Part 38 (1/2)
CHAPTER VIII
_PLANETS AND SATELLITES_--(_continued_)
”The a.n.a.logy between Mars and the earth is perhaps by far the greatest in the whole solar system.” So Herschel wrote in 1783,[965] and so we may safely say to-day, after six score further years of scrutiny. The circ.u.mstance lends a particular interest to inquiries into the physical habitudes of our exterior planetary neighbour.
Fontana first caught glimpses, at Naples in 1636 and 1638,[966] of dusky stains on the ruddy disc of Mars. They were next seen by Hooke and Ca.s.sini in 1666, and this time with sufficient distinctness to serve as indexes to the planet's rotation, determined by the latter as taking place in a period of twenty-four hours forty minutes.[967] Increased confidence was given to this result through Maraldi's precise verification of it in 1719.[968] Among the spots observed by him, he distinguished two as stable in position, though variable in size. They were of a peculiar character, showing as bright patches round the poles, and had already been noticed during sixty years back. A current conjecture of their snowy nature obtained validity when Herschel connected their fluctuations in extent with the progress of the Martian seasons. The inference of frozen precipitations could scarcely be resisted when once it was clearly perceived that the s.h.i.+ning polar zones did actually by turns diminish and grow with the alternations of summer and winter in the corresponding hemisphere.
This, it may be said, was the opening of our acquaintance with the state of things prevailing on the surface of Mars. It was accompanied by a steady a.s.sertion, on Herschel's part, of permanence in the dark markings, notwithstanding partial obscurations by clouds and vapours floating in a ”considerable but moderate atmosphere.” Hence the presumed inhabitants of the planet were inferred to ”probably enjoy a situation in many respects similar to ours.”[969]
Schroter, on the other hand, went altogether wide of the truth as regards Mars. He held that the surface visible to us is a mere sh.e.l.l of drifting cloud, deriving a certain amount of apparent stability from the influence on evaporation and condensation of subjacent but unseen areographical features;[970] and his opinion prevailed with his contemporaries. It was, however, rejected by Kunowsky in 1822, and finally overthrown by Beer and Madler's careful studies during five consecutive oppositions, 1830-39. They identified at each the same dark spots, frequently blurred with mists, especially when the local winter prevailed, but fundamentally unchanged.[971] In 1862 Lockyer established a ”marvellous agreement” with Beer and Madler's results of 1830, leaving no doubt as to the complete fixity of the main features, amid ”daily, nay, hourly,” variations of detail through transits of clouds.[972] On seventeen nights of the same opposition, F. Kaiser of Leyden obtained drawings in which nearly all the markings noted in 1830 at Berlin reappeared, besides spots frequently seen respectively by Arago in 1813, by Herschel in 1783, and one sketched by Huygens in 1672 with a writing-pen in his diary.[973] From these data the Leyden observer arrived at a period of rotation of 24h. 37m. 2262s., being just one second shorter than that deduced, exclusively from their own observations, by Beer and Madler. The exactness of this result was practically confirmed by the inquiries of Professor Bakhuyzen of Leyden.[974] Using for a middle term of comparison the disinterred observations of Schroter, with those of Huygens at one, and of Schiaparelli at the other end of an interval of 220 years, he was enabled to show, with something like certainty, that the time of rotation (24h. 37m. 22735s.) ascribed to Mars by Mr. Proctor[975] in reliance on a drawing executed by Hooke in 1666, was too long by _nearly one-tenth of a second_. The minuteness of the correction indicates the nicety of care employed. Nor employed vainly; for, owing to the comparative antiquity of the records available in this case, an almost infinitesimal error becomes so multiplied by frequent repet.i.tion as to produce palpable discrepancies in the positions of the markings at distant dates. Hence Bakhuyzen's period of 24h. 37m. 2266s. is undoubtedly of a precision unapproached as regards any other heavenly body save the earth itself.
