Palatka daily news. [volume] (Palatka, Fla.) 1919-1994, 1921-10-10
(By Associated Pressl


bare the secret of Mars?
Of course, it isn't at all certain
that any one of the three will prove
a successful Sherlock Holmes of the
skies but scientists, lured on by an
age-old curiosity concerning our
neighboring planet, are pressing
along all three paths.
The latst development to set the
scientific world again agog over the
old question of whether there was
life on Mars was the announcement
from Paris of B. McAfee, American
scientist and Professor David Todd,
American astronomer, that they pur-
posed to snapshot the planet by u.s.
ing an abandoned mineshaft in Chile
as the barrel for a telescope.
Only a short time before Signor
Marconi of wireless fame had put
kick of interest in the most fantastic
of scientific inquiries by suggesting
that a radio signal of 100000 meters
which he had picked up might have
come from some Marian armed with
a mammoth sending set.
Would Send Camera on Rocket
But it was left to Professor Robert
H. Goddard of Clark College in Wor-
cester, Mass, to suggest making an
investigation of the moon by means
of multiple-charge, high efficiency
rocket, capable of carrying cameras
or other recording apparatus needed
to explore the unknown regions of
the upper air. As the claim was
made that a rocket could be con-
structed of unlimited cruising power,
it has been suggested that it might
be shot up to Mars instead of the
moon, which many scientists affirm
is uninhabited. One or two daring
individuals even have volunteered to
be shot up in place of a camera.
The possibility that some folk
might be wandering up and down
the valleys of Mars has excited the
curiosity Of astronomers and laymen
throughout all the ages for Mars is
the nearest planet to the earth and
the easiest to observe.
Imaginative writer's took their
readers on trips to the moon and
laid the scenes of their stories in the
surroundings of Mars, Saturn and
other planets but there was little
scientific knowledge to furnish q
basis for such fiction.
Think Life Is There.
The perfecting of the high power
ed telescope and the adaptation of
photography to the uses of the as
tronomers quickened their interest
in the possibility Of life on another
world. Mars, which was seen to
have large areas of blush green
and other areas of an ochre red, with
patches of white at the poles, was be-
lieved by many astronomers to be
capable of supporting life in some
form.
Schiaparelli, an Italian astrono-
mer, announced in 1871 that he had
found the surface of the planet scar
red by many lines which were per-
fect!y straight and seemed to have
some system like vast engineering
works. He called the lines canals
and said he believed they had been
constructed and were not simply
cracks in the surface of the planet.
Professor Percival Lowell erected
an observatory in Flagstaff, Ariz.,
many years ago and commenced a
systematic observation of Mars.
More than 10 years ago he startled
the world by expressing his belief
that Mars was inhabited by intelli-
gent organisms living in civiliza-
ton mach farther advanced than
ours.
The canals, he said, were really
big bitches bringing water from the
poles to irrigate the rest of the plan.
ct. The ochre red areas on the sur
face of Mars, he asserted, were des-
erts or fallow fields which became
blush green as the water flowed
along the canals in the seasons.
Irrigated From Polar Regions
Later, he said that he had watched
the blush green area, denoting land
springing to. life with the coming of
the water, spread down the northern
hemisphere along the borders of the
canals to beyond the equator of the
planet and then gradually turn red
dish brown with the waning of the
season. The water, he claimed, was
from ice melting on the polar caps OF
the planet.
Other scientists took the opposite
point of view. Some said the canals
were only cracks in the surface of
the planet filled with sand, impreg-
mated with salts of various kinds,
which became dark or light to the
observer according to its moisture
content. The temperature on Mars
they said, was too cold to support
life of any kind.
Al l. ,hr