The Far-Away Lichens

Are there living beings--or Some form of life--on the planet Mars? No one knows. But last week Mars paid one of its close (63,000,000 miles away) visits to earth. Its inhabitants, if any, could have taken a good look at their big, cloud-blotched neighbor. And staring down the Martians' hypothetical throats from McDonald Observatory, Texas was Dutch-born Astronomer Gerard Peter Kuiper.

Kuiper was full of scientific eagerness, because Mars rarely comes so close. Also, he had a brand-new supersensitive infrared spectrometer. With this gadget, he hoped to find out, at least, whether the climate on Mars can support the kind of life we have on earth.

Icecaps & Atmosphere. Mars is considerably colder than the earth. The midday temperature in the Martian tropics rises only a few degrees above freezing. At night it probably falls to -- 80DEGF. But even easygoing earth has living organisms that can stand such extremes.

Unlike the naked moon, Mars has an atmosphere. It is very thin (probably equivalent to the earth's atmosphere 50,000 ft. above sea level), but sometimes small white clouds can be seen floating in it. Yellow dust storms rage across the Martian plains. The Martian poles show white spots, suggesting icecaps, that creep in winter down to latitude 50 degrees (equivalent to the latitude of Winnipeg), and disappear in the Martian summer. When the "icecaps" retreat, they leave greenish areas that resemble vegetation.

All this might suggest the existence of life. But astronomers have had no evidence that the Martian atmosphere contains the gases (carbon dioxide, nitrogen and oxygen) which are necessary for life as we know it. The necessary water might be lacking too. The "icecaps" might not be frozen water but "dry ice": solid carbon dioxide.

Dr. Kuiper thinks that his infra-red spectrometer (a wartime development) has answered some of these questions by identifying certain gases and solids on Mars. Last autumn, he found that the atmosphere of Mars contains a small amount of carbon dioxide, which is necessary to plants (the basic living organisms). Without any carbon dioxide, plants cannot live, but too much would indicate that there are no plants on Mars to consume it.

Water & Greenery. Last week, Kuiper focused his spectrometer on the gleaming icecap, dwindling fast in the Martian May. It turned out to be "water in the solid state" (ice, snow or hoarfrost). If it had been solid carbon dioxide (dry ice), it would have shown an entirely different spectrum.

Next, Kuiper examined the greenish areas. Their spectra indicated that they could not be vegetation like trees or grass. But they might be lowly lichens like those that grow on the dry rocks near McDonald Observatory. Lichens need no water in liquid form. Martian lichenlike plants might get enough water out of vapor from the icecaps, which evaporate without melting.

Canals & Superscientists? That was about as far as Dr. Kuiper went. He did not speculate about a race of lichen eaters. He took no direct photographs, and did not see the famous Martian "canals" that astronomers (and Sunday supplement readers) argue about. The canals may get their test in a couple of years when Mars swings around again, and the 200-inch telescope on Palomar Mountain is ready to take its picture.

Some astronomers claim that they see the canals. Others claim that the canals are only optical illusions. No photograph of Mars has ever shown the geometrical lines which indicate (if they exist) that life of a very high type must have developed on Mars. If the canals do appear on the Palomar photographs, the world will be in for another rash of "Man from Mars" sensations, like H. G. Wells's The War of the Worlds and Orson Welles's broadcast.

Astronomer Percival Lowell (who saw more Martian canals than anyone else) believed that life on Mars is older and more highly developed than it is on earth. Scientifically, this theory could hold H2O. Mars is smaller than the earth; it may have cooled off sooner, allowing evolution to begin sooner.

It is at least possible that Martians reached a stage of scientific civilization while man's ancestors were still fish or reptiles. Perhaps the Martians have evolved by now into some superscientific stage. But since they have not yet invaded the earth, they probably never will. They may have become far too intelligent to wage war, even against a backward foreign planet.

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