Marvels of Modern Science Part 12

Can this intelligence in any way reach us, or can we express ourselves to it? Can the chasm of s.p.a.ce 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 inst.i.tute 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 s.p.a.ce 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.

a.s.suming 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 ill.u.s.tration, 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 s.p.a.ce and the most distant planets of our system as but a little journey afield. Distant Ura.n.u.s 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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sed on are not dead but gone before, just a little s.p.a.ce, 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