Books: Marvels of Modern Science

P >> Paul Severing >> Marvels of Modern Science

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Though little more than half the earth's size, Mars has a significance
in the public eye which places it first in importance among the planets.
It is our nearest neighbor on the outer side of the earth's path around
the Sun and, viewed through a telescope of good magnifying power, shows
surface markings, suggestive of continents, mountains, valleys, oceans,
seas and rivers, and all the varying phenomena which the mind associates
with a world like unto our own. Indeed, it possesses so many features
in common with the earth, that it is impossible to resist the conception
of its being inhabitated. This, however, is not tantamount to saying
that if there is a race of beings on Mars they are the same as we on
Earth. By no means. Whatever atmosphere exists on Mars must be much
thinner than ours and far too rare to sustain the life of a people
with our limited lung capacity. A race with immense chests could live
under such conditions, and folk with gills like fish could pass a
comfortable existence in the rarefied air. Besides the tenuity of the
atmosphere, there are other conditions which would cause life to be
much different on Mars. Attraction and gravitation are altogether
different. The force with which a substance is attracted to the surface
of Mars is only a little more than one-third as strong as on the earth.
For instance one hundred pounds on Earth would weigh only about
thirty-eight pounds on Mars. A man who could jump five feet here could
clear fifteen feet on Mars. Paradoxical as it may seem, the smaller
a planet, in comparison with ours and consequently the less the pull
of gravity at its centre, the greater is the probability that its
inhabitants, if any, are giants when compared with us. Professor Lowell
has pointed out that to place the Martians (if there are such beings)
under the same conditions as those in which we exist, the average
inhabitant must be considered to be three times as large and three
times as heavy as the average human being; and the strength of the
Martians must exceed ours to even a greater extent than the bulk and
weight; for their muscles would be twenty-seven times more effective.
In fact, one Martian could do the work of fifty or sixty men.

It is idle, however, to speculate as to what the forms of life are
like on Mars, for if there are any such forms our ideas and conceptions
of them must be imaginary, as we cannot see them on Mars we do not
know. There is yet no possibility of seeing anything on the planet
less than thirty miles across, and even a city of that size, viewed
through the most powerful telescope, would only be visible as a minute
speck. Great as is the perfection to which our optical instruments
have been brought, they have revealed nothing on the planet save the
so-called canals, to indicate the presence of sentient rational beings.
The canals discovered by Schiaparelli of the Milan Observatory in 1877
are so regular, outlined with such remarkable geometrical precision,
that it is claimed they must be artificial and the work of a high order
of intelligence. "The evidence of such work," says Professor Lowell,
"points to a highly intelligent mind behind it."

Can this intelligence in any way reach us, or can we express ourselves
to it? Can the chasm of space which lies between the Earth and Mars
be bridged--a chasm which, at the shortest, is more than thirty-five
million miles across or one hundred and fifty times greater than the
distance between the earth and the moon? Can the inhabitants of the
Earth and Mars exchange signals? To answer the question, let us
institute some comparisons. Suppose the fabled "Man in the Moon" were
a real personage, we would require a telescope 800 times more powerful
than the finest instrument we now have to see him, for the space
penetrating power of the best telescope is not more than 300 miles and
the moon is 240,000 miles distant. An object to be visible on the moon
would require to be as large as the Metropolitan Insurance Building
in New York, which is over 700 feet high. To see, therefore, an object
on Mars by means of the telescope the object would need to have
dimensions one hundred and fifty times as great as the object on the
moon; in other words, before we could see a building on Mars, it would
have to be one hundred and fifty times the size of the Metropolitan
Building. Even if there are inhabitants there, it is not likely they
have such large buildings.

Assuming that there _are_ Martians, and that they are desirous
of communicating with the earth by waving a flag, such a flag in order
to be seen through the most powerful telescopes and when Mars is
nearest, would have to be 300 miles long and 200 miles wide and be
flung from a flagpole 500 miles high. The consideration of such a
signal only belongs to the domain of the imagination. As an
illustration, it should conclusively settle the question of the
possibility or rather impossibility of signalling between the two
planets.

