I have recently become convinced that the ESA Mars Express photos provide enough information to support the hypothesis that Mars was home to a civilization that existed quite some time ago and left ruins behind.

Having read through the threads in this forum and having been directed back to the shameful 'Major Tom..." flame-fest that left one poor soul thoroughly disenchanted somewhat saddened at the schoolyard antics of his critics, I would like to invite a reexamination of the ESA photos of Crater Hale with the intent to rationally determine whether or not the photos are a hoax.

For those who may not be familiar with the ESA photos and the controversy surrounding them, please indulge me a brief synopsis: There is a high-resolution photo of Crater Hale, looking west. In the lower left-hand corner, at the terminus of the central mountain range is a city of ruins. The city is not resolved in the full image, but if one enlarges either the .jpg or .tif downloaded image, one may readily discern indisputable evidence of artificiality.
Loaded into an editing viewer and stripped of chroma, that is to say converted to a greyscale image, the enlarged area evidences buildings in ruin, streets, multi-story structures and outlying areas that have all the hallmarks of a municipality, small town or perhaps a purpose-community such as a military installation.

I'm sure someone out there in this blogspace is familiar with this. I am new to Bad Astronomy and inexpert as to how to run all its features, so it will be some time before I can imbed hyperlinks and do all the cool tricks. But to help us get started, if you are a reader interested, please go to the ESA (European Space Agency) website and download the Crater Hale photo of your choice and take a look for yourself.

Also, if you go to photobucket and search on Crater Hale, there are some twenty photos and other postings that have the relevant information already processed. For me, this was an easier route as all the work had been done, and after seeing the results and what they were getting at, I was able to resolve the same imaging myself using the original ESA downloads.

IF (caps intentional) this is real, we need to discuss it at some length. IF this is a hoax, it's spectacular and whoever did it deserves an Academy Award (tm) for Special Effects and a job in Hollywood.

Please join me in this. Your insight is welcome. Thank you.
=BillyG

-Real men don't need avatars.-
- I said that

My "gut" instinct--as well as my personal observations of Martian topography from NASA and as well as ESA space probe photographs tell me that no government agency run by citizens of the host-country could perpetrate such a hoax. There is always the chance that one could ( on their own ) perpetrate such a touched-up representation--but why? The notoriety would surely give sway to disgrace and complete humiliation for the perpetrator.

Not exactly how I'd classify this thread.

What hoax are you talking about? The issue being discussed in the "Major Tom" thread was the misinterpretation (and in some cases, additional manipulation) of ESA supplied images.

So, you manipulate the image . . .

And, this is where the discussion breaks down unless you can show, specifically, what you're talking about, and how you got there from the ESA images. Just saying "there's some blocky stuff when I throw it in photoshop" isn't going to do it.

So, you AREN'T basing this on ESA images, but on somebody else's manipulated images?

By the way, are you familiar with the term, "pareidolia"?

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Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

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This is what is known as a 'false dilemma': you seem to think that the patterns that you see are either real evidence of a civilisation or a 'hoax'.
In fact they are neither - they are a mistake. The JPEG artifacts are clear to see, for anyone who recognises that sort of pattern. Why would an alien civilisation build cities that look exactly like JPEG artifacts?

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Well, OK...Here we go again.

a. I stumbled across the video on YouTube with the instructions on how.

a1.You can do this too. Go to youtube and search Planet Hale Civilization. You will see a screenshot video of how to do this.

b. I downloaded the hires ESA photos directly from the ESA website.

c. I enlarged the "Crater Hale Looking West" image with Photoshop. Just enlarged it using the "zoom" tool. Nothing else.

d. I found exactly what everybody else who's bothered to check it out found.

e. Then I found the link to the photobucket collection. Go to photobucket.com and search on "Crater Hale Civilization". You can do it too.

f. I think something is there.

Why don't you do it too, then you can tell me how a .jpeg artifact generates circles and triangles and shadows and is exactly the same in two different pictures taken from two different angles at two different times of the day and encoded with two different processes. That's the part that escapes me. If it was just one picture, just one .jpeg, OK, I will get on board that it's a fraud.

But it's not that simple. So instead of picking -me- apart, why don't you go try it for yourself. It's all in the public domain and really easy. Nothing is hidden nor obscured or smudged or compressed in the .tif.

