The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1897-06-02
LIFE IN NEARBY PLANETS.
If Nan Exists He Must Be Provided
With Singular Lungs.

London Spectator: The discovery of
the philosophers stone. supposing that
phrase to imply a working scheme for
transmitting an inferior metal into
gold would probably produce nothing
beyond a period of terrible economic
confusion or. perhaps, a vast and dis
astrouS, because OVer-rapid, transfer of
property, but the attainment of GER
/ tainty that sentient beings with corpo-
real incaSementS, acting by effort and
not by pure Yolition, existed in any one
/ other planet would not enlarge the
range of human thought and the force
of the human imagination. Such a GER
/ tainty would either increase to an ex-
traordinary degree the reverence for
/ the creator-for we are all so limited
! that we reverence powers which we
know in theory must exist-or would
compel materials to revise and widen
/ their whole theory of the relation of
matter to mind, it being evident that
sentence could exist under conditions
I hitherto deemed impossible.
There are certainly millions. and pos
sibly billions, of worlds of which no
two are the same. and if sentient be-
ings were found past question in any
other world than ours the presumption
that they existed under a variety OF
conditions and probably. therefore, in
a variety of forms, practically unlim-
tied. would become so violent that to re-
ject the theory would soon be regarded
as an evidence of a foolish, ocular
habit of disbelief in the unseen.
Man has some internal dislike TO be-
lieve that limited beings with sentence
can exist under conditions other than
his own, and habitually assumes that
a world without air is a dead world.
Yet there is no proof that the ether
which we know TO be everywhere, can
not support life, or that circumstances
of which we know nothing may not
modify either its intOlerable cold or the
effect Of that cold.
In Mars itself there is some potency
al work which. TO the despair for the
moment of terrestrial science, produces
warmth where cold ought to reign per-
manently supreme. 1t is as certain as
any deduction from analogy can be
that the air in Mars. though it exists,
is as rarified as it would be at the top
of a mountain twice as high as Mount
Everett, and that consequently the nor
NAL and permanent degree Of cold
ought to be terrible.
TIE thermal income of Mars is less
than half that of the earth and us
theoretical mean temperature is con-
sequently-taking into account it's low
''albedo" or reflective power per unit
of area-30 degrees centigrade below
freezing. Yet the actual climate of
Mars is mild. Snow certainly melts
rapfdly-that is patent to the telescope
-vapor certainly rises-that is clear
from the spectrum analysis-water
flows. and there are indications, if not
proofs. that a sudden vegetation fol-
lows the sudden thawfng of the snow.
What warns the air is unknown, but
it is warmed past all question or doubt.
and all arguments. therefore, as to the
inevitableness Of cold in ether worlds
must be pronounced imperfect. as are
those which show the impossibility Of
sustaining corporal life. All we can
sa-r with certainty is that, if sentient
beings with corporal frames exist in
Mars, the relation of the lungs of the
body cannot be identical with their re-
lation in man, which, as we are aware
of fishes. is not an impossible exercise
of the imagination.