Apparently we discovered alien life in 1933. Nobody every bothered to tell me.

Living Germs from other worlds brought to Earth by Meteors

By Robert E. Martin

SPELLBOUND at a microscope, Prof. Charles B. Lipman, University of California biologist, recently gazed at what he believed to be the first living creatures from another world ever observed. Tiny germs—some round, some rod-shaped—swarmed beneath the lens. Despite their minute size, they were as fascinating to a scientist as any hypothetical man from Mars.

If Prof. Lipman has correctly explained the germs’ origin, they came to earth carried by a flaming meteorite from the voids beyond our planet! Here, after centuries of speculation, seems the first credible indication that life exists outside the earth. To test the possibility that living things might exist in other worlds, Prof. Lipman acquired a number of stone meteorites that had fallen on the earth. He proposed to grind these to powder and drop the powder in suitable culture media to see whether germs would grow. If so, evidence would be strong that the germs had survived the cold of the journey through space, the heat of the flaming meteor when it struck the earth’s atmosphere, and the years the meteoric stone had rested on the ground or in a museum case. Of course it would be necessary to take extraordinary precautions to make sure the meteorite was uncontami-nated by bacteria from the earth.

Deadly Smoke Menace ATTACKED ON WIDE FRONT

Cities Unite in Concerted Thrive Against Air Laden with Health-Destroying Impurities

AWAKE at last to the menace of smoke as a destroyer of health and property, great cities of the United States have opened campaigns against it. Medical authorities now realize that an ever-increasing proportion of cases of respiratory diseases is directly traceable to smoke particles floating in city air. Their baneful effect does not end here; for, blanketing the sky, they form a curtain through which only a part of the ultraviolet rays can filter.

New Efforts May Harness SUN LIGHT

By Robert E. Martin

SUNSHINE, our greatest source of potential power, is now largely wasted. It is highly probable, however, that a few years hence science will find a way to harness the mighty energy of the sun’s radiation. Solar engines and solar heating apparatus will then make it economically practicable for us to use at least a small portion of our now-wasted sunshine to run our factories, light our streets, cook our food, and warm our houses. In the United States we use, each year, something like a half billion tons of coal, a half billion barrels of oil, and fifty billion horsepower hours of water power for heat, light, and power.