Evening star., 1946-01-26
|Radar Use 10 Find 0uI
Whether Life Exists on
Planets Seen Likely
By the Associated Press.

Mankind's success in establishing
tradar contact with the moon was de.
scribed last night as an Opening
step" toward solving the age-ole
question whether human life exist.
elsewhere than on earth.
This was the view of Maj. Gen
Harold McClelland, air communica.
tions officer of the Air Forces, wher
queried as to further possibilities
growing out of the Army Sigma
Corps announcement that it hao
achieved several radar contacts with
the moon since January 10.
Gen. McClelland told a reporter:
Il see no reason why, eventually
a form of Morse code by radal
could not be transmitted to some oi
the celestial bodies about which con-
lecture has been made that human
life exists.
Superior Techniques" Possible.
'Tf sufficient power could be gene
rated to get signals out through mil
lions of miles of space to reach the
planets. intelligence could be simply
transmitted by such signals.
And if intelligent human life
exists beyond the earth, such sig
nails could be answered. We might
even find that other planets had
developed techniques superior to our
own"
H. E. Burton. principal astrono-
mer Of the Naval Observatory
pointed out that conjectures have
been made that life exists on the
planets Mars and Venus. He de-
clared that Mars had thin enough
atmospheric envelope to admit pas
sage of radar signals if sufficient
power were generated to span the
IS, ,000, 900 miles between the earth
and Mars at their closest point of
proximity.
Notifications Held Necessary.
Gen. McClelland, discussing the
possibilities of sending Morse code
to the outer spaces, told a reporter
There would have to be modi-
fications of the signal described in
the Army's announcement.
THE radar pulses transmitted
were Of a half-second's duration,
spaced every five seconds apart. Con-
ceivably the duration of the pulse
could be a little less or a little
more than half-second's duration
at certain intervals, so as to pro-
duce coded transmission of the
Morse variety"
He pointed out, however, that if
there were any radar receiving sta
tions on other heavenly bodies they
would have to be tuned to the same
frequency on which earthlings were
transmitting.
The big thing in this whole de-
velopment, he said, lis that it has
definitely been shown that radio
waves can be made to pierce the
ionoSphere, the highly ionized layer
above the earth's atmosphere which
usually serves to defect radio waves
back to the earth.
Sound Broadcasts Envisaged.
If the radar pulses can get
through to a celestial body and back
again l don't see any reason why
radio sound broadcasts could not be
made to penetrate the ionosphere.
It's even possible that some radio
sounds have hitherto been getting
through the ionosphere, but we have
had no means of being certain"
He declared, however, that voice
broadcasts-which require a con-
tinuous wave transmission as COM
pared with the spaced-apart pulses
of, .radar-would require tremendous
transmission power to reach even
the closest celestial body. ,....
The first step in getting sound
broadcasts through the ionosphere,
he said, might be the transmission
of tremendous bursts of energy for
short periods. That would mean,
OF course, that the speech of the
broadcaster would be broken up,
but eventually it may be possible
to modulate the waves in a way
that would allow continuous broad
casts to the outer space"
Venus Atmosphere Dense.
Astronomer Burton said he be-
lieved it would be virtually impos-
sible to contact Venus by radar
because of that planets extremely
dense atmosphere.
Mr.. Burton declared that while
it was generally accepted that hu-
man life does not exist on the moon,
it may be that lower forms of life
exist there.
I'VE assume" he said, that be-
cause the moon has little at
moshere that there is no moisture
there and hence no forms of life
But a typographical mapping OF
the moon by radar might reveal
that there is moisture in the
crevices of the lunar mountains. u