ARE THERE OCEANS IN OUTER SPACE? 



carefully conserved quantities if there are intelligent 

 beings on Mars. 



Those who argue for the existence of artificially con- 

 structed canals on Mars rightly point out that nowhere 

 in Nature do we find long straight lines, and that only 

 man produces such projects as railways and canals, 

 which follow essentially straight lines for long distances. 

 Hence, they argue, the markings on Mars must be 

 caused by intelligent beings. Whatever may be the 

 answer to the centuries-old problem of the existence of 

 life on the red planet, we can be sure that water is very 

 scarce there. 



If the strange markings seen through our powerful 

 telescopes are actually the irrigated regions bordering 

 artificial water courses, then they certainly do not 

 indicate the presence of large bodies of water like our 

 own oceans. Some of the world's most efficient observers, 

 using its most powerful telescopes, have failed to see the 

 fine straight markings described in detail by Schiaparelli, 

 Perrotin, Thollon, A. S. Williams, Lowell and others. 

 But careful examination of the recorded evidence com- 

 pels any impartial investigator to belief that the canals 

 have been seen, so that there is at least 2i prima facie case 

 for the existence of water in limited quantities on Mars — 

 but not, in any sense, oceans as we know them. 



Beyond Mars, keeping our backs to the sun, we see 

 Jupiter, a huge giant out there in space, revolving in its 

 orbit at a distance of 484 million miles from the sun, and 

 nearly 400 million miles from our earth. It has a diameter 

 over eleven times that of our own planet, and possesses a 

 deep atmosphere, 1 7,000 miles thick, composed of methane 

 and ammonia — dense and poisonous to life as we know it. 



If Jupiter has any kind of ocean it is probably one of 

 soHd ice. Certainly not water ice, the frozen stuflf which 

 we know, but frozen ammonia or methane. Nor are its 

 clouds water-vapour clouds, but vast misty masses of 

 ammonia crystals. 



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