Two facts bearing on the state of things at the surface of Mars were, then, fully acquired to science in or before the year 1862. The first was that of the seasonal fluctuations of the polar spots; the second, that of the general permanence of certain dark gray or greenish patches, perceived with the telescope as standing out from the deep yellow ground of the disc. That these varieties of tint correspond to the real diversities of a terraqueous globe, the ”ripe cornfield”[976] sections representing land, the dusky spots and streaks, oceans and straits, has long been the prevalent opinion. Sir J. Herschel in 1830 led the way in ascribing the redness of the planet's light to an inherent peculiarity of soil.[977] Previously it had been a.s.similated to our sunset glows rather than to our red sandstone formations--set down, that is, to an atmospheric stoppage of blue rays. But the extensive Martian atmosphere, implicitly believed in on the strength of some erroneous observations by Ca.s.sini and Romer in the seventeenth century, vanished before the sharp occultation of a small star in Leo, witnessed by Sir James South in 1822;[978] and Dawes's observation in 1865,[979] that the ruddy tinge is deepest near the central parts of the disc, certified its non-atmospheric origin. The absolute whiteness of the polar snow-caps was alleged in support of the same inference by Sir William Huggins in 1867.[980]
All recent operations tend to show that the atmosphere of Mars is much thinner than our own. This was to have been expected _a priori_, since the same proportionate ma.s.s of air would on his smaller globe form a relatively spa.r.s.e covering.[981] Besides, gravity there possesses less than four-tenths its force here, so that this spa.r.s.er covering would weigh less, and be less condensed, than if it enveloped the earth.
Atmospheric pressure would accordingly be of about two and a quarter, instead of fifteen terrestrial pounds per square inch. This corresponds with what the telescope shows us. It is extremely doubtful whether any features of the earth's actual surface could be distinguished by a planetary spectator, however well provided with optical a.s.sistance.
Professor Langley's inquiries[982] led him to conclude that fully twice as much light is absorbed by our air as had previously been supposed--say 40 per cent. of vertical rays in a clear sky. Of the sixty reaching the earth, less than a quarter would be reflected even from white sandstone; and this quarter would again pay heavy toll in escaping back to s.p.a.ce. Thus not more than perhaps ten or twelve out of the original hundred sent by the sun would, under the most favourable circ.u.mstances, and from the very centre of the earth's disc, reach the eye of a Martian or lunar observer. The light by which he views our world is, there is little doubt, light reflected from the various strata of our atmosphere, cloud or mist-laden or serene, as the case may be, with an occasional snow-mountain figuring as a permanent white spot.
This consideration at once shows us how much more tenuous the Martian air must be, since it admits of topographical delineations of the Martian globe. The clouds, too, that form in it seem in general to be rather of the nature of ground-mists than of heavy c.u.mulus.[983]
Occasionally, indeed, durable and extensive strata become visible.
During the latter half of October, 1894, for instance, a region as large as Europe remained apparently cloud-covered. Yet most recent observers are unable to detect the traces of aqueous absorption in the Martian spectrum noted by Huggins in 1867[984] and by Vogel in 1873.[985]
Campbell vainly looked for them,[986] visually in 1894, spectrographically in 1896; Keeler was equally unsuccessful;[987]
Jewell[988] holds that they could, with present appliances, only be perceived if the atmosphere of Mars were much richer in water-vapour than that of the earth. There can be little doubt, however, that its supply is about the minimum adequate to the needs of a _living_, and perhaps a life-nuturing planet.
The climate of Mars seems to be unexpectedly mild. Its _theoretical_ mean temperature, taking into account both distance from the sun and albedo, is 34 C. below freezing.[989] Yet its polar snows are both less extensive and less permanent than those on the earth. The southern white hood, noticed by Schiaparelli in 1877 to have survived the summer only as a small lateral patch, melted completely in 1894. Moreover, Mr. W. H.
Pickering observed with astonishment the disappearance, in the course of thirty-three days of June and July, 1892, of 1,600,000 square miles of southern snow.[990] Curiously enough, the initial stage of shrinkage in the white calotte was marked by its division into two unequal parts, as if in obedience to the mysterious principle of duplication governing so many Martian phenomena.[991] Changes of the hues a.s.sociated respectively with land and water accompanied in lower lat.i.tudes, and were thought to be occasioned by floods ensuing upon this rapid antarctic thaw. It is true that scarcity of moisture would account for the scantiness and transitoriness of snowy deposits easily liquefied because thinly spread.
