Question Reopened By Radar Contacts
WASHINGTON, Jan. 25 (AP) Mankind"s success in establishing radar contact with the moon was described tonight as an "opening step" toward solving the age-old question whether human life exists elsewhere than on earth.
This is the view of Maj. Gen. Harold McClelland, air communications officer of the air forces, when queried as to further possibilities growing out of the Army Signal corps announcement that it had achieved several radar contacts with the moon since Jan. 10.
McClelland told a reporter:
"I see no reason why, eventually, a form of morse code by radar could not be transmitted to some of the celestial bodies about which conjecture has been made that human life exists.
"If sufficient power could be generated to get signals out through millions of miles of space to reach the planets, intelligence could be simply transmitted by such signals.
"And if intelligent human life exists beyond the earth such signs could be answered. We might even find that other planets had developed techniques superior to our own."
H. E. Burton, principal astronomer at the U.S. Naval observatory, pointed out that conjectures have been made that life exists on the planets Mars and Venus. He declared that Mars had a thin enough atmospheric envelope to admit passage of radar signals if sufficient power were generated to span the 35,000,000 miles between the earth and Mars at their closest point of proximity.
The Army"s claim of being first to span the 240,000 miles between the earth and the moon with a radar signal was indirectly disputed in Los Angeles by W. E. Osborne, a former Australian Army major.
Osborne said Australian scientists had broken through to the moon by radar "several times in October and November, 1941."
The Army reported that its pulsed signals traveling at the speed of light, 186,000 miles a second made the roundtrip in two and a half seconds.