Mars

Like sentient creatures, the Earth has its eyes in it upper/- part, eyes which, like an owl's see best by night: telescopes. That is why the press contained more news of Mars last week than it did two and one half years ago when Mars, though eight million miles nearer Earth than last week, was more visible from Earth's southern hemisphere. There are no major telescopes in the southern hemisphere. With hollow clankings of their metallic optic muscles, the great, unblinking eyes slowly scoured the heavens, coming to focus on a bright disc, 1/76th the size of Earth's full moon at its zenith.

Different countries, different scenes. At the Yerkes Observatory at Williams Bay, Wis., a badger-like Belgian, Professor George Van Biesbroeck, squatted in his dusky cavern, mapping what he could see, through Earth's shaking atmosphere, of the 1926 Martian geography. He disregarded the two little moons that circle Mars (the inner one twice daily) and concentrated on the dark-stained areas of its surface which remain fairly constant in their own cycle of changes and seem to indicate the existence of seasons on Mars--a 340-day summer and 347-day winter. Last week it was summer time on Mars' earthward hemisphere. The planet's ice cap was almost all melted. The stained areas showed the faint regular lines which some observers have called "canals." Their irregular spread, coupled with measurements of their heat, suggest that the stains are seasonal vegetation.

Listening to what his assistants saw was Director Edwin Brant Frost of the Yerkes Observatory. His years of looking through telescopes are over; his sight, after having served him with distinction, fails. But Mars is etched in his memory and he discussed the perennial question of Martian inhabitants. "We are agnostics on Mars up here," he said, but obliged newsgatherers with an idea of the characteristics a Martian being would have to have to live: a hide thick enough to Stand temperature ranging 150 Fahrenheit between noon and midnight; ability to migrate from 60DEG North Latitude to 60DEG South with the seasons; lungs capable of using atmosphere as poor in oxygen as that encountered by terrestrial aviators on their highest flights and as dry as the Sahara,.

In England, radio engineers "listened" for signals from Mars with apparatus tuned for waves from 30 metres to 40,000 in length. Engineer Guglielmo Marconi was quoted as having believed interstellar communication "not impossible." A spiritist kept newspaper readers diverted with "messages" from a Martian woman, one "Gomaruru."

Sir Oliver Lodge, famed spiritist, sound scientist, was besieged but made no public comment on the alleged news from 'Gomaruru" that Martians were seven feet tall, with heavy black hair, slanted eyes, big ears; appetites for tea and tobacco; electric airplanes, gigantic waterpower developments (the "canals") etc., etc.

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