Now, with Mars the state of things is completely in accord with what is
thus demanded for the existence of life. The Martian climate is one of
extremes, where considerable heat treads on the heels of great cold.
And the one of these two conditions is as certain as the other, as the
condition of the planet’s surface shows conclusively. In summer and
during the day it must be decidedly hot, certainly well above any
possible freezing, a thinner air blanket actually increasing the amount
of heat that reaches the surface, though affecting the length of time
of its retention unfavorably. The maximum temperature, therefore,
cannot be low. The minimum of course is; but as we have just seen, it
is the maximum that regulates the possibility of life. In spite,
therefore, of a winter probably longer and colder than our own, organic
life is not in the least debarred from finding itself there.
Indeed, the conditions appear to be such as to put a premium upon life
of a high order. The Martian year being twice as long as our own, the
summer is there proportionately extended. Even in the southern
hemisphere, the one where the summer is the shortest, it lasts for 158
days, while at the same latitudes our own is but 90 days. This
lengthening of the period of reproduction cannot but have an elevating
effect upon the organism akin to the prolongation of childhood pointed
out by John Fiske as playing so important a part in the evolution of
the highest animals. Day and night, on the other hand, alternate there
with approximately the same speed as here, and except for what is due
to a thinner air covering reproduce our own terrestrial diurnal
conditions, which as we saw are not inimical to life.
In this respect, then, Mars proves to be by no means so bad a habitat.
It offers another example of how increasing knowledge widens the domain
that life may occupy. Just as we have now found organic existence in
abyssal depths of sea and in excessive degrees of both heat and cold,
so do we find from exploration of our island mountains, which more than
any other locality on earth facsimile the Martian surface, its
possession there as well.
Another point, too, is worth consideration. In an aging world where the
conditions of life have grown more difficult, mentality must
characterize more and more its beings in order for them to survive, and
would in consequence tend to be evolved. To find, therefore, upon Mars
highly intelligent life is what the planet’s state would lead one to
expect.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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