As Nike says..."just do it"

Here you go BillyG:http://www.enterprisemission.com/

You'll love it

The images available are too large to post here. If anyone would like, I will be happy to send you copies via email. Please just post me at billg@makahiki.net with a nasty note in the topic header if you must, and I will return some interesting things from the collection to you with my best regards.

Resize them or provide links

-Neverfly- Well _that's_ a hoot!
Witholding information for political expedience is nothing new, but it doesn't add up to a full-blown paranoid's conspiracy. I'm beginning to get the notion that the thing to do is to make the Hale information readily available now via personal contacts and weblogs like this so when the gubbermint finally pops the cork the psychological fallout on the populace will be a bit more gentle.
I'd like to put together a powerpoint presentation about Hale and all this (excluding the politix) and begin circulating it at the Scientific Cafes that are held here in Mexico in all the major cities once a month.

-Neverfly-
OK. I'll try again to get a url to post properly in here, but if it crashes again like it did in the other blog, just go to the photobucket.com site and check it out. Here, try this http://www.photobucket.com/

Now let's see what happens....

It shouldn't crash. People link to their photos on photobucket here all the time.

OK...this time it worked this far.
Follow the link. Just so you know I'm not setting you up, when you get to the photobucket site, put "Crater Hale" in the search field.

Bingo. The whole magilla. Scroll down the images and look at the one that is titled "Crater Hale Civilization Confirmed In Two Different Images".

Don't worry, be happy. There it is. Still think it's compression artifacts?

Betcha you don't......

I Never said it was.

I think it's pure and simple pereidolia. Going to the pics now... will return...

ETA:http://media.photobucket.com/image/c...TwoDi.jpg?o=11

Oh mannn

That's so full of artifacts I'm eating crow.

Still much pereidolia though...

well Google defines PAREIDOLIA as something like wanting to see it so much that you blow your sparkplugs. Yeah, there's artifacts, but it's all the other stuff, Mr crow-eater...

Billy: is there a difference between what you believe and the things found here?

http://www.wiolawapress.com/

Are the results compatible?

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No it doesn't for one.
Maybe you need to research your word definitions better.

It is when you see what is not there. Like seeing a giraffe in a cloud shape. You don't have to want to see it (though that can most definitely help...), it is simply evolutionary conditioning of the brain.
It is better to see a predator that is not there than to not see one that is.

Why does this> Look like a face to us? A computer would not recognize it as a face nor equate it as a face. It's because of pareidolia.

So did you actually download the image and look at it, or only pop the thumbnail and form an opinion based on that?
How come you guys all _want_ this to be baloney? How come you work so hard at denial when it's so much easier and more fulfilling to get into the reality of it? I really don't get the psychology of this. All you gotta do is look at this and you know darn well this can't be artifacts. Now it _may_ be a spoof or something, but, duder, it just ain't .jpeg trash and you know it.
Now what's the real beef all about?

All I can say is, you can't be serious. What relevent information are you talking about? Is the man in the moon an artifact just because we see a funny face on the disk? In the photo of the numerals 79, I also found Alf looking up at me from the plain above the numerals; I found an image of a giant flea in the middle, and a long funny face in the lower right hand corner, and I wasn't looking very hard.

My father was, among other things, a fine painter, and when he finished a work, he would stare at it for hours looking for what he called "Monkey Faces," unintended patterns in the brush strokes and light that when discovered by a viewer can ruin a work by distracting from it. That's what the face on Mars is, and that's what all this junk in these photos is. The mind will interpret what it sees in familiar terms, so light and shadow frequently resolve themselves into a familar pattern whether there's anything of real substance there or not: the Man in the Moon. We even make a game of seeing familiar shapes in clouds. That such "Monkey Faces" as the Face on Mars could have been received as legitimately controversial reveals a degree of misinformed stupidity that is beyond all comprehension. (I'm not calling you stupid, but the nut fringe following for such nonsense is definitely lined up in those sights.) Would it be any less silly of me to claim artificial origin for Alf, the flea, and the cartoon funny face? Take a look. They're easy to spot.

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"To complete the picture all the photons can be seen to be synchronising friction on and off throughout the overall cone which itself is synchronised to the equal and opposite reaction of equilateral triangulation"... by a scientificator in ATM, too priceless to be lost to posterity.

