![]() Thermal Erosion Reveals More of the Martian Soil As the carbon dioxide evaporates and exposes more soil, the 'nose' of the Happy Face crater has also grown into one large depression from two small dots, while the 'smile' has also grown significantly. The grinning visage was first discovered in 2011 by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter using its powerful High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera (HiRISE).Īccording to Universe Today, a new image captured in 2020 has proven that it has changed over the past ten years due to thermal erosion. As fun as the search has been, I'm still left marveling at the real wonder here: that humans placed a machine on a planet millions of miles away from home and I have the images it sends back at my fingertips.The infamous Happy Face crater on Mars near the south pole is smiling even brighter over the last decade. I would be delighted if the stones I found really were ancient carvings left behind by a defunct Mars-roaming alien civilization, but I know they're still just cool-looking rock formations. It's both familiar and peculiar, a mirror world to the dry Southwestern landscapes of my New Mexico home. It's a world of craggy hillsides, sweeping dunes and desert-like barren stretches. Marveling at MarsĪfter spending a solid hour gazing into the ragged depths of Mars through Curiosity's eyes, I've got a new appreciation for the planet. Thanks to Curiosity's camera angles, the playful fall of shadows and my human imagination, rocks can become faces. There's a thrill to the search - and even more of one to the discovery. I can understand why alien hunters spend time poring over Mars images, looking for any imagined sign of life. One of them peers back at the camera, like it's looking through all those many miles and into my Mars-loving soul. There's something both human and otherworldly about these formations. Still, I clearly see eyes, noses, cheekbones, chins and outrageous pompadour haircuts. "As an inadvertent side effect," he writes, "the pattern-recognition machinery in our brains is so efficient in extracting a face from a clutter of other detail that we sometimes see faces where there are none." In his 1995 book " The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark," Carl Sagan suggests facial pareidolia is hardwired into human brains, a result of evolution and the need for infants to recognize their parents. ![]() I find not one, but three rocks that could pass for twisted, alien versions of faces. Then I open the collection from Curiosity's mast camera from Sol 1450, which translates to Septemhere on Earth. I've looked at hundreds of images and I'm thinking about giving up. Kissy 'alien face' spotted in Mars formation.Fish-shaped rock swims into NASA photo from Mars.'Spoon' on Mars catches hungry UFO hunter's attention.The images are organized by which camera took them, whether it's the landscape view of a navigation camera or a close-up from the chemistry cam. Browsing this public archive, which I've only glanced at before, is like being immersed in a pile of postcards sent back by the Mars machine (the Opportunity rover has its own images library here). So here I am, clicking through NASA's raw-images library of photos delivered by the Curiosity rover all the way from the distant Red Planet. Despite being millions of miles away, the minute details of Mars are as close as a browser window, and for me, there are few uses for a browser as worthwhile as a trip to space. It's the planet I feel closest to (other than our own) since NASA has two operational rovers roaming its surface, beaming back vacation photos of exotic landscapes and doughnut-shaped rocks. It's both familiar and peculiar, a mirror world to the dry Southwestern landscapes of my New Mexico home.Īs someone who spends weekends gazing at stars, gets lost for hours in NASA websites and writes about space for a living, Mars holds a particular allure for me. With Mars being such a popular target of intriguing sightings lately, I decide to test my own powers of pareidolia by staring at images of the Red Planet. How hard can it be to harness the power of pareidolia - a phenomenon that causes people to see recognizable faces and shapes in unrelated objects - to find familiar sights on Mars? We do it all the time on Earth when we see sheep in clouds, the Virgin Mary on toast and the famous ape Harambe in a Cheeto. I don't believe those are signs of alien life like some do, but I want to be part of the fun. I'm both delighted and fully skeptical when UFO and alien fans spot things like statues of ancient gods and walking women on Mars. I want this little spoon-like formation spotted on the planet to be a sign of advanced table manners there. I want this goofy-looking Mars rock to be a real fish. Like Agent Fox Mulder from " The X-Files," I want to believe.
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