"THE FACE ON MARS: ONCE AND FOR ALL" > Page 1, 2
Was the Face a Face?
The images of the Cydonia formation from the Viking Orbiter really did look like a human face. But so what? Does that mean it really was a sculpted human face? The human brain is programmed to recognize patterns and shapes that are familiar from everyday experience. It is especially adept at recognizing faces, a skill that humans employ from the day they are born. That's why we can often see faces peering out of tree bark, foliage, swirls of stucco and stains on walls. Our eyes are quick to recognize a pair of eyes, a nose, the shape of a head in the random patterns created in these textures. Sometimes they are very familiar - like the devil, Jesus, Mary, your aunt Louise... or Elvis.
The Face on Mars was plain to see, even though it didn't resemble anyone in particular. The notion that it looks like the face of the Sphinx at Giza is debatable... and it's even been suggested that it bears a likeness to the face on the Shroud of Turin.
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The other way the Face could have been meaningful to the Martians was if they built it purposely to be seen from space or a visiting orbiter, like Viking. Perhaps they built it as an eye-catching signal to their brothers on Earth saying, "Hey, you're not alone." |
What about the idea that it was built by the same beings who engineered the amazing structures at Giza? Is there any ancient monument on Earth that is built in the same way that the Martian Face supposedly was? For one thing, the Face is huge. It measures roughly 1.5 miles (7,920 feet) long, 1.2 miles (6,336 feet) wide and is approximately .3 miles (1,584 feet) tall. By comparison, the base of the Great Pyramid at Giza measures just 756 feet on a side. Also, if the Mars Face were an artificial structure, it's unusual in that looks straight up into the sky. On Earth, human likenesses in the form of statues and great carvings like the Sphinx were created in a standing or upright sitting position so they could be appreciated by viewers on the ground. On Mars, viewers of the face, partly because of its large dimensions, would have difficulty discerning its features. Because they couldn't really see it, wouldn't it have been virtually meaningless to them?
If the face were real, there are two ways it could have held meaning for the Martians. One was if they had the capability to view it from high in the air. And if this race was a resident of both Mars and Earth, we can assume that they mastered powered flight. But, again, there are no similar constructions on Earth. The closest analogous creations on this planet are, perhaps, the enigmatic figures seen at Nazca, Peru. Etched into the wide plain of Nazca are large figures of birds, spiders and other creatures and objects - so large that they can only be visualized correctly from the air - and puzzling since they were made sometime between 200 B.C. and 600 A.D., long before powered flight. But this is the only similarity between the Nazca lines and the Face on Mars. They are not similar in size or theme and, most important, the Nazca lines are two-dimensional while the Mars formation is three-dimensional.
The other way the Face could have been meaningful to the Martians was if they built it purposely to be seen from space or a visiting orbiter, like Viking. Perhaps they built it as an eye-catching signal to their brothers on Earth saying, "Hey, you're not alone." If that were even a remote possibility, wouldn't it be worth a subsequent investigation by later probes to Mars?
Return to Cydonia
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How could our space agency intentionally ignore what could potentially be the greatest discovery in all of human history? How could they not rephotograph Cydonia, even if to prove the believers wrong? |
While people like Carlotto, McDaniel and Richard C. Hoagland were busy studying and writing about the Face, the pyramids and other enigmatic features of Mars and strongly suggesting that an intelligent life form was responsible for them, scientists largely ignored the debate while they worked on new spacecraft that would revisit our nearest planetary neighbor.
In the spring of 1998, a new orbiter - the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) - would reach the Red Planet and resume mapping the surface with far better, more high-resolution equipment than Viking had carried. Great, thought believers in the Face, now we'll get further proof that the Face and pyramids are indeed artificial structures. It came as a shock to a lot of people that because MGS's mapping duties would at first be limited, NASA had no intention of re-imaging the formations at Cydonia right away.
What? How could our space agency intentionally ignore what could potentially be the greatest discovery in all of human history? How could they not rephotograph Cydonia, even if to prove the believers wrong? The NASA scientists responded by saying merely that Cydonia was not a priority. They didn't take seriously the notion that anything at Cydonia could be artificial and they had other sites to look at that seemed to be of far more geological interest.
The public outcry was too great for NASA, however. The tide of popular opinion overwhelmed them, and the agency eventually relented and agreed to re-image the Cydonia region. Of course, the conspiracy-minded who believed that the same U.S. government that was covering up the facts about UFOs and probably knew more Cydonia than it was letting on quite likely had plans to secretly revisit the site anyway; now they were being forced to release the pictures when they did.
In
April, 1998, MGS did rephotograph
segments of the Cydonia region, including at least one of the pyramids and the
face. The new, more detailed images of the formation - 10 times the
resolution of the Viking photos - that once looked like a face resolved into a
lumpy outcropping in which one would be hard-pressed to see the likeness of a
human face. Likewise, other anomalous structures like the pyramids, the city and
the "fort" still looked interesting, but hardly artificial. Although many
former believers and the otherwise curious were satisfied that there was, in
fact, nothing of intelligent design at Cydonia, a few diehards contended that NASA
had either given us photos that were not of the Cydonia features at all or they
were doctored to disguise the structures and continue to keep the truth from the
public.
That an ancient civilization once existed on Mars cannot be disproved by the new Cydonia images, but they certainly don't yield any persuasive evidence either. It is still unknown whether any kind of life at all - sentient or microbial - ever existed on Mars, but the possibility is so exciting that it will continue to inspire popular fiction and film, and exhilarate the collective human imagination.
MGS continues to map the surface of Mars and has returned many utterly
beautiful and astonishing pictures of this fascinating planet. This month, more
than 25,000 MGS images have been placed on the Internet at the Malin
Space Sciences Systems site. There you can peruse photos of Mars' craters,
chasms, volcanoes, sand dunes, whirling dust devils and the polar ice caps. And
yes you can also see the latest images of Cydonia and the "Face." 
> > Page 1, 2
All photos: NASA/JPL/Malin Space Science Systems
What Do You Think?
Are the Face
or other "monuments" at Cydonia artificial structures? Is the government
hiding the truth about what it knows concerning these formations? Discuss it all
at the Paranormal Phenomena
Forum.
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Experience? |
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