People Seeing Life on Mars

Ward C. Diehl writes "Tech Central Station has an article detailing the latest round of Martian visions, over 100 years after Percival Lowell's canal 'sightings'. The article interviews astrobiologists, including Nobel laureate Richard Roberts, and one astronomer from the fringe. The latest photos from Mars Express, Opportunity, and Spirit are interpreted as sea shells, pyramids, Nasca-like lines, etc. and one truly freak-deaky crab claw. There's a great link list at the end of the article so we have a gallery these photos. Prepare to blow your Friday afternoon productivity!"

Comments

Enterprise Mission

[JabberWokky]

The guy from the Enterprise Mission is a regular on Coast to Coast AM (aka 'Art Bell's show'). He's great fun to listen to... a real, genuine kook. He's been raising money to go to Washington to show pictures to congresscritters and convince them that there's life on Mars and there's a government conspiracy against it. He thinks that the Spirit and Opportunity were reprogrammed by MiBs right as they landed - that's why they had to reupload... to insert filtering software to hide the artifacts the probe accidently landed in the middle of.

I'm not a big fan of George Noory, but Art's been hosting on weekends again. Yay.

--
Evan

Re:Enterprise Mission

[DynaSoar]

JabberWokky (19442) sez: "The guy from the Enterprise Mission is a regular..."

Regular is not the word I'd use. Apparently he went on Art Bell claiming that pretty much all the visible rocks around Spirit were machine parts. Bell went along with it at first, but by the second day backed off and said "Actually, they all just look like rocks!"

It's so sad when close kooks* fall out.

[* Not in any way flamage. I participate with these guys in their usenet groups regularly. I use the term fondly.]

Pyramids look cool

[RobertB-DC]

Of all the images linked, I think the "Pyramid and underground entrance (at the apex of the pic)" is the most interesting. Sure, there are plenty of non-ET explanations, especially since the view looks pretty skewed. But if there were to be one visible artifact of some long-dead civilization, it would probably be some mostly flat structure on the top of a mound. Anything in a valley would probably have gotten covered up by the dust.

But let's get one thing straight. Even if it does turn out that these shapes were created by intelligent hands, it does NOT mean that ancient Martians built the Egyptian or Mayan pyramids. A cone is simply a stable structure. Saying that Earthly pyramids must have been built by Martians is like saying that the doodlebug holes and ant mounds in the back yard were built by the ancient Egyptians.

-1, Offtopic..

[jasno]

I love that show. Where else can you hear people who simultaneously believe in angels, aliens, christianity, ghosts, exorcism, satan, cow mutilation, bigfoot, mind control, underpants gnomes, psychic powers, the afterlife, etc..

At least if you're going to believe in a fantasy, pick one that's internally consistent.

Face on Mars; Lowell Canals

[Latent Heat]

What I find interesting about the Face on Mars is that it sure freakin' looks like a face at low res, but at high res it breaks up into mountains and ridges and the face disappears. Come to think of it, I see the Man in the Moon everytime the full Moon is visible, but in a detail lunar map of the Near Side, I no longer see the Man in the Moon.

Sky and Telescope just did a thing about Lowell's Canals. Traditionally, planet photos are just a blur while skilled observers claim to see all kinds of stuff by waiting for glimpes of "good seeing." Look at any traditional astronomy textbook and you see these awful photos of Mars and Jupiter and Saturn. It turns out that some amateurs with CCD or WebCams can sift through tons of blury images to find the few good ones and and then use image software to stack to good images to build up contrast. Using such advanced imaging techniques, they showed some images where if you use your imagination somewhat, you can see Lowell canals.

What I want to know if there is much of any correspondence between spacecraft images of Mars and what is scene from Earth-based telescopes. The Man in the Moon is mainly three of the larger maria forming two eye sockets and a kind of Mr. Bill oooooo mouth. Stuff like Syrtis Major and the light and dark markings -- are those just wind-blown albedo features or do they correspond to some kind of continental-scale topography? How big are the Lowell Canals compared to Vallis Marinaris (I imagine Vallis Marinaris while honkin big is below what can be seen from Earth, maybe like trying to see the Grand Canyon from the Moon, but how far off is it?).