Alien 'Face' Recedes Into Martian Myth
Space: NASA photo appears to show a naturally weathered mesa. Some have
speculated it is work of alien civilization.
04/07/98
A new high-resolution portrait of the so-called face on Mars, released Monday
by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, reveals the enigmatic feature in 10
times greater detail than previously available, showing the eroding features
of what appears to be a natural geologic formation.
The more detailed image of the Cydonia region of Mars, where the surface
feature was first photographed by the Viking space probe in July 1976, was
taken over the weekend by the Mars Global Surveyor as it prepares to
systematically map the solar system's fourth planet.
In the years since the indistinct Viking images first captured the public
imagination, a veritable cottage industry has sprung up around the mile-long
feature. Several books and scholarly articles speculated that it might be
evidence of ancient Martian civilization, even as NASA steadfastly maintained
it was nothing more than a trick of light.
The image, often dramatically enhanced to heighten its resemblance to a face,
became a staple of supermarket tabloid covers. As the ominous visage of an
ethereal space being, it achieved minor stardom as a character in an "X-
Files" episode.
Aware of the intense interest in the site, JPL took unusual measures to make
it clear that the space agency did not alter the data that went into the
computer-generated image by posting the raw data on the Internet as soon as
it was received, officials said.
"There've been charges of conspiracy and manipulating the data and we want to
make it very clear to everybody that no such activity goes on here," said
Glenn E. Cunningham, Global Surveyor project manager. "We put the raw data
out there so that anybody can . . . process it any way they want."
NASA officials said Monday that the agency would also take no official
position on what the image shows, leaving any interpretation to the
scientific community.
Several planetary scientists and project engineers said Monday that for them,
the new image contained no surprises and no evidence of artificial origin.
"It looks to me like a hill that has been weathered," said Michael Ravine,
advanced projects manager at Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego, which
built the Surveyor camera and processes the images. "It is consistent with
the previous image and there is more detail. There have pretty clearly been
episodes of erosion and deposition" that caused the distinctive shape of the
mesa.
"I don't see anything artificial in it," Ravine said. "If I had seen anything
that looked obviously artificial, I would be happy to admit I was wrong,
because it would be really, really great. But it just isn't there."
Arden Albee, Global Surveyor project scientist at Caltech, concurred.
"In my own judgment, I would interpret the [face] as natural erosional
features. There are layers of relatively soft material that have been eroded.
That is my own judgment as a geologist and planetary scientist."
The site, located in the northern hemisphere of Mars, lies at the boundary
between ancient uplands and low-lying plains.
The Global Surveyor probe is scheduled to photograph the area again April 14
and April 23.
With Mars Images, NASA Says: Face It, It's a Mesa
NASA scientists yesterday wiped the "face" off Mars and with it, the belief
in some quarters that it was the remnant of an ancient Martian civilization.
At least they hope they did.
More than 20 years ago, one of the U.S. Viking space probes took a
photograph of what appeared to some people to be a monumental sculpture of a
humanoid face, staring skyward from a hilly desert region of Mars known as
Cydonia. Since then, the Martian "sphinx" has generated tabloid headlines,
true believers and questions. For some, its stony stare carried intimations
of intelligent beings at work on the Red Planet and led more recently to "X-
Files"-style suspicions of a U.S. government conspiracy to keep this
knowledge from the public.
NASA yesterday released images taken over the weekend by the Mars Global
Surveyor spacecraft, which is orbiting the Red Planet on a mapping mission.
The pictures show the same site in 10 times the detail and with the sun
shining from the opposite direction, compared with the 1976 image.
It's a mesa, scientists have concluded, once again. And the only sculptor
at work there is nature. "There will always be a few die-hards, but I think
the American people will look at this and wonder what all the fuss was about,
" said Surveyor chief scientist Arden L. Albee of the California Institute of
Technology.
"Anyone who has flown in an airplane will recognize that this is natural,"
rather than an artificially constructed feature, he added. "You could see
[something like it] in many places on a flight from Washington to L.A. It's
not an unusual feature."
Albee said the new images, taken from 276 miles above the surface, confirm
previous NASA analysis indicating that the "face" is actually a natural rock
formation, an isolated mesa where ridges and gullies cast shadows. The
illusion of human features was produced by the combination of light and
shadow that prevailed when the original Viking picture was taken on a July
day in 1976.
The first Surveyor image of the region, which NASA posted on a Web site in
midafternoon (East Coast time), was a dark rectangle with a muddle of lighter
shapes, including what appear to be small impact craters, at the location
where the mile-wide face had appeared in the Viking image. Subsequently, NASA
posted clearer versions of the image.
Groups that believe in the "Case for the Face" (the name of a recent
publication that compiles 18 research papers on the issue) plan exhaustive
analysis of the new images in coming days and weeks, said Stephen Bassett, of
the Paradigm Research Group, a consultant for leading advocates of the theory
that the face is the unnatural product of intelligent activity. "There are
many layers to this. This is going to be analyzed to death," he said.
In addition to extremely close scrutiny of the photos for such signatures
of artificiality as repeating patterns not found in nature (fractal analysis),
pro-face groups plan online chats and interviews with experts. The new NASA
images will be a topic of discussion at gatherings such as the 10th annual
Ozark UFO conference in Eureka Springs, Ark., which begins Friday.
The supposed face has attracted the attention of engineers, computer
specialists and others with technical training, including some NASA contract
employees.
But some of the more extreme speculation has frustrated mainstream
scientists. Some face partisans have claimed to find a city to the southwest
of the face, complete with temples, fortifications and monuments with an
astronomical orientation.
And some have accused NASA of a vast coverup that included faking the
costly August 1993 failure of the $1 billion Mars Observer spacecraft just as
it arrived at Mars, so the agency could study the face covertly. NASA
scientists have consistently dismissed such a scenario as not only outrageous
but unnatural, against their own self-interest and, in any case, impossible
to pull off.
NASA's latest attempt to resolve the controversy goes only part of the
distance for true believers.
"The real issue is, `What's the next photo,' " Bassett said.
"We're all waiting for them to take the city itself."
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Los Angeles Times
04/07/98
The Washington Post
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