After an intense Email - Fax campaign NASA has decided to image Cydonia
The first images are available
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mgs/target/CYD1/index.html
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mgs/target/CYD2/index.html
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mgs/target/CYD3/index.html
And some interpretations
http://www.anomalous-images.com/mgs/mgs.html
By Steve Wingate
http://www.evansville.net/~slk/marslink.html
Links listed at the NICAP web site
"Trailer Park"
~ Cydonia, Mars by Rupert Chappelle
Very Important News!!!!
Notice: This message is going out to Current-Encounters, The Lunascan
Project Update & The Mars_Updates Lists:
Douglas Isbell
Headquarters, Washington, DC
March 26, 1998
(Phone: 202/358-1547)
Diane Ainsworth
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA
(Phone: 818/354-5011)
RELEASE: 98-50
MARS GLOBAL SURVEYOR TO ATTEMPT IMAGING OF FEATURES OF PUBLIC INTEREST
NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft is about
to begin
a summer-long set of scientific observations of the red
planet from an interim elliptical orbit, including several
attempts to take images of features of public interest
ranging from the Mars Pathfinder and Viking mission landing
sites to the Cydonia region.
The spacecraft will turn on its payload of science
instruments on March 27, about 12 hours after it suspends
"aerobraking," a technique that lowers the spacecraft's orbit
by using atmospheric drag each time it passes close to the
planet on each looping orbit. Aerobraking will resume in
September and continue until March 1999, when the spacecraft
will be in a final, circular orbit for its prime mapping mission.
It will not be possible to predict on which
orbit the
spacecraft will pass closest to specific features on Mars
until Global Surveyor has established a stable orbit and
flight controllers are able to project its ground track. This
process should be completed in the next few days. The exact
time of observations and the schedule for the subsequent
availability of photographs on the World Wide Web are
expected to be announced early next week.
"Global Surveyor will have three opportunities
in the
next month to see each of the sites, including the Cydonia
region, location of the so-called 'Face on Mars,' " said
Glenn E. Cunningham, Mars Global Surveyor project manager at
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA. "The sites
will be visible about once every eight days, and we'll have a
30- to- 50-percent chance of capturing images of the sites
each time."
Several factors limit the chances of obtaining
images of
specific features with the high-resolution mode of the camera
on any one pass. These factors are related primarily to
uncertainties both in the spacecraft's pointing and the
knowledge of the spacecraft's ground track from its
navigation data. In addition, current maps of Mars are
derived from Viking data taken more than 20 years ago. Data
obtained by Global Surveyor's laser altimeter and camera
during the last few months have indicated that our knowledge
of specific locations on the surface is uncertain by 0.6 to
1.2 miles (1 to 2 kilometers). As a result, the locations of
the landing sites and specific features in the Cydonia region
are not precisely known.
In addition, the Mars Pathfinder
and Viking landers are
very small targets to image, even at the closest distance
possible, because they are the smallest objects that the
camera can see. The Cydonia features, on the other hand, are
hundreds to thousands of times larger and the camera should
be able to capture some of the features in that area.
Global Surveyor's observations of the Viking
and
Pathfinder landing sites will provide scientists with
important information from which to tie together surface
observations and orbital measurements of the planet. Data
from landing sites provide "ground truth" for observations of
the planet made from space.
As for the "Face on Mars" feature, "most scientists
believe that everything we've seen on Mars is of natural
origin," said Dr. Carl Pilcher, acting science director for
Solar System Exploration in NASA's Office of Space Science,
Washington, DC. "However, we also believe it is appropriate
to seek to resolve speculation about features in the Cydonia
region by obtaining images when it is possible to do so."
Information about Viking observations of the
Cydonia
region and a listing of those images are available on the
World Wide Web at:
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/facts/HTML/FS-016-HQ.html
New images of the landing sites and Cydonia
region taken
by Mars Global Surveyor will be available on JPL's Mars news
site at: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/marsnews
and on the
Global Surveyor home page at http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov
.
These sites will also carry detailed schedules of the imaging
attempts once they have been determined. Images will also be
available on NASA's Planetary Photo journal web site at:
http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov
.
