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IS MARS DEAD OR ALIVE?
A MARVELLOUS SCIENTIFIC ADVENTURE TO FIND OUT

From My
Magazine, January 1922

FIFTY million miles across space as we stand and watch
the stars is a shining light to which the minds of wise men have been turned for
generations. It is Mars.

MEN peer at it through telescopes, hoping to catch
some sign; they prick their ears in wireless rooms, hoping to catch some sound.
For Mars i5 ahead of Earth in the long, long evolution of the rolling worlds,
and it is believed by those who have studied Mars most that the planet is not
dead. It may be that Man is not alone in the Universe, but that far away in
space, swinging round between us and the Sun, is another living world, older
than ours, and therefore possibly with living beings with whom we may one day
get in touch.

WE shall see ; those who are young will live to see
wonders. And who shall say that they will not live to see pictures of Mars, and
perhaps to have communication with this planet millions of miles away? We have
learned to be afraid of calling anything impossible. If it has been possible to
talk from England to Australia, if it has been possible to persuade nations to
break up their battleships, if it has been possible for a Postmaster-General to
rob us of our Penny Post, we need not count it as impossible to speak to Mars

MEN are busy at this moment with what is perhaps the
most ingenious scheme that has ever been thought out for widening our knowledge
of Mars. They are trying to bring it as near to our vision as Hyde Park is when
we stand on the top of St. Paul's. They hope to photograph it at a distance
equal to that, and, if all their plans are carried out, we may hope next year to
see actual photographs of Mars, which may settle once for all the enthralling
question whether the planet is alive or dead.

A WONDROUS scheme it is, with mountains of difficulty
in the way but with brains conquering them all, so that, whether it succeed or
fail, we may feel proud of the men who can conceive so great a scheme.

THERE may be men on Mars or there may not; there may
be men with cleverer brains than ours; but, clever as they may be, it is hard to
believe that they could think out anything more wonderful than this scientific
adventure for seeing the face of another world from the bottom of a hole in the
Earth. Let us see what this scheme is.

TO SEE THE FACE OF MARS IN AN OLD PIT
SHAFT

MARS is known, of course, to the ancients, but it was
not till Galileo turned his telescope on the planet for the first time, in 1610,
that the real study of Mars began. Galileo found that Mars was not perfectly
round, and from his time till now men have been making fresh discoveries almost
every year.

Sometimes the scientists, looking through their telescopes, have seen signs
on the surface of Mars that have given rise to much speculation, as in the case
of the canals, and the Polar caps, which almost disappear during the Martian
summer; while at other times the storytellers have allowed their imagination to
play, and have come strangely near the mark in their forecasts. A striking
instance of this comes up in Dean Swift's Travels of Gulliver, where it is
stated that the astronomers of Laputa had discovered two satellites "which
revolved about Mars." At that time it was not known that Mars had any moons, and
only in August, 1877, did an American professor, watching Mars through his
telescope at Washington, discover that there were actually two moons circling
round her. The storyteller's dream had come true.

Slowly men came to note that Mars revolved round the Sun at a distance of 140
million miles, that his year was equal to 687 of our days, and his day 37
minutes longer than ours; that Mars was much smaller than the Earth, being only
4191 miles in diameter, and that in bulk it would take seven planets as big as
Mars to make one Earth.

Then his mass or weight was worked out and found to be ten times less than
the Earth's, and the pull of gravity at his surface proved to be only two-fifths
of the Earth's, so that a man who weighs 150 pounds on Earth would weigh only 60
on Mars, and would be able to jump over an eight-foot wall as easily as he can
jump a two-foot fence here. An elephant on Mars could skip like a gazelle, and
could leap from hill to hill like a chamois on the Alps.

Clouds were long ago observed on Mars, and the fact that the Polar ice-caps
disappeared in summer and returned in winter suggested to Sir William Herschell
that here was a repetition of what was happening in our own Polar regions. As
the atmosphere of Mars was not very dense, the surface of the planet could be
examined, and it was seen that, while the bulk of it was red, there were dusky
patches here and there, and these were supposed to represent land and sea.

But all other discoveries in connection with Mars seem
small compared with that discovery made at Milan Observatory in 1877, by
Giovanni Schiaparelli, who saw, to his astonishment, what no other man up to
that time had seen - a number of straight, dark lines, which he called
canali, or channels. During the next few years he found more and more of
these lines, which he sketched on maps. He expressed no opinion as to whether
these channels were natural or artificial, but by a mistranslation his Italian
word canali became in English canals, and so at once there was aroused a
popular speculation as to whether Mars had intelligent inhabitants who could
carry out vast engineering schemes. For a time many astronomers would not
believe in the channels at all, but the wonderful discovery is now generally
accepted, and the markings are no longer dismissed as creations of the
imagination, or the result of an optical illusion, or a trick of the lens of the
telescope.

