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Mars Surface Anomalies Viewed From Orbit / Afar

OldTimeRadio said:
Jerry_B said:
The problem with all this sort of 'evidence' is that it doesn't seem any different from the 'evidence' that used to insist that there were canals on Mars. Or that there was a 'face' on Mars.

Some current theories still insist that the Face exists, only that it is MUCH older, and therefore much more weathered and eroded, than previously believed.

But the "Face" question to which I've never received a really good answer is how the NASA enhancer managed to turn a jumble of rocks into such a convincing human face. Was the enhanced PROGRAMMED to LOOk for Faces? The enhancer all by its lonesome shouldn't have recognized the difference between a face and a Ferris wheel.

"Accidental" doesn't seem to cut it, since everybody not only recognized the Face on sight, but apparently the SAME face. (I ran some informal tests on this back in later 1976 with people seeing the Face for the first time and not having the slightest idea what to expect). NOBODY saw a duckie or a horsie. And, to answer the next question, nobody saw just an outrcropping of rock.

Its not some NASA enhancer that is programmed to look for human faces, its the human brain. Which is why we can find faces in clouds, rocks or any random pattern.

The 1976 picture was so low resolution compared to more recent pictures that it looks obviously like a face (eyes, nose, mouth) that I'm not surprised everybody sees it the same way. Everybody is programmed to assemble those elements as a face rather than say a weasel*.

*Hamlet, Act III, Scene II:
Hamlet: Do you see that cloud, that's almost in shape like a camel?
Polonius: By the mass, and 't is like a camel, indeed.
Hamlet: Methinks, it is like a weasel.
Polonius: It is backed like a weasel.
Hamlet: Or, like a whale?
Polonius: Very like a whale.
 
Mike_Pratt33 said:
Its not some NASA enhancer that is programmed to look for human faces, its the human brain. Which is why we can find faces in clouds, rocks or any random pattern.

Yes. yes, yes, of course, those are called "accidentals."

But it DOESN'T explain why everybody saw the same face, and nobody FAILED to see it....and without any coaching neccessary.

Totally unlike clouds, where a given formation is going to be visualized as a duckie or a horsie....or the stoning of St. Stephen.

And Polonius saw the camel through Hamlet's LEADING question.

And was fictional anyway.
 
eburacum said:
...

There are two apparently tube like features which some people think are anomalies; one is a peculiar type of dry river which looks like a tube but is actually a channel with a hemispherical cross-section;
http://www.unarius.org/mars/glass-tubes.jpg
it looks like a tube because we mistakenly see it as sticking up out of the ground, when it is in fact dug into the ground by rapidly evaporating water. Remember Mars is a very different planet to Earth; water is almost always frozen there, but if it melts, it flows, and as it flows, it boils in the near vacuum. Imagine how different our rivers would look it they were rapidly boiling away even as they flowed.

The other kind of tube anomaly on Mars is the lava-tube; these have grown to massive size, perhaps because of the low gravity
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/ ... gamite.jpg
and there is some debate over the mechanisms involved. But they look natural, rather than artificial, to me; this doesn't detract from their unusual nature.

...
Thanks, eburacum! :)
 
OldTimeRadio said:
Yes. yes, yes, of course, those are called "accidentals."

But it DOESN'T explain why everybody saw the same face, and nobody FAILED to see it....and without any coaching neccessary.

Totally unlike clouds, where a given formation is going to be visualized as a duckie or a horsie....or the stoning of St. Stephen.

If alot of people saw the same face in a somewhat poor photograph at the time, all that shows is that the blobs, etc. that made up the shape looked most like a face to people in general. There's nothing at all mysterious in that.
 
OldTimeRadio said:
Some current theories still insist that the Face exists, only that it is MUCH older, and therefore much more weathered and eroded, than previously believed.

Which seems to be desperately shifting the goalposts in an effort to make a mistake still stick to the 'theory'.
 
Jerry_B said:
...

If alot of people saw the same face in a somewhat poor photograph at the time, all that shows is that the blobs, etc. that made up the shape looked most like a face to people in general. There's nothing at all mysterious in that.
Human faces are very much hardwired into our brains. There often the first things we see when we're born and we spend much of our early development learning to read them. We see them everywhere.
 
Jerry_B said:
If alot of people saw the same face in a somewhat poor photograph at the time, all that shows is that the blobs, etc. that made up the shape looked most like a face to people in general. There's nothing at all mysterious in that.

It is to me. The remaining question I have is how mysterious, very much or very little. I'll probably end up at the latter conclusion, but I'm not by any means there yet.