But we might expect to see the whole wintry hemisphere, at any rate, frost-bound, since the sun radiates less than half as much heat on Mars as on the earth. Water seems, nevertheless, to remain, as a rule, uncongealed everywhere outside the polar regions. We are at a loss to imagine by what beneficent arrangement the rigorous conditions naturally to be looked for can be modified into a climate which might be found tolerable by creatures const.i.tuted like ourselves.
Martian topography may be said to form nowadays a separate sub-department of descriptive astronomy. The amount of detail become legible by close scrutiny on a little disc which, once in fifteen years, attains a maximum of about 1/5000 the area of the full moon, must excite surprise and might provoke incredulity. Spurious discoveries, however, have little chance of holding their own where there are so many compet.i.tors quite as ready to dispute as to confirm.
The first really good map of Mars was constructed in 1869 by Proctor from drawings by Dawes. Kaiser of Leyden followed in 1872 with a representation founded upon data of his own providing in 1862-64; and Terby, in his valuable _Areographie_, presented to the Brussels Academy in 1873[992] a careful discussion of all important observations from the time of Fontana downwards, thus virtually adding to knowledge by summarising and digesting it. The memorable opposition of September 5, 1877, marked a fresh epoch in the study of Mars. While executing a trigonometrical survey (the first attempted) of the disc, then of the unusual size of 25” across, G. V. Schiaparelli, director of the Milan Observatory, detected a novel and curious feature. What had been taken for Martian continents were found to be, in point of fact, agglomerations of islands, separated from each other by a network of so-called ”ca.n.a.ls” (more properly _channels_).[993] These are obviously extensions of the ”seas,” originating and terminating in them, and sharing their gray-green hue, but running sometimes to a length of three or four thousand miles in a straight line, and preserving throughout a nearly uniform breadth of about sixty miles. Further inquiries have fully substantiated the discovery made at the Brera Observatory. The ”ca.n.a.ls” of Mars are an actually existent and permanent phenomenon. An examination of the drawings in his possession showed M. Terby that they had been seen, though not distinctively recognised, by Dawes, Secchi, and Holden; several were independently traced out by Burton at the opposition of 1879; all were recovered by Schiaparelli himself in 1879 and 1881-82; and their indefinite multiplication resulted from Lovell's observations in 1894 and 1896.
When the planet culminated at midnight, and was therefore in opposition, December 26, 1881, its distance was greater, and its apparent diameter less than in 1877, in the proportion of sixteen to twenty-five. Its atmosphere was, however, more transparent, and ours of less impediment to northern observers, the object of scrutiny standing considerably higher in northern skies. Never before, at any rate, had the true aspect of Mars come out so clearly as at Milan, with the 8-3/4-inch Merz refractor of the observatory, between December, 1881, and February, 1882. The ca.n.a.ls were all again there, but this time they were--in as many as twenty cases--_seen in duplicate_. That is to say, a twin-ca.n.a.l ran parallel to the original one at an interval of 200 to 400 miles.[994]
We are here brought face to face with an apparently insoluble enigma.
Schiaparelli regards the ”germination” of his ca.n.a.ls as a periodical phenomenon depending on the Martian seasons. It is, a.s.suredly, not an illusory one, since it was plainly apparent, during the opposition of 1886, to MM. Perrotin and Thollon at Nice,[995] and to the former, using the new 30-inch refractor of that observatory, in 1888; Mr. A. Stanley Williams, with the help of only a 6-1/2-inch reflector, distinctly perceived in 1890 seven of the duplicate objects noted at Milan,[996]
and the Lick observations, both of 1890 and of 1892, together with the drawings made at Flagstaff and Mexico during the last favourable oppositions of the nineteenth century, brought unequivocal confirmation to the accuracy of Schiaparelli's impressions.[997] Various conjectures have been hazarded in explanation of this bizarre appearance. The difficulty of conceiving a physical reality corresponding to it has suggested recourse to an optical rationale. Proctor regarded it as an effect of diffraction;[998] Stanislas Meunier, of oblique reflection from overlying mist-banks;[999] Flammarion considers it possible that companion-ca.n.a.ls might, under special circ.u.mstances, be evoked by refraction as a kind of mirage.[1000] But none of these speculations are really admissible, when all the facts are taken into account. The view that the ca.n.a.ls of Mars are vast rifts due to the cooling of the globe, is recommended by the circ.u.mstance that they tend to follow great circles; nevertheless, it would break down if, as Schiaparelli holds, the fluctuations in their visibility depend upon actual obliterations and re-emergencies. Fantastic though the theory of their artificial origin appear, it is held by serious astronomers. Its vogue is largely due to Mr. Lowell's ingenious advocacy. He considers the Martian globe to be everywhere intersected by an elaborate system of irrigation-works, rendered necessary by a perennial water-famine, relieved periodically by the melting of the polar snows. Nor does he admit the existence of oceans, or lakes. What have been taken for such are really tracts covered with vegetation, the bright areas intermixed with them representing sandy deserts. And it is noteworthy in this connection that Professor Barnard obtained in 1894,[1001] with the great Lick refractor, ”suggestive and impressive views” disclosing details of light and shade on the gray-green patches so intricate and minute as almost to preclude the supposition of their aqueous nature.
