Slashdot Mirror
Interesting Structures On Mars
fear writes: "Meta Research has just released a new report on what they call 'Artificial Structures on Mars. Much of it is obvious nonsense ('animal-like shapes,' for example) similar to seeing things in clouds, but some structures look interesting: spots, tubes 1, tubes 2, track, 'vegetation', 'trees', triangles, strange lines, T. Which geological and climatic processes cause the formation of such structures?" Though I see no trees or vegetation, these are still fascinating images of Mars, and Meta Research looks like an interesting, off-beat site to check back to.
Why don't you think these are pipelines? They look just like the natural gas pipelines out by where I live. The pipelines themselves are buried, but a pipeline access road runs over top of the line. These lines are laid down straight as an arrow through whatever terrain might be in the way. Bicycling on these roads is lots of fun as they generally go over mountains instead of through them, sometimes going over *VERY* steep hills (the kind where you have to get off the bike and more or less just pull it up behind you). If the roads are graveled in, then they would show up bright like that against a relativly dark soil.
Down that path lies madness. On the other hand, the road to hell is paved with melting snowballs.
I read the internet for the articles.
The "tubes" appear to be an optical illusion. Look especially in "Tubes 1". Look at the shadows on the crater in the upper right, then look at the shadows in the "tube". It appears to be a valley, not a tube. The "tiger-stripe" ridging is the result of the cliff edge slumping. Likewise, the "track" is a slumped cliff edge. The triangles are shadows in a dune field.
cb
cb
Oooh! What does this button do!?
Matter of debate? "It's made by martians!" "Huh?" "It looks like a face; it must be made by Martians!" "Um... And that cloud over there that looks like a bunny?" "Martians made that too!"
Look, it is a simple fact that our brains are wired to see faces in things. Any arrangement of three dots in a circle ends up looking like a face to us. "Strongly" in this case just means "also has a dot for the nose." It's also a simple fact that on a planet the size of Mars (or Earth) you're going to see a lot of crazy things in natural formations. Of all the mounds of dirt on Mars, one looks a lot like a face. Yawn.
Sure, it _might_ be aliens... but the face itself isn't _evidence_ that aliens did make it.
The enemies of Democracy are
It's obfuscation, all right, but not where you think...
Keeping the mystery alive about the 'face' does two things: keeps interest in Mars high, and keeps all the conspiracy theorists from spending their time looking for the real conspiracies.
It's like Area 51 -- The government being all cloak-and-dagger about it keeps every high-powered telescopic lense focused on _it_, rather that the _real_ top-secret anti-gravity alien-technology aircraft flight test center, which is probably somewhere north of Walla Walla, WA.
The enemies of Democracy are
See "All your base are belong to us"
spelled in Martian rocks.
On a more serious note: erosion patterns
on earth are well-studied and characterised.
Not so on Mars. 100 years from now every
formation on Mars will have an explanation.
Here's an example of the tubes -- look at the high res version, lower left corner.
One thing to note when we look at stuff that's come back from mars is that the most of the planet has not been viewed with the narrow angle camera at all -- for example, go here, select a region, then look at the clickable map -- the little light blue tracks are the places where the narrow angle views are available.
Came across this while randomly looking at the MSSS gallery -- view the "full size image".
Notice some parts look like the "tubes" that people show from mars photos, but when you see them merging into large dune areas they appear to be just sand dunes?
As someone who had been directly studying some features, I would note a few things:
Geometries? Yes, there are geometries. There are lots of them. But I would stop far from claiming artificialities on them. They can be the cause of very natural phenomena, having enormous dimensions. Such things are, for example, very large impacts that produce a "rombic wallpaper" pattern for hundreds of even thousands of kilometers.
Mars has tons of water. The Hell with what NASA claims as they have shown no worser in lies as in facts. Yes, this water is far less than what we have on Earth but it still manages to create small underground lakes and ponds in such places like South Arabia Terra. In the past it covered all Northern Hemisphere and even such higher landscapes like Arabia Terra.
