Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-04-06

mOcOuple, has found the temperature Oh MATS
rises well above the freezing point and at
times attains'a reading of 60 degrees-just
nice Spring day in Washington, d. c., or
Chicago Yet the nights on Mars must be
extremely cold-many degrees below zero-and
a Martian who. could go coatless at MONDAY
would have to dig in" under heavy cover
ings to endure the night.
Mars with Within IS 900 900 miles Of Earth
in 1924 and will not be as close again until
2347 AID, but perhaps in the meantime, the
giant 2OO-inch telescope will reveal within the
next two or three years more about Mars
than man has been able to learn in the last
800 years.
A MOTHER sphinx-the MAN in the Noon
may have to yield his secrets before the
ubiquitous eye of the new telescope. Once
upon a time-not SO long ago-the mystery
of the moon had been solved. He was just
dead cold planet, his pock-marked face COW
cred with the craterS of volcanoes that had
ceased Spouting very long ago. But Tow Sci-
ence is not so sure the moon is cold and dead,
nor that those burrows on his placid face were
inflicted by raining meteors, as some held.
One who inclines to the view the moon Is
not altogether lfeless and inactive Is Dr. VIII
liam Pickering. Silvery effects observed upon
the peaks and within the shadows of the lunar
orb are to this Harvard savant evidences
Of ice and snow in processes OF melting and
freezing, and the variable spots" observable
at times indications of organic life resembling
a form of vegetation that houriSheS while the
sun shines and withers when the night falls.
If one accepts the theory held by many
then the moon is not only inactive but airleSS
as WELL although it once had an atmosphere
A modern Jules Verne airplaning to the moon
could never return, for his machine would
not lift of the surface of the Earth's
cause of its small size, the gravitational pull Of
the moon is only one-sixth that Of the earth.
You could jump over barn on the moon,
carry six times as much as on the earth and
run six times as fast"
Some time soon We may know more about
the Man in the Moon" Three hundred years
ago, when Calico turned the first telescope
upon him, his face was brought within 10000
miles. The big reflector at the Mount Wilson
observatory reduced this to 100 miles, and
now mirror that will bring that pallid face
as close as so miles!
A ND what about Venus, the Evening Star"
twin of the earth, with plenty of light
heat and water? 1t is 10000 900 miles nearer
the sun than earth, and, because life is CO.
existent with heat and water, it has been the
assumption of many scientists that surely there
must be life of some kind on Venus.
Perhaps the new telescope will be power
full enough to pierce the veil that Venus wears
constantly. This veil has been assumed t0@be
steam clouds resulting from the effects OIL
bliStering heat Of the sun upon the watery
content of this planet. Whereas life on Mer-
curry might be annihilated by the blazing in
ferno of the suns heat, Venus might be far
enough away to shelter life; Just as men on
earth manage to live in the baked desert
areas of the Sahara.
Sir James Jeans thinks that Venus with q
mean temperature of some 60 degrees higher
than that of the EARTH is probably too hot for
life at present. "But after 1000 900 yeas,
he Observes "the temperature of Venus wiz
have fallen 40 degrees and what the earth is
now Venus may perhaps be somewhere be-
tween one and two million years hence
Whether life will then inhabit Venus we can
not know, and it would be futile to guess
but there is at least a chance that, as the
earth fails, Venus may step into its place"
Perhaps the new telescope will reveal more
about the reported ninth planet revolving
outside the orbit of Neptune, nameless wher
its discovery was reported last month by DIR
v. M. Slipher of the Lowell Observatory
That new planetary member Of our Sola
system would be found was predicted year!
ago by DR.. Percival Lowell. PLANET x" i
said to be larger than the earth and snlalle
than Neptune.
That new star clusters and more milky
ways" may be discovered with the new tele
scope seems an inevitable conclusion. TIN
nearest stars, such as Proxima Centauri, ar
49, 900, 600 900 900 miles away, or 427 light
years-the distance that light, travelling at 1856,
900 miles second, takes APT years to traverse
Farther away are such stars as Sirius, $1,000,
600, OOO,O 900 miles, or 8.65 nght-years away
Yet, remote as is Sirius, science is able to tel
us that this Dog Star" has nearly twice tn
suns temperature and its luminosity is abOu
&c times that of the sun, which would max
the stars diameter So per cent greater thai
that of the sun. 1t has nearly four times tn
suns volume. but only 2.45 times its weight