Abstract
IT is highly unlikely that there is any life on any planet in the solar system except the earth. Dr. W. S. Adams, who has himself made some spectro-scopic investigations of our fellow planets, has enumerated the factors which preclude the possibility of life on each of them (Science Service, Washington, D.C.). In the case of Mercury, the planet is too hot and too small to hold an atmosphere. Venus has neither oxygen nor water above the dense clouds which hide its surface, but it does have carbon dioxide, which shows that plants, if any, are not numerous. The possibility of life is least remote in the case of this planet, but without plant life there can be no animals or human beings. Mars is so small, and its gravity so weak, that its atmosphere is thin. It has polar caps suggesting water, but the spectrum shows no free oxygen. The outer planets have temperatures far below zero: their great masses enable them to hold dense atmospheres, containing gases which are rare in the earth's atmo sphere: the poisonous gas ammonia is a fairly abundant constituent of their atmospheres, but oxygen has not been found in any of them. Imagina tive enthusiasts who project interplanetary journeys in rockets, must envisage a complete departure from the solar system, and conduct an extensive search among the satellites if any of some of the nearer stars, if they wish to find a landing place at which they can avoid suffocation at the end of their journey.
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Life on the Planets. Nature 133, 356 (1934). https://doi.org/10.1038/133356a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/133356a0