Mars suffered of some weird phenomena that wiped out most of its surface water in very short time. Near Mons Olympus and in some highlands on Acydalia, there are clear traces of megafloods that nearly caved a good piece of Mars crust. In geological terms people name these things scablands, as for a similar landscape in Washington State of the same name.
There is a very high chance that some biology existed in Mars. And some features are very suggestive that some of it survived and exists nowadays in Mars. Note that I believe on NASA results as much as I believe that the Face of Mars was built by an alien mind. In fact the study of several documents and the tragedy of Professor Wolf Vishniac lead me to conclude that there were people on Viking Project that falsified results and produced a scientific analysis with a very biased weight. In fact, there were people inside the project, like Professor Horowitz, who were not only aggressively opposed to the prospects of life in Mars, but also tried to undermine the work of some members of the team, and specially the work of Vishniac.
If there were lill green men on Mars, than 99% of their world will be impossible to be seen as this world was completely washed out.
The Face of Mars is probably the product of a living being but one as much as dumb as our trees, corals or liquens.
There is a goemetry on Cydonia. But it is hard to determine its nature. The most probable is the pure result of physical forces of natural or near natural origin. Anyway the probability of terraformation cannot be put fully aside.
The most terryfying in Mars are not "formations" or "geometries" or even "faces". The most scaring are craters. For nearly 5 years I have been studying them and came into one conclusion. In Mars craters are far from being interpreted only as a natural phenomena. In some places their distribution correlates with landscape formations that are completely independent in origin. There is even one hill that possesses a ring of more than 10 craters sorrounding nearly 90% of its cliffs. Much like if someone pointed straightly to the sides of this hill. Curiously they are nearly equal in diameter for a large part of the hill.
NASA lies. Yes it lies. But not only. It also shuts down the voices of those who dissent. Or helps to shut them down. Why? No its not an alien conspiracy. Just some people claiming for "Good Science" love to be "more popists than the Pope himself". And maybe some governmental short-mindness and underground politics is also in place.
After examination, I still think it's a load of crap. I've had to make this point on other fora recently; it's getting silly.
Pick up any issue of Fortean Times. Examine its 'simulacra' section. Therein you'll find examples of everyday objects that look like people, things, whatever.
If it's got a beard, it must be Jesus
If it's got a quiff, it must be Elvis
Why is the "okay, so cydonia wasn't really alien. But this is" considered a valid argument for these structures being anything other than natural?
Is Richard Hoagland's http://www.enterprisemission.com. One page with a few pictures of these Mars structures is http://www.enterprisemission.com/sequel.htm and others are at Glass Tubes, and Cydonia Triangle. Another site with tons of Mars surface feature images is http://barsoom.msss.com/moc_gallery/index.html.
Take a look at Picture 18:
a /asom/artifact_html/slide.asp?image=18
http://www.metaresearch.org/solar%20system/cydoni
--
Pretend there is some witty statement here.
It's my job to look at satellite imagery of the Earth every day. And looking at these Mars pictures, I don't see many structures that I haven't seen in earth geology. The tubes (dunes or ravines), triangles (dunes), and other formations are all things you'd see if you looked in the right places on Earth.
The only features that did seem a little strange were the 'trees' images. While they could be lava flows, lava is usually not that fractal or inhomogeneous. They do look more like natural vegetation, although without scale on the images it's impossible to tell. So I'd dismiss immediately any claims of intelligent artifacts on Mars, but there may be some tantalizing possibilities for primitive forms of life.
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
I can't get through to the site as well ("slashdotted", see other posts), but since I see Cydonia in the URL I doubt to see something really new there.
:-)
t m
Cydonia is the region of the famous "mars face" (which doesn't look like a face anymore on pictures with higher resolutions---thanks to Mars Global Surveyor) and there have been plenty of reports about the mars face and the other "artifical" structures around ("city", "pyramid" and so on.)