What, then, can they be? That is the most enthralling problem in astronomy
today. Professor Percival Lowell, the son of the American poet and a
distinguished astronomer, gave the best years of his life to the study of the
lines, and came to the conclusion that they were really channels, as
Schiaparelli said, and in all probability made by intelligent beings. He further
suggested that when the ice-caps melted in the summer the water flowed into
these channels, irrigated the adjoining land, and caused a broad belt of
vegetation to spring up. The lines, strangely enough, become wider and darker in
the Martian summer; and Professor Lowell's theory certainly offers a plausible
explanation of this. The red colour of the planet he regarded as proof that the
bulk of its surface is covered with deserts of sand.

It is an ingenious and fascinating theory, the best explanation of the facts
that has yet been offered. But can it be proved or disproved? There is only one
conceivable way to prove or disprove it, and that is to make a giant telescope,
so powerful that Mars can be seen through it near enough to recognise the nature
of the surface. The lens must be so great that it will bring Mars within a mile
or two of the Earth if we are to be able to survey the landscape of this distant
world.

But is it possible to build such an instrument? No, said most men of science.
In the first place the lens would have to be fifty feet wide, and the biggest
that could be made was a hundred inches. Even if the great lens could be made,
the tube would be impossible, for it would have to be a thousand feet long.

But there was one astronomer who did not agree with
all this; he hated the word impossible. True, he could not see how the great
lens could be fashioned, or how the tube could be made, but he would not give up
such a splendid idea. When Sir Christopher Wren, who was professor of astronomy
at Oxford, built the Monument in London to commemorate the Great Fire, he meant
it to be the tube of a great telescope; a big lens cast and ground in Holland
was to be fitted into it. But it was found that the swaying of the Monument in
the wind was so great that it would be useless for astronomical observation, and
so a staircase was put inside the Monument, and the telescope tube became
instead a watch-tower. And yet the Monument is only 202 feet high, while the
tube of the Mars telescope would have to be a thousand feet. How could such an
instrument be built, higher than the Eiffel Tower, and, if it were built, how
could it be kept from swaying in the wind?

The astronomer who turned these problems over in his mind was Professor
David Todd, of Amherst College, Massachusetts. He had done much valuable work in
connection with the measurement of the Sun's distance, and had also devoted much
time to calculations in the hope of discovering the planet which is supposed to
be beyond Neptune. Now he was captivated by the possibility of the big telescope
and the dazzling prospects it would hold out to the man who could make it.
Things had changed considerably since ancient days, when the fact that Mars was
brighter than usual, owing to his nearness to the Earth, had once caused a
panic, and men had wanted to shut out the sight from their view. Now everyone
wished to know what was happening on this distant world.

One day there flashed into the professor's mind a great idea, almost
startling in its unexpectedness to the ordinary mind, yet simplicity itself when
we come to understand it, Another astronomer, Professor Wood, of Johns Hopkins
University at Baltimore, had experimented with a new kind of mirror consisting
of a rapidly revolving bowl filled with mercury, so that by centrifugal force
the edge of the mercury - quicksilver - could rise and the liquid metal could
form a shining concave surface. At first the scheme was not successful, as the
vibration set up in whirling the bowl produced flaws and ridges in the surface
of the quicksilver, but this was overcome in a very ingenious way. The bowl to
contain the mercury was made of steel, and placed inside another bowl slightly
larger, with magnets fitted all round it. When the outer bowl revolved the
magnets caused the inside bowl to spin round too, and as there was no mechanical
connection between the bowls, but merely a magnetic pull, the mercury whirled
round with a smooth flow, and its surface was as dazzling as if it were pure
sunlight.