So far in the aerobraking process, Global Surveyor's
orbit has been reduced from an initial 45-hour duration to
less than 12 hours. During the aerobraking hiatus, the
spacecraft will be orbiting Mars about once every 11.6 hours,
passing about 106 miles (170 kilometers) above the surface at
closest approach and about 11,100 miles (17,864 kilometers)
at its farthest distance from the planet. The pause in
aerobraking allows the spacecraft to achieve a final orbit
with lighting conditions that are optimal for science observations.
Mars Global Surveyor is part of a sustained
program of
Mars exploration, managed by JPL for NASA's Office of Space
Science, Washington, DC. Lockheed Martin Astronautics,
Denver, CO, which built and operates the spacecraft, is JPL's
industrial partner in the mission. Malin Space Science
Systems, Inc., San Diego, CA, built and operates the
spacecraft camera. JPL is a division of the California
Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA.
-end-
Copyright ©1998 Nando.net
Copyright ©1998 Scripps Howard
WASHINGTON (January 8, 1998 00:07 a.m. EST http://www.nando.net)
-- The
mysterious "Face on Mars" is not an optical illusion or a natural
feature on the Red Planet, a scientist reported Wednesday at a major
astronomical conference.
Dr. Tom Van Flandern reached the conclusion after new studies of the
Cydonia region, where strange-looking land forms have excited science
fiction and life-on-other-worlds buffs for decades.
His report, presented at the 191st national meeting of the American
Astronomical Society (AAS), attracted unusual attention because sharp
new images of the "Face" may soon be available. The National
Aeronautics and Space Administration Global Surveyor spacecraft, now
orbiting Mars, is scheduled to begin imaging in 1999.
Global Surveyor's camera is capable of making images with 30 times the
resolution, or sharpness, of the Viking cameras. It can distinguish
objects as small as 4.6 feet across, and will try to image the "Face."
Van Flandern holds a doctorate in astronomy from Yale University. Until
1991, he was chief of the celestial mechanics branch at the U. S. Naval
Observatory, a respected astronomy facility. He then founded Meta
Research, an organization based here, that fosters research on topics
that conflict with mainstream theories in astronomy.
The "Face on Mars," he explained, certainly fits that bill. Some people
claim that images of the Cydonia region, taken in the 1970s from the
Viking spacecraft, show a gigantic human face, a pyramid, and other
structures left by some ancient extra-terrestrial civilization.
In the eyes of some, the "Face" bears a striking resemblance to the
"death masks" that ancient Egyptians used to adorn the sarcophagus
of
King Tut and other rulers. Indeed, some hint that the "Face" may be
part of an immense tomb on the Red Planet.
Believers have come up with all kinds of intricate mathematical
relationships between the Face and several associated land forms that
supposedly prove the structures are artificial.
Conspiracy theories, charging NASA and the military with a cover-up,
also abound.
"The conventional view is that this is all nonsense," says Dr. Michael
C. Malin. He is chief investigator for the Mars Global Surveyor Orbiter
Camera.
Cydonia, he explained, is a desert-like region that has undergone the
same kinds of weathering that carve weird land forms in terrestrial
deserts. He regards the features at Cydonia as strictly natural, the
result of Martian weathering and erosion.
Van Flandern said his study undermines the main argument against an
artificial origin for the "Face:" Its apparently random orientation
on
the Martian surface.
"No apparent purpose is served by a face monument looking upward toward
space if it is not oriented right-side up and in an attention-getting
location with respect to the surface of the planet," he said.
On Earth, one such location, visible for great distances from space,
might be right on the equator, he indicated.
Van Flandern analyzed data from previous studies showing that the
Martian north and south poles occupied a different position in the
past. A meteor impact or other cataclysmic event relocated the poles
to
their current position millions of years ago. He concluded that the
"Face" originally was in a much different location.
"It was a great shock to me to discover that the Cydonia area was right
on the old Martian equator," he said.
Further analysis showed that the "Face" is oriented perpendicular to
that old equator. The bridge of its "nose" is oriented almost exactly
north-to-south.
"This has only about a 1 percent probability of occurring by chance,"
Dr. Van Flandern said. "The weight of existing evidence appears to
have
shifted in favor of an artificial origin of the Cydonia complex."
Van Flandern predicted that the Mars Global Surveyor's high-resolution
cameras will finally determine whether the "Face" is a natural geologic
structure, or something constructed by an earlier civilization.