-pzkpfw- Ummm...I don't think so.
Are you are referring to my rant in Marzipaning Earth or whatever they call it, about the Martians leaving home and having a vacation here...in our wet little brains...?
I think my answer to you is "probably not". But I do think that there's a foundation to the mythology of 'spirit possession' as reported, and it may have its root in transmigrating life forms. We humanz hold that a higher. more 'spiritual' way of thinking is the evolutionary part of choice (unless you're a mass murderer or something) and this could be a migratory path off this planet as the Martians may have taken before their planet disposessed them or they self-destructed or whatever.

This image? Compressed to fit on BAUT:


Nice try.

It is not a matter of "wanting to believe" that it's balogna.
It's a matter of recognizing what is really going on instead of entertaining delusions of fancy.
Wow. You really like to play the psychology game don't you?
Ok
Am I in denial that the grilled Cheese Sandwich showing the face of Madonna is pareidolia?
TRUE!
Well... All I did was look and see that it was.
The real beef is that you are experiencing pareidolia and don't want to admit it, yourself.
Like Hoagland, you are seeing what is not there.

Hoagland saw a bit of fluff from the insulation of the rover lander and claimed it was a millimeter sized Martian White Bunny Rabbit.

Funny - No one suffers from possession by demons at all these days. Did the aliens leave?

Yet, people do suffer from understood mental Illnesses- Which is a much more plausible explanation than "transmigratory aliens."

-ThorKil-
Well, I wasn't serious before, but I guess I'll have to get some. How about the World Serious? I hear that's a pretty good game if you like debased ball.

Yeah. Take the links, go get the pics and look for yourself. And please don't tell me it's just 'cause I want it to be there. Do you think I'm any more ready for this than you are just because I'm flapping about it out here?

Look, it's not about whether the city is there or nor. It's about whether the pictures from the ESA are bogus. If these are hokum, then the rest of them could well be too and does ESA want to step up to the plate and cop to the fact that their database in compromised?

Compromised how? YOU manipulated the photos... Now you're going to claim they are compromised?

I think this is going to need to be moved to the Conspiracy Theories Forum.

Because BillyG, the only possibility, at this point, that you can entertain your notions, is that all those top scientists, photo analysts, researchers and explorers that are SEARCHING FOR LIFE ON Mars must be hiding or covering up the evidence that they ever so willingly dole out to the public.


Strange huh?

-NeverFly- The _mythology_ of spirit possession is quite apart from the reality of mental illness. Just because we have a rational handle on some things that were considered 'etehreal' in the past does not discount _how_ those things were described before we learned better. Who was it that said that 'any significantly advanced technology is virtually indistinguishable from magic'?
And where do the trancendentalists go when they go 'out' transcending or whatever? Are they nuts? I don't think so. Maybe they're on their way to the same place the Martians got to eons ago.

-NeverFly-
_I_ didn't manipulate the photos! I just downloaded the originals as posted on ESA and magnified them. And yeah, the thumbnail you parked in your post is one of them. Actually it's pretty good. And no, I don't think all these scientists are holding back information. I believe that my God-given government is completely honest and forthright with me in all ways and forms.
There is nothing hidden in those photos and no attempt has been made to hide anything. It's right there and you saw it too.
There's no conspiracy. What's your problem?

BillyG, Read ALL these links and then reply to each one and how all those examples of Pareidolia are wrong and that the image shown Is, In Fact, What it appears to be.
Pareidolia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia#Examples

http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/lenin.html

http://forgetomori.com/2008/skeptici...reidolia-ever/

Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjMh6e_wxbY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQ-CiG7seUU

Oh? How so, exactly?
Ok so ignorant people inventing stories to describe something they did not understand defines reality better than educated people describing things with solid evidence?
Amazing.


I say that they are on their way to visit Puff the Magic Dragon on Uranus. Prove me wrong.
Then YES, you DID.
Take a photo and magnify it until you're seeing just the pixels.
That, alone, will create artifacts in what you are seeing.
Then you converted it to greyscale...
Then you inverted it...

Manipulated.

Then please explain to me how the many many many many experts who are analyzing these photos, even for a year before they are released, searching for any evidence of life, are missing what you think you are seeing?

I did a little research. It turns out Mars Express does JPEG based compression onboard. I found this PDF:

http://www.planetary.brown.edu/pdfs/3416.pdf

From page 8:

So, it's no surprise that images would already show compression artifacts in low contrast areas, even if the image wasn't compressed again (put in another JPEG file for online viewing).