Let us suppose that the signalling power of wireless telegraphy had
been advanced to such perfection that it was possible to transmit a
signal across a distance of 8,000 miles, equal to the diameter of the
earth, or 1-30 the distance to the moon. Now, in order to be appreciable
at the moon it would require the intensity of the 8,000 mile ether
waves to be raised not merely 30 times, but 30 times 30, for to use
the ordinary expression, the intensity of an effect spreading in all
directions like the ether waves, decreases inversely as the square of
the distance. If the whole earth were brought within the domain of
wireless telegraphy, the system would still have to be improved 900
times as much again before the moon could be brought within the sphere
of its influence. A wireless telegraphic signal, transmitted across
a distance equal to the diameter of the earth, would be reduced to a
mere sixteen-millionth part if it had to travel over the distance to
Mars; in other words, if wireless telegraphy attained the utmost
excellence now hoped for it--that is, of being able to girdle the
earth--it would have to be increased a thousandfold and then a
thousandfold again, and finally multiplied by 16, before an appreciable
_signal_ could be transmitted to Mars. This seems like drawing
the long bow, but it is a scientific truth. There is no doubt that
ether waves can and do traverse the distance between the Earth and
Mars, for the fact that sunlight reaches Mars and is reflected back
to us proves this; but the source of waves adequate to accomplish such
a feat must be on such a scale as to be hopelessly beyond the power
of man to initiate or control. Electrical signalling to Mars is much
more out of the question than wireless. Even though electrical phenomena
produced in any one place were sufficiently intense to be appreciable
by suitable instruments all over the earth, that intensity would have
to be enhanced another sixteen million-fold before they would be
appreciable on the planet Mars.

It is absolutely hopeless to try to span the bridge that lies between
us and Mars by any methods known to present day science. Yet men styling
themselves scientists say it can be done and will be done. This is a
prophecy, however, which must lie in the future.

As has been pointed out, we have as yet but scratched the outer surface
in the fields of knowledge. What visions may not be opened to the eyes
of men, as they go down deeper and deeper into the soil. Secrets will
be exhumed undreamt of now, mysteries will be laid bare to the light
of day, and perhaps the psychic riddle of life itself may be solved.
Then indeed, Mars may come to be looked on as a next-door neighbor,
with whose life and actions we are as well acquainted as with our own.
The thirty-five million miles that separate him from us may be regarded
as a mere step in space and the most distant planets of our system as
but a little journey afield. Distant Uranus may be looked upon as no
farther away than is, say, Australia from America at the present time.

It is vain, however, to indulge in these premises. The veil of mystery
still hangs between us and suns and stars and systems. One fact lies
before us of which there is no uncertainty--_we die_ and pass away from
our present state into some other. We are not annihilated into
nothingness. Suns and worlds also die, after performing their
allotted revolutions in the cycle of the universe. Suns glow for a
time, and planets bear their fruitage of plants and animals and men,
then turn for aeons into a dreary, icy listlessness and finally crumble
to dust, their atoms joining other worlds in the indestructibility of
matter.

After all, there really is no death, simply change--change from one
state to another. When we say we die, we simply mean that we change
our state. There is a life beyond the grave. As Longfellow beautifully
expresses it:

"Life is real, life is earnest,
And the grave is not its goal,
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul."

But whither do we go when we pass on? Where is the soul when it leaves
the earthly tenement called the body? We, Christians, in the light of
revelation and of faith, believe in a heaven for the good; but it is
not a material place, only a state of being. Where and under what
conditions is that state? This leads us to the consideration of another
question which is engrossing the minds of many thinkers and reasoners
of the present day. Can we communicate with the Spirit world? Despite
the tenets and beliefs and experiences of learned and sincere
investigators, we are constrained, thus far, to answer in the negative.

Yet, though we cannot communicate with it, we know there is a spirit
world; the inner consciousness of our being apprises us of that fact,
we know our loved ones who have passed on are not dead but gone before,
just a little space, and that soon we shall follow them into a higher
existence. As Talmage said, the tombstone is not the terminus, but the
starting post, the door to the higher life, the entrance to the state
of endless labor, grand possibilities, and eternal progression.

THE END

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