This experiment was on a very small scale, but it occurred to Professor Todd
one day that here was the solution of the trouble with the lens. Why not make
the lens of liquid mercury? The making of a glass lens even a hundred inches
wide is a lengthy and costly business. There is first the difficulty of casting
so large a piece of glass without a flaw; and when this is done the great disc
has to be ground to the proper curvature and given a perfect surface. At any
time during the process, even at the very end when all seems completed
satisfactorily, the lens may crack across, and years of time and huge sums of
money may be wasted. The 101-inch lens of the Mount Wilson telescope, which
weighs four and a half tons, took nine years to make. Even a whole generation of
scientific effort, and a great fortune spent, could not guarantee a glass lens
such as would be needed for Mars. And so mercury was fixed upon as the only
possible way out of this dilemma. It is the only metal that is liquid at
ordinary temperatures, and from its surface reflects light better than most
other substances. That is why it has been used for centuries on the back of
glass to make mirrors. Then mercury does not dull by contact with the air as
silver and many other metals do. The ancients called it quicksilver because it
was the colour of silver and the drops ran about so quickly. The metal has been
known at least three hundred years longer than Bethlehem, and has been found in
many places. Spain is now the chief producer.

So one of the difficulties in the way of the discoverers of Mars was
overcome. But, supposing the lens were made, how was Professor Todd to get his
tube? It must be a thousand feet long, and must hold within it his great
spinning bowl of mercury. Imagination came once more to the aid of Professor
Todd, and at last he hit on the brilliant idea of using a disused mine shaft.
There would be his tube ready made, a tube so strong and firm that there could
be no question of its swaying in the wind.

Yet it was not easv to find his shaft, for not only
would it have to be a disused shaft, but there was an all-important fact to be
remembered. The shaft must point in a certain direction. It must point
directly up to that part of the heavens across which Mars would pass in the year
1924, when the planet approaches nearer to the Earth than for a century past,
and nearer than it will be for a century to come.

Well, by a stroke of rare fortune, Professor Todd discovered the very shaft
he was seeking at Chañaral, in Chile, in the heart of the Andes. This round hole
in the Earth is 1200 feet deep and can be widened to 50 feet across. It can then
be lined throughout with reinforced concrete, so that the face of the walls will
be perfectly white and smooth. The mine shaft could even be sheathed with a
dazzling white metal. During the year 1924 the planet Mars will pass immediately
over this mine shaft several times.

Professor Todd has resolved to use the shaft as his telescope tube, and to
put his immense bowl of mercury at the bottom, where it can be revolved by
motors. It is hoped the image of Mars, falling on the mercury, will be reflected
into a glass prism higher up the shaft, and then into the lens of a camera
facing the prism.

Was anything ever more ingeniously contrived than this? Think of this series
of astonishing devices.

There is the old pit shaft which must be widened till
it is fifty feet across.

There is the huge bowl of mercury which must be spun round without vibration.

There is the magnetic attraction by which the bowl will be revolved while
suspended in space.

There is the power house at the top of the shaft to work the motors.

There are the motors at the bottom of the shaft to work the bowl.

There is the reflector suspended in the shaft to pick up the reflection in
the bowl.

There is the chamber cut out in the side of the shaft for the camera.

There is the special camera that will pick up the image from the reflector
hanging high up in the shaft.

There is the fastest photographic plate ever known to pick up the fastest
moving thing ever photographed.

Could anything be more surprising in conception or more triumphant in its
execution? The whole scheme is bold and remarkably ingenious, and if success is
humanly possible Professor Todd and his colleague, Mr. B. McAfee of Paris, will
achieve it. Never before has an astronomer conceived so brilliant an idea for
scanning the heavens, and if the scheme should succeed a new and thrilling page
of the Book of Nature will be thrown open for men to read. It will mean a
revolution in astronomy, and our nearer neighbours of the Solar System will
become next-door neighbours in very truth. With such a telescope, bringing Mars
within short range of human vision - a mile and a half of the Earth optically -
the planet may one day be open to our close inspection, and wondrous secrets now
hidden may stand revealed to our astonished sight.

What is it that this marvellous telescope is likely to do for us if it
succeeds?

It will bring Mars as near to our view as St. Paul's is to Westminster
Abbey. Think what that means. We stand on a hill and see a train passing
along the countryside a mile and a half away. We see the cattle in the fields,
the ploughman driving his horses, and the children playing in a meadow, and if
we have fair sight we can roughly discern their forms. With this wonderful
telescope a world travelling through space, 3 million miles away, may be brought
as near to us as this landscape from our hill.

But truly nothing is very easy in the human search for knowledge; it is
almost as if Nature were opposing man at every step he takes. There now arises
a difficulty that would hardly be thought of by an ordinary reader who has come
so far. If, when the telescope is completed, we were to look through the
eyepiece as Mars was passing overhead, its image being optically within a mile
and a half of us, what should we see? We should see only a blur - no canals, no
vegetation, no Polar caps, not even mountains and valleys such as we can see on
the Moon. For this planet, brought within a mile and a half of our sight, would
be moving so fast that we should see nothing, of it as it dashed by the mouth
of the shaft.