Almost as an afterthought, he observed to a standing-room- only
audience of about 400 astronomers, "I suggest that in view of these
test results we prepare ourselves for a cultural shock certainly
unrivaled in recent times."
By MICHAEL WOODS, Toledo Blade
Preliminary Analysis of April 5 Cydonia Image Tom Van Flandern
Examining the Cydonia Region of Mars Tom Van Flandern pre MGS
N.B. Photographs from original journal article are not
currently available.
Personal Glimpse:
DIGITAL IMAGE ANALYSIS OF POSSIBLE EXTRATERRESTRIAL ARTIFACTS
ON
MARS
Mark J. Carlotto
TASC, 55 Walkers Brook Dr., Reading MA 01867 (USA)
1. INTRODUCTION
In 1985 an article appeared in the Boston Globe about the discovery
of a "face
on Mars" by the Viking space probe ten years earlier. I had followed
the
mission and did not recall any such discovery. Viking's primary science
goal
was to search for possible signs of life on the surface, specifically,
for
evidence of microbes, tiny organisms, in the Martian soil. The newspaper
article suggested another possibility - that large artificial structures
including a mile-long humanoid face might have been found on Mars.
At first I
though it was just a joke but soon my curiosity got the better of me.
I traced
the story to a small group at the University of California at Berkeley
who
were studying the face along with several other unusual objects that
had been
found in a dozen or so Viking Orbiter photographs. Shortly thereafter
I
obtained two tapes containing copies of the original NASA imagery.
Initially my goal was to produce high-quality digital enhancements of
the
imagery. As I became drawn into the investigation I soon learned that
there
was much more to the face on Mars. The face was extremely controversial
- in
fact, most planetary scientists had already decided it was an optical
illusion. Although I am not a planetary scientist and therefore not
an
"expert," I was not convinced. I found it hard to believe that such
a
compellingly humanoid form could occur naturally in close proximity
to other
objects, some quite geometric in shape and arrangement. The certainty
of the
"experts" bothered me. Their conclusions were based on little, if any,
detailed analysis of the data. I felt the possibility, however remote,
that we
had imaged extraterrestrial artifacts on Mars demanded a closer look.
2. BACKGROUND
Late in the 19th century the Italian astronomer Schiaparelli observed
what
appeared to be lines on the surface of Mars. Percival Lowell's interpretation
of Schiaparelli's canali (channels) as artificially constructed canals,
prompted considerable speculation about life on Mars. This vision was
shattered in the 1960s when the early Mariner probes took the first
close up
pictures of Mars. These pictures showed the planet to be heavily cratered,
more like the moon than the Earth. But these early probes photographed
only a
very small portion of the surface. In 1971 Mariner 9 imaged a larger
portion
of the planet changing our view of Mars once again. It found channels
that
appeared to be carved by water, giant volcanoes almost three times
as high as
Mt. Everest, and a great canyon system thousands of kilometers in length.
Viking 1 and 2 were launched in 1976 to follow-up on these discoveries.
Its
two landers found the Martian soil to be highly oxidized, and to contain
no
organic compounds and no microbial life. The orbiters collected over
60,000
images of the surface, clouds and dust storms in the atmosphere, and
Mars' two
moons Phobos and Deimos.
The above discoveries of the Mariner and Viking missions are well-known.
What
is less known is that on a summer day in 1976 one of the Viking orbiters
imaged what appeared to be a humanoid face staring up into space from
the
surface of Mars. NASA dismissed the face as an optical illusion and
simply
filed the picture away without further study. But several years later,
two
engineers Vincent DiPietro and Gregory Molenaar rediscovered the image
of the
face in the NASA archives along with a second corroborating image of
it taken
35 days later [1].
Criticism of their work centered on the human tendency to find faces
everywhere; in other words finding a face in isolation tells us nothing.
But
then in a subsequent investigation motivated by their work, other nearby
objects which seemed to be related to the face were found [2]. In particular,
the face appeared to be aligned with a collection of polyhedral objects
to the
southwest, termed the city (Fig. 1). By 1985 the investigation had
continued
to enlist broader interdisciplinary support in the technical and scientific
community at which time I became involved.
