Saturday, April 09, 2005





NASA's Mars Odyssey craft has returned an impressive new photo of the Face on Mars. The short of it: It's still a face.

More soon at the Cydonian Imperative.
Posted by Mac at 10:21 PM

11 comments:

KennyJC said...

It does seem to have a lot of detail for something so small. Which is unusual for a 'hill'.

Obviously errosion has taken place, which begs the question to what it would've looked like when 'new'.

I'm still pretty skeptical though, look at a planet full of rocks and you'll probably find something strange. I haven't read up on it enough though to make up my mind.

12:02 AM
W.M. Bear said...

The Mars Odyssey photo strikes me as being one of the best if not THE best photo of the Face. The contrast is great, the details pop out at you -- eyes, nose, mouth, symmetrical "headdress." Frankly, I was skeptical and thought the face was just a simulacrum until I saw this photo. Not any more. BTW, Mac, in the Cydonian Imperative you mentioned hundreds of thousands of years of erosion. But if the ancient Martians flourished during the so-called "Martian Spring," wouldn't they more likely have lived millions or even BILLIONS of years ago? That would definitely make for erosion, though not nearly as badly as on Earth for the same span.
--WMB

12:13 AM
Mac said...

KennyJC--

There's this book called "After the Martian Apocalypse"... ;-)

12:38 AM
Mac said...

WMB--

Yes. It's totally possible "hundreds of thousands of years ago" is a gross understatement.

12:39 AM
Keleri said...

Psh, who cares about a face? How about this cat I found after looking at this image? xD

11:06 AM
Ken Younos said...

It seems that more facial detail is visible when shadows are cast on specific parts of it. I wonder if that were deliberate? Anyway, I can see the brow, the eye and iris, the bridge of the nose, nostril, mouth, teeth, chin and jawline. If this is a natural formation, that's just weird...

3:18 PM
W.M. Bear said...

If the Face were just a pattern in the ground (like the "Dolphin" or "Queen Nefertiti"), that would be one thing. But the fact that the highly symmetrical features are ALSO framed by an extremely regular-shaped mesa lends a lot of additional credence to the possibility that it's artificial. Or so it seems to a recent convert like me, anyway. Interestly, one of the implications of an artificial origin is that the ancient Martians (or whoever fashioned it) may have looked a lot like US!
--WMB

10:16 PM
Ken Younos said...

Is it just me, or does the face resemble W's?

4:58 PM
Mac said...

Now *that*'s a chilling thought!

Actually, the Face is quite simian-looking...

12:38 AM
W.M. Bear said...

The Chimp on Mars -- I love it!

During the long American Empirium established by George W. Bush when he assumed emergency dictatorial powers provided by the Constitution and declared the Permanent State of Emergency -- in the year 2030, a secret European project developed both an anti-gravity space drive and a time-travel device. The Europeans then used this combined technology to secretly colonize Mars during the Martian Spring. The colonists then created an enormous, sky-facing portrait of the Emperor Bush as a warning to future generations of Earth dwellers....

2:26 PM
Mac said...

*Great* satirical SF story idea!

2:36 PM