The Project Gutenberg EBook of Is Mars Habitable?, by Alfred Russel Wallace
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Title: Is Mars Habitable?
Author: Alfred Russel Wallace
Release Date: January 28, 2004 [EBook #10855]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
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_Is Mars Habitable?_
A CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF PROFESSOR PERCIVAL LOWELL'S BOOK
"MARS AND ITS CANALS," WITH AN ALTERNATIVE EXPLANATION
BY ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE F.R.S., ETC.
PREFACE.
This small volume was commenced as a review article on Professor
Percival Lowell's book, _Mars and its Canals_, with the object of
showing that the large amount of new and interesting facts contained in
this work did not invalidate the conclusion I had reached in 1902, and
stated in my book on _Man's Place in the Universe_, that Mars was not
habitable.
But the more complete presentation of the opposite view in the volume
now under discussion required a more detailed examination of the various
physical problems involved, and as the subject is one of great, popular,
as well as scientific interest, I determined to undertake the task.
This was rendered the more necessary by the fact that in July last
Professor Lowell published in the _Philosophical Magazine_ an elaborate
mathematical article claiming to demonstrate that, notwithstanding its
much greater distance from the sun and its excessively thin atmosphere,
Mars possessed a climate on the average equal to that of the south of
England, and in its polar and sub-polar regions even less severe than
that of the earth. Such a contention of course required to be dealt
with, and led me to collect information bearing upon temperature in all
its aspects, and so enlarging my criticism that I saw it would be
necessary to issue it in book form.
Two of my mathematical friends have pointed out the chief omission which
vitiates Professor Lowell's mathematical conclusions--that of a failure
to recognise the very large conservative and _cumulative_ effect of a
dense atmosphere. This very point however I had already myself discussed
in Chapter VI., and by means of some
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