3. IMAGE PROCESSING
Initially I used fairly routine image processing techniques to clean
up noise
and other defects in the data, to enhance subtle detail not visible
in the
batch-processed NASA photographs, and to magnify smaller features for
analysis. Many of these early results appeared in books by Pozos [2]
and
Hoagland [3]. The original image of the face (frame number 35A72) was
taken
when the sun was about 10deg. above the northwestern horizon. As a
result the
right side is in shadow and there is little detail visible. When DiPietro
and
Molenaar found the second image (70A13) with the sun 17deg. higher
in the sky,
they discovered that the face exhibited a high degree of bilateral
symmetry
with what appeared to be a second eye socket and the extension of the
mouth.
In comparing carefully restored and enhanced images of the face from
35A72 and
70A13, I observed a pair of crossed lines above the eyes, fine structure
in
the mouth that some have referred to as teeth, and broad lateral strips
across
the face (Fig. 2). Geometrical regularity and fine detail have been
noted in
several other objects as well [4, pp. 38, 57, and 87].
The image processing results surprised me. If these were simply eroded
land forms one would not expect to see such features as one examined
them in
greater detail. Granted, the features were near the resolution limit
of the
sensor, about 50 meters/pixel. Yet, they could be seen in both 35A72
and
70A13. It seemed unlikely that these structures were caused by random
noise,
sensor defects, or image processing artifacts.
4. SHAPE-FROM-SHADING
But was the face an optical illusion as NASA had stated? Since the only
two
high resolution images of the face were acquired at approximately the
same sun
angle and sensor geometry it seemed at first that one could neither
prove nor
disprove that statement. But then it occurred to me that if the shape
of the
face could be recovered somehow, one could, in principle, generate
synthetic
images for different sun angles and sensor geometry's using computer
graphics
techniques. If the face was an optical illusion, a trick of light and
shadow,
then these images would reveal an ordinary mesa as NASA had said.
In 1986 at TASC we were exploring the use of shape-from-shading techniques
for
computing elevation maps from imagery. Simply stated, shape-from-shading
relates changes in image brightness in the direction of the light source
to
the shape of the imaged object. By inverting the image formation equation
where R is the reflectance map which relates surface orientation to
brightness
and a is a constant of proportionality, one can estimate the relative
shape of
an object z(x,y) from image brightness values i(x,y).
Patrick Van Hove, a graduate student under Berthold Horn at MIT implemented
an
algorithm that summer at TASC that seemed to work well on recovering
the shape
of isolated land forms such as craters and mesas [5]. I used this algorithm
to
estimate the shape of the face from each of the two images 35A72 and
70A13.
Since there was no "ground truth" to check the accuracy of the results,
the
surfaces computed from each image were used to predict the other image.
By
comparing the predicted image with the actual image I was reasonably
sure that
the recovered surface was an accurate representation of the shape of
the face.
Two key questions could then be addressed: Are the facial features
visible in
the imagery also present in the underlying surface? Do these features
persist
as the lighting conditions and viewpoint are changed?
Fig. 3 shows synthetic images of the face for different lighting conditions
and perspectives. These results suggest that the face is not a "trick
of light
and shadow" as originally stated by NASA in that it retains its appearance
over a wide range of viewing conditions. This is not the case for natural
stone formations like New Hampshire's Old Man of the Mountain [4, pg
39].
After being initially rejected by the journal Icarus on the grounds
that "the
face is of no scientific interest", a paper describing the above methodology
and results was published in Applied Optics in May 1988 [6].
5. FRACTAL ANALYSIS
Following the publication of the above paper the noted planetary scientist,
Carl Sagan, sent me a copy of an article he had written for Parade
Magazine
several years earlier. In it he points out the tendency of the human
mind to
find faces in practically anything, from clouds to tortilla chips,
suggesting
that the "face on Mars" is no different than "the man in the moon."
I began to
wonder whether there was a more objective way to evaluate this imagery.
Was
possible to determine if the structure of the face and other objects
was
quantitatively different from the surrounding terrain and nearby land
forms?
At about that time we were becoming interested in the use of fractals
for
analyzing images. In short, fractals are objects that are self-similar
in
structure - in some sense, a portion of a fractal resembles the whole.
