The Birmingham age-herald., 1921-10-16

apparatus In use today Maroon said the letter V had been repeated several times in international code He suggested that possibly the in. habitants of Mars were trying 10 yet into communication with the earth
 Two engineers of Omaha devoted two weeks of their time recently t. listening for signals from Mars. They kept their apparatus tuned to catch such message as Marconi described but they heard nothing.
 Entirely New Proposal
 Controversy has run high over the bold proposal of Messrs. B. McAfee and Todd. A mine shaft In the Chil. can Andes, which will point directly at Mars in 1924, will provide the bar rel of their telescope, they announced and a big pan of mercury revolving at high speed at the bottom will pro. vide the mirror. The two Americans calculate that the surface of Mars will be rnagnified at least 25, 900, ,O0C times. bringing 1t within a few miles of their cameras.
 Tn mine shaft will be widened fo 90 feet In diameter and sheathed The pool of mercury at the bottom will be revolved at such high speed that 1t will assume a concave shape and become a mirror. The depth of the fortunately placed shaft Is so great that there will be sufficient luminosity. the two scientists said, to enable them to take snapshots in stead of time exposures
 The Goddard proposal for aerial in- Vestigation also includes use of cam eras. To summarize his principle. the determining factor of the efficiency or a rocket Is the velocity of the ejec- ton of gases due to the explosion of propelling material. By Increasing this velocity, through increasing the proportion of the propelling material to weight of projectile and through greatly improved nozzle shaped passage for the escape of gases, Pro- fesor Goddard claims to have raised the efficiency of the docket to nearly 64 per cent.
 Convinced Life Exists
 Many investigators are convinced that life exists on Mars and expect to prove 1t with the novel telescope What they will find on their photo graphic plates is the object of spec ulation by scientific men the world over.
 Lowell has said that Mars Is level and uninteresting, with no mountains and only Q few dried-up beds of shall low seas to diversity its topography More than one-half of it Is desert land and the rest is only green when the canals are bringing water from the polar icecaps. Dust storms. which blot out hundreds of square miles of the planets surface from the view of scientific observers, sweep oven It's equatorial section.
 The physical conditions of Mars are entirely different from those we know on earth. The force of gravity ex- erted by Mars Is only three- els ghths that of the earth, while the atmos- pheric pressure, that Is about 15 level on our world, Is less than four and no known animal could live on it.. These conditions, however. make it possible for great weights to be lifted with little effort.
 Martians Great Workers
 Lowell computed that the Martians could do seven times more work than human beings could accomplish, with the same amount of effort. A human observer on Mars, he said, would be impressed by the slowness and flat ness of his surroundings.
 An elephant could leap like a ga zelle In such an atmosphere, he said; water would flow with a hesltant, lazy current and stone thrown into the air would sink with graceful moderation to the ground. He made no attempt to describe how the Mar tians themselves might appear to workings. but he said they would not resemble human beings.
 The Martian day is 20 minutes long CT than ours. but the seasons are twice as long. Lowell asserted that Mars Is slowly dying for want of wa ter and the canals had been built in an epic struggle of the Martians to maintain life. He suggested that the spots observed at the intersections of some of the canals might be cities built up around points where the greatest amount of water could be concentrated by the canals.