Notes

Abstract

A CORRESPONDENT recently directed our attention to a sensatiqnal report that certain signals are regularly received at one of the Marconi wireless telegraph stations, and are believed to be communications from Mars or another planet. As Mars will be in opposition on July 6, and is well situated for observation in southern observatories, the runout will probably be extensively circulated during the next few months. A copy of the report was sent, therefore, to Mr. Marconi, who has favoured us with the following reply:—“There is no truth whatever in the statement which has been freely published for the last year or two that mysterious signals have been received at Cape Clear from probably some distant planet. There is, in the first place, no wireless telegraph station at Cape Clear. The stray or vagrant electrical effects which do manifest themselves from time to time at wireless telegraph stations are due to atmospheric discharges or other natural causes. To attribute this phenomenon to any such source as is contemplated in these newspaper reports is, so far, purely imaginative and idle speculation.”