See here for an example:
http://www.psrw.com/~markc/marshome.html
Here's a mirror in Germany (if that's slashdotted also
http://home.t-online.de/home/zimmert/marshpge.h
Administrative contact: Michael Van Flandern
Technical contact: Kevin Van Flandern
Mouthpiece for: Tom Van Flandern, big-time Cydonia-face, um, "enthusiast".
Have yourself a browse through metaresearch.org and you'll find out all sorts of interesting things. Like, apparently the speed of gravity is "not less than 2 x 10^10 c", and therefore probably infinite.
Feel free to read some stuff on Jerry Pournelle's site about this guy.
Here's another URL that directly addresses the gravity-speed thing Tom Van Flandern loves so dearly.
If he were a bit more dedicated, he'd qualify as a real, quality, Usenet kook. I don't think he quite makes the grade, though.
I'm just waiting for them to find the face of the Virgin Mary. My neighbor's window does a pretty good Jesus in the wintertime, though at other times it looks like Satan.
Heck, if those Greek dudes could decide that those five stars look like a crab, and these seven look like a bear, then who knows what they would find on Mars?
Spots: ? Looks like they cranked up the contrast like crazy. Tubes 1: Pretty clearly barcan dunes in a valley.
Tubes 2: Ditto
Track: Ditto (ho hum)
Vegetation: Another one where it looks like they cranked up the contrast like crazy - these actually look like sunspots (?). If they're actually from Mars, they are lava flows.
Triangles: No clue - need to see in different light angles
Strange Lines: These are dust devil/tornado tracks - pretty cool, eh?
T: There are a bunch of these near Valles Marineris (which is a 10km+ deep version of these long, blunt-ended vallies. Their formation is a source of major contention. Probably a faulted graben feature.
Remember the "face" on Mars? That one was very effectively debunked with the MGS images. As long as you show individual images, you can pretty much see anything you want, but if you look at them in different light angles, you can start to piece together what the features actually are. However, if they actually showed those (or read the science), they'd have nothing.
#47, "arranged triangles" is quite clearly one of the Florida vote ballots that, had it been accurately interpreted, would have given Gore his rightful place behind Clinton.
It also happens to be punchcard #4 of the DeCSS code. The MPAA better follow up on that one, there is quite clearly a threat of loss of proportion as never before imagined.
.sigs are for post^Hers.
Seriously, this is crap!
^]:wq!^M
Däniken is one of the many authors who have claimed they were runways.
Among the reasons to take his theories with a bucket or two of salt (even if one disregards his other examples of blatant ignorance about how to present a credible "proof") one find interesting discoveries that show that a large portion of the lines connects sites of importance to the old Nasca culture, such as buildings of religious importance, water sources etc.. That explains most of the straight lines.
As for the figures, one of the more credible theories is that they were used for seremonies. There are indications of seremonies that involved walking along the lines of the figures, that are consistent with other findings at the Cahuachi site, the ruins of a city now believed to be a religious center for the Nasca culture.
Dänikens central thesis, which is nothing more than ignorant conjecture, is that the figures must have been created by ETs, or with the help of ETs because no humans where capable of doing so at the time. Which is the same as assuming that a nobody at that time had ever tried what even many children discover by themselves: Using rope, wire or thread to scale a figure.
This "face" lunacy has been debunked. Note also that you are NOT seeing original images of the "face", but instead "digitally enhanced" photos, which appear to have had a smiley face drawn on them. See the Mar/Apr SI for more details, as well as this special issue:
http://www.csicop.org/si/2000-11/
I thought that some of these pictures were uh... blurry and took some level of interpretation to see but most of these ok looking. But then again, take a look at how many shapes, forms, animals, etc. we've seen and made from the billions of stars in our skies (constellations)! I guess if you take enough pictures of stuff, you'll start to see things in 'em. Especially random hilly terrain pics. Good idea: one of you techheads should program a random terrain generator linked to a webpage and have a voting system to see if a person sees anything in that picture. Would make a great website... name it amisecretmartianface.com or something *snicker*.
-Christopher Wu
http://www.christopherwu.net/