Any particular spot on the planet that may come within range of the shaft
would be rushing past our eyes at a speed of about ten miles a minute, or ten
times as fast as an express train. If we stand on a hill and watch an express
train passing some distance away, we see it creeping, as it seems, across the
landscape ; we see it clearly. But if we stand close by the moving train it
rushes past at such a speed that we see nothing but a blur. That is how it will
be with the planet Mars. We may bring it near our vision, but we cannot slow it
down; and here, again, is another mountain of difficulty to be conquered.

And it will be conquered. A wondrous and thrilling thing is science,
overcoming all difficulties, climbing over all barriers, overthrowing all
pessimists if we will only have faith in it, and give it time. Now it is
photography that comes to our aid, photography and the mastery of the secrets of
light. Professor Todd will have a special camera built, and special plates
prepared, so that, as the surface of Mars passes across the shaft, above the
mercury mirror, and is reflected by the prism into the eyepiece of the camera,
an instantaneous photograph will be taken, which, when developed, will show that
particular part of the planet's surface as if it were stationary. What we cannot
see with our own eye we shall see through an eye we can make - the sensitive eye
of the camera.

If there are canals and vegetation and Martians, water and ice, clouds and
snow-storms, we shall see them all. We shall actually see this far-off world in
space, with the help of photography, as if we were looking down on a landscape
from a mountain peak on Earth. All the visions of the novelists who have taken
us to Mars in their books, stimulating our imaginations with their own, will
become as nothing, for with our eyes, through the eyes of the camera and the
telescope. we shall see what Mars is like.

That is, of course, if the professor's great scheme succeeds as he believe it
will. Daring and wonderful as it is, it is not the vain imagining of a dream; it
is a proposition of practical science, thought out by a clever astronomer - a
man of wide experience, who knows far more than we do about the scientific
difficulties of his adventure.

Some scientists think there may be trouble in taking a satisfactory
photograph, even with the special camera and the extra-rapid plates made for
photographing a body travelling ten miles a minute. The great mercury mirror
will magnify the surface of Mars 25 million times, but this does not mean that
the light of Mars will be magnified accordingly. When we look at a planet and
see it as a point in the sky, all its light is concentrated in that point; but
when we have a lens magnifying the planet to 25 million times the size of the
dot in the sky, the light of any particular part of the surface will be only one
a 5-millionth of the light of the point in the sky. It is therefore suggested
that there would not be enough light to take a photograph of any part of the
planet. The projectors of the telescope, however, believe that satisfactory
snapshots of Mars will be quite possible with the large amount of light the
spinning mercury will provide. It is an interesting point that not even experts
can decide, and the experiment is certainly well worth trying.

One more trouble - there is no end to them - is that, of course, this immense
telescope tube cannot be moved round to follow its moving object; it must remain
in one position. The dish of mercury cannot be whirled round at different
angles, nor can the shaft be moved or tilted. The astronomers will therefore
have to wait until Mars passes overhead. As this will occur, however, several
times during the year 1924, there will be opportunity for repeated observations
and duplicate photographs.

Another difficulty to be overcome is the possible
obscuring and dulling of the photograph by the denseness of the Earth's
atmosphere. All the best observations and photographs of stars and planets are
made in observatories at great heights, like the one on Mount Wilson, in
California, but the lens of this telescope will be 1200 feet down in the Earth,
so that the image of Mars will have to be viewed through the whole of the
Earth's atmosphere. A clear, dry atmosphere, however, will do much to overcome
its density. The atmosphere of Mars is not likely to interfere with the
brightness of the photographs, as it is only about half the density of the very
thin air at the top of the Himalayas.

One of the problems that will be solved if the telescope succeeds is the
mystery of the canals and their duplicate forms, with the curious circular
patches where they appear to intersect - patches which some have thought to be
oases watered from the Polar ice-caps. The telescope may also solve the mystery
of the strange patches of light that once appeared on the edge of Mars, causing
a great stir in scientific circles. It was suggested that they might be signal
fire, lighted to attract our attention; but to produce even a speck of light
that could be seen on Mars from the Earth it would be necessary to burn a vast
forest. A more scientific theory is that the light was the reflection of
sunlight on mountain-tops or possibly on clouds. Professor Lowell suggested that
these clouds might be composed of dust and not of water-vapour.

We may hope to see these wonders the year after next; and eagerly the news
will be awaited.