Because there's still the underlying question proposed by my friend the honest skeptic - "Why do all these 'almost' convincings appear only on Mars?"
 
OldTimeRadio said:
... there's still the underlying question proposed by my friend the honest skeptic - "Why do all these 'almost' convincings appear only on Mars?"
Possibly because that's the only planet that we've been able to photograph in detail up to now - Venus, for instance, may be littered with simulacra, but because of the thick cloud cover, aerial photography will extremely difficult.
 
OldTimeRadio said:
...

It is to me. The remaining question I have is how mysterious, very much or very little. I'll probably end up at the latter conclusion, but I'm not by any means there yet.

Because there's still the underlying question proposed by my friend the honest skeptic - "Why do all these 'almost' convincings appear only on Mars?"
Perhaps, because Mars is the closest planet we've pinned our hopes on and previously peopled with the Martians of our imagination?

Perhaps because the Martian landscape is so weather worn and Earth like? Humans have personifed the Earth's landscape features for 10s of thousands of years. A World with a human face is probably one of the techniques we use to navigate, even remembering Earth's spirit in our stories, poetry, dance and song. So, perhaps we're unconsciously doing the same for Mars?

Plus, we hate to be alone. ;)
 
OldTimeRadio said:
Because there's still the underlying question proposed by my friend the honest skeptic - "Why do all these 'almost' convincings appear only on Mars?"

They turn up everywhere - Fortean Times has a section on them. In trees, toasted bagels and beer froth...
 
A few years ago there were tree-like formations filmed on Mars. I had the opportunity at the time to question an expert on Mars about them, but she claimed not to know about them.

I subsequently emailed her copies of these images, on at least two occassions, asking for comment, but got no reply....

So I tend to lean to the Conspiracy side of the line on this one! 8)


To my surprise, I still have one of these pics on my computer, but I don't have the details of when or where it was taken:

v_mars_banyon_02.jpg
 
Saw this one over on the Huffington Post website.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/13/mars-tree-photo-nasa-hiri_n_421507.html

Mars 'Tree' PHOTO: NASA HiRISE Camera Shoots Picture Of Sand Dunes

Huffington Post Online. 01-13-10

This week, NASA released a photograph of sand dunes on Mars taken by HiRISE, the most powerful camera ever sent into space. On first glance, the picture appears to show dark trees growing out of reddish sand dunes on the planet's surface-- in fact, it's showing a landslide of debris as ice melts in Mars's spring.

NASA's HiRISE blog describes the process like so:
[http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/PSP_007962_2635]

There is a vast region of sand dunes at high northern latitudes on Mars. In the winter, a layer of carbon dioxide ice covers the dunes, and in the spring as the sun warms the ice it evaporates. This is a very active process, and sand dislodged from the crests of the dunes cascades down, forming dark streaks... Falling material has kicked up a small cloud of dust. The color of the ice surrounding adjacent streaks of material suggests that dust has settled on the ice at the bottom after similar events.
Still doesn't look much like dust to me.

PSP_007962_2635_cutjpg.jpg

http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/images/2009/details/cut/PSP_007962_2635_cut.jpg

:shock:

Edit: Reduced image size
 
Reviving an old thread where even the OP was an old story...! But at least this article provides an overview of the silly tale.

New high-resolution photo of the 'Face on Mars' proves Red Planet's most famous landmark is just a rocky hill
By Niall Firth
Last updated at 9:10 PM on 29th July 2010

It was the startling photograph that spawned a thousand conspiracy theories.
A photograph taken by the American Viking 1 Orbiter in July 1976 appeared to show a hill in shape of a human face on the dusty surface of Mars.

But a new photograph released today, which was taken with Nasa’s high-definition HiRISE camera, finally shows the Face on Mars for what it really is: just a large, rocky hill in the middle of the Martian desert.

This is the closest ever image of the famous outcrop which should, once and for all, scotch the conspiracy theorists who believe that the 'face' uis conclusive evidence of intelligent life on Mars.

Within days of its discovery in 1976, space enthusiasts were speculating that the structure was man-made and had been built by Martians in the distant past.
Today's image was taken by HiRISE from on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter which can pick out incredible detail from 300 kilometres above the planet’s surface.
The rocky formation is known as a mesa, a large rocky outcrop with a flat top and steep, cliff-like sides.
The Face’ mesa is in the Cydonia region and is a couple of miles long and a few hundred feet high.