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Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser

The real beef is some of what has been said already. I noticed you are a junior member, so I'll cut you some slack for a while in that area.

We regularly deal with all manner of crazy stuff here, this being part of it. From UFOs to psychic stuff to ancient civilizations predicting the end of the world and people then finding something that will resemble or justify their fears. Or hopes. And using those things, clinging to them so tightly that they can consider NOTHING else even though there is a fair chance and lots of evidence that they are using those things as merely confirmation bias for whatever has their goat at the moment.

I am not saying you are in this group, but by presenting a claim that is as extraordinary as this and ONLY supporting it with evidence that is well known to produce artifacts...Sagan said it best (I'm pretty sure it was him) that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

So for a moment let me work as though the JPGs are real. By the way, could you please link to the ones YOU are looking at specifically so we all know we are looking at the same ones? If you just send me to the nethers of the internet (or just photobucket) I all but guarantee I could find photos to prove anything. Link to the pictures explicitly in question just to save us all a headache of realizing we are making circles...100 posts down the road.

Anyway, IF the pictures are real we should be able to demonstrate it. These methods can also falsify the claim, so be prepared for that. Science does not show us what we think we see, but what is. Sometimes it takes time, but it does work out, governments or not.

1. IF the buildings in the picture are real, let's look for pictures of the same area taken at a different time. How do the shadows compare? Shapes?

2. The orbiter has spotted landers (or at least evidence of them). I will look for those pictures if someone doesn't beat me to it. I'm pretty sure some are on Phil's blog.

Look up pictures on NASA's website covering the same territory. Match up the big features, then smaller ones. Do any of these ruins show up that can be shown as unnatural? Aka, not talus slopes or sand dunes (of which I believe there are also photos of).

3. I would say drive to Mars but that is not an option really.

4. Easiest, and perhaps the best way to start is to request non-JPG versions of the same pictures. JPGs are well known to display artifacts due to compression, but they work well for websites due to their file size. For public consumption, these do fine. For photo analysis, they do not (and there are literally countless threads about that here, type "moon" and "photos" in the search bar for a plethora of examples).

5. That's all there is to it. Look for other sources showing the same thing! If not today I am sure in the next ten years the entire surface of Mars will have been photographed and we can inspect the surface as though it were a prospective vacation home in Bermuda.

6. Here's another possiblity. Currently there are projects to map the Moon's surface using laser telemetry--I don't imagine Mars is too far behind if it hasn't happened already. I would have to look that up, though someone here may know without looking and beat me to it. We could look at the data if/when it becomes public, and see what it holds down to a rather fine resolution.

7. It may sound crazy, but asking a bunch of scientists and geeky types who spend their lives studying and thinking critically to simply overturn an idea is tough cookies. This is hard not because skeptics like to deny, but because one or two pieces of evidence that is historically known to be shaky at best stands a rather good chance of being wrong again.

Allowing oneself to accept any idea that comes along just because it looks nice WILL GET YOU IN TROUBLE. Maybe not with the law, but it is just much healthier to question claims that make you say "??" and demand further evidence. Coincedences and confirmation bias are powerful if one is not extremely careful. You might even say if one is not skeptical...

8. Last but not least, coming in and swinging around, calling people stupid or wantonly ignorant, or just plain deniers in your first few posts is NOT going to win you friends easily! It has been done, but it makes the hill to climb that much steeper.

Try an approach such as: "I saw these pictures, and think they might be ancient cities. Here is why {list of reasons}. I also realize these are JPEGS, and while I see cities, there is a chance they are artifacts due to compression or processing and not the original picture. How might I go about proving these are A) cities or B) at least not JPEG artifacts?"

Then go about DOING those things instead of just accusing people of doubting "what is obvious" when it may not be to them, and usually for good reason.

If you can figure out that one part of the psychology of "doubters", you will likely find some success here, even if it is just in healthy debate rather than getting walked on for sounding like another woo-woo. Whether or not we agree on the conclusion is (somewhat) irrelevant as long as arriving at the conclusion is not just "because I see something".

I am generally a nice person, and try to be helpful, but I am in no way able to account for anyone else. You have to step up, step out, or risk a stepping on.

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