The projections of light on Mars can be explained much more simply and
reasonably. Various suggestions have been made about them; among others,
that they are masses of cloud reflecting the sunshine; that they are
areas of snow; and that they are the summits of mountains crowned with
ice and encircled with clouds. In fact, a huge mountain mass lying on
the terminator, or the line between day and night, would produce the
effect of a tongue of light projecting into the darkness without
assuming that it was snow-covered or capped with clouds, as any one may
convince himself by studying the moon with a telescope when the
terminator lies across some of its most mountainous regions. To be sure,
there is reason to think that the surface of Mars is remarkably flat;
yet even so the planet may have some mountains, and on a globe the
greater part of whose shell is smooth any projections would be
conspicuous, particularly where the sunlight fell at a low angle across
them.
Another form in which the suggestion of interplanetary communication has
been urged is plainly an outgrowth of the invention and surprising
developments of wireless telegraphy. The human mind is so constituted
that whenever it obtains any new glimpse into the arcana of nature it
immediately imagines an indefinite and all but unlimited extension of
its view in that direction. So to many it has not appeared unreasonable
to assume that, since it is possible to transmit electric impulses for
considerable distances over the earth's surface by the simple
propagation of a series of waves, or undulations, without connecting
wires, it may also be possible to send such impulses through the ether
from planet to planet.
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