SUMMARY: Do you think the "Face on Mars" was created by aliens? Perhaps you might want to read a recent article by the Bad Astronomer, Phil Plait. In this multi-page guide, Plait dismantles the NASA conspiracy claims of Richard Hoagland, setting the record straight. It's great reading, and does a good job of explaining some larger issues, like why it's hard to get true colour images of Mars, and how you can get funny patterns in almost anything you look at. You should also check out Plait's previous defense against the Moon landing hoaxes. And while you're at it, buy his book… Bad Astronomy.

Nice work Phil.

Fraser Cain
Publisher
Universe Today


What do you think about this story? Post your comments below.

I just love the people who come :blink: out of the woodwork :blink: with these silly ideas based on grainy images. They see a resemblance to something and it immediately has to be that thing and nothing else. When the Hubble took those great images of the Eagle nebula, some people though that a section of one of the columns of gas looked like a face, which quickly morph into the face of the devil, and then was followed by apocolypse predictions. There's even a guy out there now looking at extreme close-ups of the individual pixels on Mars Global Surveyor images and seeing actual cities on the surface of Mars. I just think these people need to find a nice quiet hobby and stop bothering normal people... :P

Ha I agree John! I especially get annoyed with pseudo-scientific claims that are made with the words "it can only be" without any scientific evidence to back it up.

I have read the book "Bad Science", it is a well written book in easily understood syntax, I would recommend it to everyone.

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All civilizations become either spacefaring or extinct.~ Carl Sagan ~

Humanity must rise above the Earth, to the top of the atmosphere and beyond, for only then will we fully understand the world in which we live.~Socrates, 500 B.C. ~

Let every man judge according to his own standards, by what he has himself read, not by what others tell him. ~Albert Einstein~

Click on the Phil Plait Bad Astronomy story, and the select the "Say What?" link. There is the most hilarious theory that a bad 1950's sci-fi TV show's spin off View Master reels are the key to understanding a massive cover-up of the fact that there was once an advanced alien race on the planet between Mars and Jupiter that exploded, forming the asteroid belt. All I can say is, "Pass that man some Thorizine!"

Hey, thanks for the plug Fraser! That's cool. I am very interested in seeing my webstats tonight... :-)

Before anyone thinks the face on Mars was created by aliens...you should take a trip out Zion National Park. There is a lot of faces there created by mother nature (god).

(incidently, she is a woman because over 80% of the people hit by lightning are men).

People will see and believe what they want.

I think that the face was made by aliens there are so many galaxys and other stars in the univers so there has to be other life some were. They might not have advanced technology but they might know a lot about space travel.

Thats the problem with trying to rationally argue against a belief--regardless of how reasonable your argument, regardless of how clear your evidence, regardless of how unreasonable the 'belief" or evidence to support the belief, there are some people who will go on believing the apparently ridiculous.

Starting to tread on dangerous territory here :unsure:

__________________
All civilizations become either spacefaring or extinct.~ Carl Sagan ~

Humanity must rise above the Earth, to the top of the atmosphere and beyond, for only then will we fully understand the world in which we live.~Socrates, 500 B.C. ~

Let every man judge according to his own standards, by what he has himself read, not by what others tell him. ~Albert Einstein~

Opps, misquote, that was Mathew Henry, not Jonathon Swift. So sorrry!!! Swift said . Still applies in this context! -_-

__________________
All civilizations become either spacefaring or extinct.~ Carl Sagan ~

Humanity must rise above the Earth, to the top of the atmosphere and beyond, for only then will we fully understand the world in which we live.~Socrates, 500 B.C. ~

Let every man judge according to his own standards, by what he has himself read, not by what others tell him. ~Albert Einstein~

I agree and I disagree. There are somewhere between 100 and 500 billion stars in our galaxy alone. There are hundreds of billions of galaxies in the visible universe. With all of those stars in all of those galaxies it would be a hell of a small chance if we were the only inteligent life in all of the universe, let alone this galaxy (See Carl Sagan's Contact).

On the other hand, I seriously doubt that an inteligent life form that did not originate in our solar system has ever bothered to visit it. Our sun is an average yellow dwarf star, only the second most common star in the universe next to the red dwarf star. There are billions of stars just like ours and there is nothing special about ours that would attract anyone's attention. Some mention that now our radio signals are being beamed out into the cosmos, but you have to remember that we've only been sending signals powerful enough to be heard outside of our solar system since the late 1930's.