The closeness of the terrestrial a.n.a.logy has thus of late been much impaired. Even if the surface of Mars be composed of land and water, their distribution must be of a completely original type. The interlacing everywhere of continents with arms of the sea (if that be the correct interpretation of the visual effects) implies that their levels scarcely differ;[1002] and Schiaparelli carries most observers with him in holding that their outlines are not absolutely constant, encroachments of dusky upon bright tints suggesting extensive inundations.[1003] The late N. E. Green's observations at Madeira in 1877 indicated, on the other hand, a rugged south polar region. The contour of the snow-cap not only appeared indented, as if by valleys and promontories, but brilliant points were discerned outside the white area, attributed to isolated snow-peaks.[1004] Still more elevated, if similarly explained, must be the ”ice island” first seen in a comparatively low lat.i.tude by Dawes in January, 1865.
On August 4, 1892, Mars stood opposite to the sun at a distance of only 34,865,000 miles from the earth. In point of vicinity, then, its situation was scarcely less favourable than in 1877. The low alt.i.tude of the planet, however, practically neutralised this advantage for northern observers, and public expectation, which had been raised to the highest pitch by the announcements of sensation-mongers, was somewhat disappointed at the ”meagreness” of the news authentically received from Mars. Valuable series of observations were, nevertheless, made at Lick and Arequipa; and they unite in testifying to the genuine prevalence of surface-variability, especially in certain regions of intermediate tint, and perhaps of the ”crude consistence” of ”boggy Syrtes, neither sea, nor good dry land.” Professor Holden insisted on the ”enormous difficulties in the way of completely explaining the recorded phenomena by terrestrial a.n.a.logies”;[1005] Mr. W. H. Pickering spoke of ”conspicuous and startling changes.” They, however, merely overlaid, and partially disguised, a general stability. Among the novelties detected by Mr. Pickering were a number of ”lakes,” or ”oases” (in Lowell's phraseology), under the aspect of black dots at the junctions of two or more ca.n.a.ls;[1006] and he, no less than the Lick astronomers and M.
Perrotin at Nice,[1007] observed brilliant clouds projecting beyond the terminator, or above the limb, while carried round by the planet's rotation. They seemed to float at an alt.i.tude of at least twenty miles, or about four times the height of terrestrial cirrus; but this was not wonderful, considering the low power of gravity acting upon them. Great capital was made in the journalistic interest out of these imaginary signals from intelligent Martians, desirous of opening communications with (to them) problematical terrestrial beings. Similar effects had, however, been seen before by Mr. k.n.o.bel in 1873, by M. Terby in 1888, and at the Lick Observatory in 1890; and they were discerned again with particular distinctness by Professor Hussey at Lick, August 27, 1896.[1008]
The first photograph of Mars was taken by Gould at Cordoba in 1879.
Little real service in planetary delineation has, it is true, been so far rendered by the art, yet one achievement must be recorded to its credit. A set of photographs obtained by Mr. W. H. Pickering on Wilson's Peak, California, April 9, 1890, showed the southern polar cap of Mars as of moderate dimensions, but with a large dim adjacent area.