Conspiracy theorists insist that the 'face' is an artifact from an ancient Martian civililsation and the centre of a Nasa cover-up.
Nasa even added to the theory by referring to the picture's human likeness in the caption it added to the photo when it first released it to the general public.

The outcrop looked a little like a face, complete with eyes, nose and mouth, because of the angle of the sun and its cratered surface, and Nasa happily pointed this fact out.
The Nasa press release read: 'This picture is one of many taken in the northern latitudes of Mars by the Viking 1 Orbiter in search of a landing site for Viking 2.
'The picture shows eroded mesa-like landforms. The huge rock formation in the center, which resembles a human head, is formed by shadows giving the illusion of eyes, nose and mouth.
'The feature is 1.5 kilometres (one mile) across, with the sun angle at approximately 20 degrees. The speckled appearance of the image is due to bit errors, emphasized by enlargement of the photo.
'The picture was taken on July 25 from a range of 1873 kilometres (1162 miles). Viking 2 will arrive in Mars orbit next Saturday (August 7) with a landing scheduled for early September.'

These theories continued despite subsequent fly-overs by probes in the 1990s and again in 2001 that showed it to be just a craggy hill.

Sceptics believed the weather during the later fly-overs had obscured the human features and remained convinced it was the product of an alien culture.

Seeing human faces in inaminate objects is known as ‘pareidolia’ and is why so many people see what they believe is the face of Jesus in tea leaves, clouds and even burnt toast.
Carl Sagan believed that humans are 'hard-wired' to find human faces wherever possible as part of our survival instinct.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ ... z0v9QCCkyX
 
You think Nasa would tell you the truth if there where aliens on mars moon etc,then sit back and have a good think about it,why would they tell us?.
I look at it this way,if they tell lies about small matters then they can not be trusted in the bigger picture.
Nasa want to keep all riches they find to themself,think of it how clear the pictures are of earth,and now look at Mars/Moon pictures,NASA only show you and me what has been declassified nothing more or less.
I could say ask the goverment for the truth but we know how many lies they tell us,so sit back and think about how much truth you are told
 
Saw this on The Anomalist web site. It's a video of a guy who said he found something on Google Mars. It appears to be, according to the narrator, about 700 ft long by 150 ft wide.

It's an interesting structure, but I don't know. It seems Google Earth is always coming up with weird stuff that turns out to be nothing.

He says the coordinates are: coordinates 71 49’19.73?N 29 33’06.53?W

link here
http://sightingufo.com/possible-mars-sp ... oogle-mars

What do you all think?

TD
 
Looks like glitch in transmission leaving a few messing pixels.
 
Perhaps you're right. The blurring of the image drove me crazy, too. I found the link on the Anomalist web site.

TD
 
Pixellation makes things look square, and that thing is severely pixellated. This has done the rounds of the anomaly sites in the past week, and a sharper image of the area is yet to emerge.
 
This is a still shot, taken by me from Google Mars.
http://imageshack.us/f/90/marsanomaly.jpg/

the anomaly can be found at 71 49’19.73?N 29 33’06.53?W.

It certainly has a lot of jpeg artifacting around it, but whether it was caused by anything on (or above) Mars is tricky to say. Since it is aligned perfectly east-west I'd say it was a photographic artifact rather than a real object. The darker pixels are a contrast effect and not a shadow.
 
Very interesting.

Re artefacts, pixelation, etc, wouldn't the blocks have to be the same colour (or close) to what's actually there? So although that whole shape might not be a single item on the landscape, there's certainly something there that's brighter than the surrounding terrain, which then might have been pixelated, or corrupted?

It's great to have something interesting on Mars again, after the whole Cydonia face disappointment.
 
Since it is aligned perfectly east-west I'd say it was a photographic artifact rather than a real object.

Why should the E-W alignment make it more rather than less likely to be an image artifact?
 
Bigfoot73 said:
Since it is aligned perfectly east-west I'd say it was a photographic artifact rather than a real object.

Why should the E-W alignment make it more rather than less likely to be an image artifact?

It does indicates a certain intelligence of design to have an E/W alignment, but equally you might assume that the satellite pictures were taken as the satellite moved in E/W or N/S direction, thus any glitches would "travel" in that direction too. Furthermore the grid pixel system of the camera might suggest something similar.
 
Are there any hi-res images from NASA of this area?
That would clear things up.

This is a fascinating find, I think.
 
Mythopoeika said:
Are there any hi-res images from NASA of this area?
That would clear things up.
If there are, they're not likely to release them, strange they haven't debunked it yet.
 
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