Are the Planets Inhabited?

In passing in review the various members of the solar system, it has been seen that there are many conditions that have to be fulfilled before a planet can be regarded as the po...

The planet Mars is the debatable ground between two opinions. Here, the two opposing views join issue; the controversy comes to a focus. The point in debate is whether certain m...

The two preceding chapters have led to two opposing, two incompatible conclusions. In Chapter VI, a summary was given of Prof. Lowell's claim to have had ocular demonstration of...

The Sun and Moon offer to our sight almost exactly the same apparent diameters; to the eye, they look the same size. But as we know the Sun to be 400 times as distant as the Moo...

Both of the two worlds best placed for our study are thus, for different reasons, ruled out of court as worlds for habitation. The Sun by its vastness, its intolerable heat and...

A world for habitation, then, is a world whereon living organisms can exist that are comparable in intelligence with men. But "men" presuppose the existence of living organisms...

The Sun is, of all the heavenly bodies, the most impressive, and has necessarily, at all times, attracted the chief attention of men. There are only two of the heavenly bodies t...

It is a striking change to pass from Ceres, the giant of the minor planets, to Jupiter, the giant of the major planets. Instead of a world that the Earth exceeds in volume 5000...

Of all the planets, Venus appears, to the unassisted eye, by far the loveliest. When seen in the early morning before sunrise--its "western elongation"--or after sundown in the...

The question has been asked: "It is evident that life cannot exist at the present time on the outer planets, since they are in a highly heated and quasi-solar condition; but whe...

It is now an old story, but still possessing its interest, how Fraunhofer analysed the light of the Sun by making it pass through a narrow slit and a prism, and found that the b...

The first thought that men had concerning the heavenly bodies was an obvious one: they were lights. There was a greater light to rule the day; a lesser light to rule the night;...