There's also the inverse-square law that say a signal deceases in power each time it doubles its distance from the source by 1/r^2. Double the distance you get 1/4 the signal, triple it and you get 1/9, and so on. Although signals from the 40's and 50's made it out of the solar system, they'd be so diluted by now that I doubt anyone who's listening would be able to tell them from background noise. We've been sending more and more powerful signals into space over the years, but at the speed of light they still haven't gone very far. Its a big universe filled with a lot of noise. You'd have to pass right by to notice we're here.

If the face was created or made by aliens, why does it look Human? Do we think all potential aliens have human form.
That 'face' would appear to have eyes, nose, mouth, where humans do.
The odds on that are slim and none.
Anyone who thinks that is more than an series of land erosion features in a random form can take a look at the potato I grew last year and looks like Clint Eastwood.

Random!!!!!

I plan to read the book ASAP.

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'I don't know if I even have an aura, man. I just try to win.'
Tiger Woods

Why does everyone have to decide THERE IS or THERE ISN'T life on Mars. Why not just keep an open mind? visit www.marsanomalyresearch.com to see what others have found from the official mapping of Mars. The govenment hardly tells us about whats going on here on Earth, so why would information about Mars be honest and forthcoming.

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Round...everything is always round!

:P oh...and....what are the monoliths on phobos? (is it really inhabited?)

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Round...everything is always round!

I'm not sure, but I think it was Johnny Rotten who said

"The trouble with having an open mind is that people put things in it".

The only time you can be absolutely certain of something is when you're looking for yourself, otherwise it's belief dependent on such things as how reliable you think the source is or amount and consistency of evidence.

I don't think anybody is saying there absolutely isn't life on Mars, in fact, I think most people now think there's a good chance of finding life there, now, or that it existed in the past.

But giant structures, massive government coverups, etc. That I don't believe. As Phil showed, the evidence just doesn't stand up.

We have rovers on the surface right now, and a whole train of vehicles planned to visit the planet and search for life - eventually bringing samples back to Earth. Nobody is trying to cover anything up.

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Fraser Cain
Publisher
Universe Today - Free space news delivered by email every weekday.

It isn't so much the yes/no question...

There are several reasons for determining if there is/was life on Mars:
- we need to know how careful we need to be about destroying/contaminating it with future probes/efforts on Mars
- we need to know if we can bring back dangerous organisms to Earth
- we want to know more about the origin of life on Earth. Mars is a better time capsule for this sort of thing than the more dynamic, weathered, biotic Earth
- we want to test theories of panspremia, and the ubiquity of life
- if there is life we want to know more about the nature of something [possibly] truly alien.
- if there wasn't life, it tells us that water and rocks is necessary but not sufficient for life to begin, which will drive exploration into what else is required.

BTW, scientists would not be surprised to see single-cell DNA based life, but would be very startled by evidence of anything more complicated than strings of bacteria.

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Forming opinions as we speak

John Lacour i can see your how you can go both ways, i gues now that i think about it i can go both ways too. (thanks)

Peter Canuck I can also see what you mean but we do not have any evidents that aleans exist. So if we dount know that we shurlly dount know what they look like they might look like we do or they might look like we think they do, they might even look like somthing we might find at the bottom of the ocean.

so one guy beloved of idiots writes a debunking book and everybody says YEAH! he is right...what a joke...read the mars mystery by graham hancock and MANY other works illustrating the NASA cover-up (NASA is strictly a branch of the fed govts intelligence apparat now, and should be SHUT DOWN) and then you will see that pat answers and easy fixes are just for lazy people, like yourselves....Bill Gallagher

Short Science Fiction that may not be Science Fiction at all.

I read Graham Hancock's book - I'd been quite impressed by the others, but that one was ludicrous.

Also, it's not just one guy publishing one book refuting any conspiracies - there's a multitude of websites out there for starters. Also, I think you'll find Phil is very well respected in his field, hardly "beloved of idiots"

Lastly, attack the idea, not the person - or people.

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"The stars are my home"
"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe... Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion... I've watched c-beams glitter in the dark, near the Tanhauser Gate... all those moments will be lost, in time... like tears in the rain..."

Actually, now I think about it, I'd say NASA has a very good reason for not openly and deliberately debunking all these silly conspiracy theories...

...it keeps public interest alive and well in NASA!! (Therefore, potentially more funding!)

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"The stars are my home"
"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe... Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion... I've watched c-beams glitter in the dark, near the Tanhauser Gate... all those moments will be lost, in time... like tears in the rain..."