The Birmingham age-herald., 1921-10-16
Will Secrets Of Mars Be
 ReUealed Through Rocket, Radio Telegraph or Camera?

[ the scenes of their stories in the sur roundings of Mars, Saturn and other 1 planets, but there was little scientific | knowledge' to furnish basis for such 1 fiction.
 | Think Life Possible. |, The pertecting of the high powered 1 telescope and the adptation of pho i tography to the uses of the astron- ! omers Quickened their interest il the possibility of life on another world. l Mars. which was seen 10 hay6 'arge areas of bluish green and other areas of a ochre red, with patches of white at the poles. was believed | by many astronomers to be capa ble 1 of supporting life in some form. | Schiaparelli an Italian astronomer announced in 1871 that he had found the surface of the planet scared by many lines, wnich were perfectly 1 straight and seemed to have some 1 system, like vast engineering works
 He called the lines canals and said he believed they had been construct cd and were not simply cracks in the surface of the planet
 Prof. Pereival Lowell erected an ! observatory in Fla gstaff. Aria, many years ago, and commenced a sys- tematic observation of Mars. Moro | than 10 years ago he startled the world by expressing his belief that Mars was inhabited by intelligent organisms living in q civilization much farther advanced than ours.
 Irrigation Canals
 The canals, he said, were really big ditches 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 bluish green as the water flowed along the canals in the seasons.
 Later, he said that he had watched the bluish 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 .he 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
 Work of Man Indicated.
 Lowell retorted that his observa- tions showed that the average tenn perature of Mars Is 4S degrees Fah- renheit. The regularity of the ca- aals; their even spacing; the accuracy with which they made great circle such as navigators employ on a curved surface thousands of miles in extent; the manner in which some of the canals were pafalleled at cer- tain points, and the regularity or the spots at the intersections of the ca Eals all testified, he asserted, to the artificial nature of the canals, ana Justified d belief that they were made by sentient organisms of high intelligence.
 Moro than 500 canals and oases, as Lowell claimed the spots to be. have been mapped out and their names arc so well known that Harvard observ- atory announced last April that snow had been discovered falling at 1sidis in the district of Syrtis Major. Mars It was held by some that the canals have been developed to signal the earth which must appear to the Mar tians as of immense size, being nine times bigger than Mars.
 Communication Attempted 1 With the development of wireless | telegraphy several empts have been made to get into communication 2 with Mars with highpowered appara- tus. Signor Marconi gave encourage ment to that field of research re- gently when he announced that in l the course of experimenting he had picked up a signal with wave length of about 150.o00 meters, about six times as long as any commercial