The Hartford republican. (Hartford, Ky.) 18??-1926, 1920-03-12
NO NEWS HAS BEEN
RECEIVED FROM MARS!

Though the world remains a-tingle
with expectancy and teeming with
plans to communicate with the other
planets no actual messages have as
yet passed either way From Austria
liza comes a report, however, that the
mysterious signals are now directed
at their side of the world, Europe
evidently having been given up as
incompetent. In these signals is a
constant repetition of the two dashes
that form the letter NJ, and they come
on wave lengths of $4,000 to 120,-
900 meters-such lengths as have
never yet been used by any station on
earth.
An Englishwoman, writing to Mar
conf, claims to have made a close
study of the subject and to have
come to the conclusion that the
strange signals COME from the souls
of wireless operators who have gone
to other planets. This view should
cause the scientists and the spiritual
lists to work together on the problem.
Mr.. Marconi has announced his in
tention of framing the letter as a
scientific curio.
Our electrical wizard" Thomas A.
Edison, thinks that we have machin-
cry powerful enough to send a mes
sage to Mars, but he doubts that the
inhabitants of that planet have in
struments sufficiently delicate to re-
ceive our signals. Sir oliver Lodge.
however, thinks the best way to try
to communicate with the other plan
cts is to describe an immense geome-
trical figure on the Sahara desert.
Geometry. he says, is a universal
science, and he thinks the chances are
that the people of Mars have magnify
ing instruments sufficiently powerful
to make out the figures.
In the meantime Prof. Robert H.
Goddard is working on a repeating
rocket which may be sent on an ex-
ploring expedition to the edge of the
earth's atmosphere, or, If desirable,
on to the moon, or to Mars. The
rocket is to contain a series arranged
to explode in relay one after another.
But according to DrN Charles C. ABB
bolt, of the Smithsonian Institution.
we must leave Mars out of our plans.
MARS" he says, sis as dry as any
desert in the world, and since water
Is essential to human existence, this
precludes the possibility of'life there
The so-called canals said to be made
to irrigate the planet from the melt
ing polar ice-caps, he states, would
be similar to a canal 10 miles wide
from Boston to Mexico City, or from
Seattle to Atlanta.
While Mars is a cold. barren world,
Venus on the other hand is young
planet-in her teens, so to speak.
And it is a favorable place for habita-
ton, there being plenty of clouds and
to that of our tropics, and in the
course of the planetary dance she
comes nearer to the earth than Mars
does. So it may be that these mystic
signals are due to an attempt at fir
tation with us on the part of Mile,
Venus.
But from Paris comes note of dis
couragement, tending to take all the
romance out of the radio possibilities
The French ministry of wireless serv-
ice announces at the conclusion of
careful investigation that the signals
discovered by the big Marconi wire
less stations are not from another
planet, but are simply the echo of
tremendous thunder storms in the
sun. Such electric waves are some
times generated by the solar disturb
ances to such an extent as to render
wireless stations on the earth almost
useless while they last.