10.5 Water and life on mars  (Page 6/8)

Astronomy and pseudoscience: the “face on mars”

People like human faces. We humans have developed great skill in recognizing people and interpreting facial expressions. We also have a tendency to see faces in many natural formations, from clouds to the man in the Moon. One of the curiosities that emerged from the Viking orbiters’ global mapping of Mars was the discovery of a strangely shaped mesa in the Cydonia region that resembled a human face. Despite later rumors of a cover-up, the “Face on Mars” was, in fact, recognized by Viking scientists and included in one of the early mission press releases. At the low resolution and oblique lighting under which the Viking image was obtained, the mile-wide mesa had something of a Sphinx-like appearance.

Unfortunately, a small band of individuals decided that this formation was an artificial, carved sculpture of a human face placed on Mars by an ancient civilization that thrived there hundreds of thousands of years ago. A band of “true believers” grew around the face and tried to deduce the nature of the “sculptors” who made it. This group also linked the face to a variety of other pseudoscientific phenomena such as crop circles (patterns in fields of grain, mostly in Britain, now known to be the work of pranksters).

Members of this group accused NASA of covering up evidence of intelligent life on Mars, and they received a great deal of help in publicizing their perspective from tabloid media. Some of the believers picketed the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the time of the failure of the Mars Observer spacecraft, circulating stories that the “failure” of the Mars Observer was itself a fake, and that its true (secret) mission was to photograph the face.

The high-resolution Mars Observer camera (MOC) was reflown on the Mars Global Surveyor mission, which arrived at Mars in 1997. On April 5, 1998, in Orbit 220, the MOC obtained an oblique image of the face at a resolution of 4 meters per pixel, a factor-of-10 improvement in resolution over the Viking image. Another image in 2001 had even higher resolution. Immediately released by NASA, the new images showed a low mesa-like hill cut crossways by several roughly linear ridges and depressions, which were misidentified in the 1976 photo as the eyes and mouth of a face. Only with an enormous dose of imagination can any resemblance to a face be seen in the new images, demonstrating how dramatically our interpretation of geology can change with large improvements in resolution. The original and the higher resolution images can be seen in [link] .

Face on mars.

After 20 years of promoting pseudoscientific interpretations and various conspiracy theories, can the “Face on Mars” believers now accept reality? Unfortunately, it does not seem so. They have accused NASA of faking the new picture. They also suggest that the secret mission of the Mars Observer included a nuclear bomb used to destroy the face before it could be photographed in greater detail by the Mars Global Surveyor .

Space scientists find these suggestions incredible. NASA is spending increasing sums for research on life in the universe, and a major objective of current and upcoming Mars missions is to search for evidence of past microbial life on Mars. Conclusive evidence of extraterrestrial life would be one of the great discoveries of science and incidentally might well lead to increased funding for NASA. The idea that NASA or other government agencies would (or could) mount a conspiracy to suppress such welcome evidence is truly bizarre.

Alas, the “Face on Mars” story is only one example of a whole series of conspiracy theories that are kept before the public by dedicated believers, by people out to make a fast buck, and by irresponsible media attention. Others include the “urban legend” that the Air Force has the bodies of extraterrestrials at a secret base, the widely circulated report that UFOs crashed near Roswell, New Mexico (actually it was a balloon carrying scientific instruments to find evidence of Soviet nuclear tests), or the notion that alien astronauts helped build the Egyptian pyramids and many other ancient monuments because our ancestors were too stupid to do it alone.

In response to the increase in publicity given to these “fiction science” ideas, a group of scientists, educators, scholars, and magicians (who know a good hoax when they see one) have formed the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. Two of the original authors of your book are active on the committee. For more information about its work delving into the rational explanations for paranormal claims, see their excellent magazine, The Skeptical Inquirer , or check out their website at www.csicop.org/.