Fractals had been previously used with great success to generate realistic
terrain backgrounds for computer animations (recall the Genesis sequence
from
the movie Star Trek II ). Locally, fractals are good models for terrain
because the structure of terrain exhibits a high degree of self-similarity
over spatial scales less than about 1 km. It has been observed that
the
structure of man-made objects, on the other hand, tends to dominate
at
particular scales.
As with shape-from-shading, the timing was fortuitous. At TASC we had
recently
developed an image processing algorithm for detecting man-made objects
such as
military vehicles in aerial photographs using a fractal modeling approach
[7].
The basic idea is to measure the deviation from fractal behavior over
a range
of scales using a least squares model
where M(r) is some metric property of the image such as its power spectral
density or surface area, r is the scale of measurement, a and b are
constants
that minimize the residual error [epsilon]. For fractals M(r) ~ r f(D)
where
f(D) is some function of the fractal dimension D. Since fractals scale
according to a power law, the signature of a fractal is a straight
line in log
r vs. log M(r) space where a is the slope of the line and is related
to the
fractal dimension. As a result, [epsilon] tends to be small over those
portions of the image containing natural terrain features and large
where
there are man-made structures. Fig 4a shows the results of applying
this
algorithm to a Landsat image containing a small town near the center
of the
picture.
When the above algorithm was applied to the Viking imagery the face
was found
to be the least fractal object in 35A72 (Fig. 4b) and among the least
fractal
object in 70A13! (Fig. 4c). The analysis was carried out over a 21x21
window
(corresponding to a range of scales from 50 meters to about 1 km).
Further
analysis revealed the face and several objects within the city to be
the least
fractal areas in the four available Viking Orbiter frames 35A70-35A73
(total
area ~ 15,000 sq. km). After being rejected by the journal Nature on
grounds
similar to those cited by Icarus, these results were eventually published
in
the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society early in 1990 [8].
6. DISCUSSION
These results appear to suggest that the face along with several other
objects
in the city are quantitatively different from the surrounding land
forms. The
face is not an optical illusion. It is also the least natural object
encountered in the imagery examined thus far. So, what is my conclusion?
Mainstream planetary scientists argue that these objects cannot be artificial
because no life, let alone a technological civilization capable of
creating
such objects could possibly have developed on Mars in time according
to
current theories. Another possibility, that Mars may have been visited
by an
intelligence from outside our solar system, is usually dismissed as
pure
speculation. As an aside many of these same individuals support NASA's
$10
million search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) using radio
telescopes. If it is legitimate to listen in the microwave portion
of the
electromagnetic spectrum for extraterrestrial radio signals, why not
use our
planetary probes to look for their artifacts or signs of altered terrain
on
planetary surfaces? Perhaps the answer is more political than scientific.
At the other extreme those who already believe in extraterrestrials
embrace
these results as proof. Some see these objects as monuments, possibly
even
conveying some kind of message to us. It seems to me that the key question
that must be addressed is simply: Are these objects artificial, or
are they
natural?
Last September our latest planetary probe, the Mars Observer [9], was
launched
towards the red planet. If all goes well, it will enter orbit later
this year
and begin to image the Martian surface at resolutions approaching 1
meter/pixel [10]. I think it is clear that the work summarized in this
paper
in no way proves that these objects are artificial. It is my hope,
however,
that it does legitimize the hypothesis that certain objects on the
Martian
surface may not be natural and deserve to be re-imaged. The Mars Observer
mission provides an unprecedented opportunity to follow-up on these
potential
discoveries of Viking. For the first time it affords us the unique
opportunity
to either confirm or deny, by purely technical means, the existence
of
extraterrestrial life, not just in the universe but practically "next
door" to
us on Mars.
REFERENCES
[1] DiPietro, V. and Molenaar, G. (1982), Unusual Martian Surface Features,
Mars Research, Glenn Dale, MD.
[2] Pozos, R. (1987), The Face on Mars: Evidence for a Lost Civilization?,
Chicago Review Press.
[3] Hoagland, R. (1987), The Monuments of Mars: A City on the Edge of
Forever,
North Atlantic Books, Berkeley CA.
[4] Carlotto, M.J. (1992), The Martian Enigmas: A Closer Look, North
Atlantic
Books, Berkeley CA.
[5] Van Hove, P and Carlotto, M.J. (1986) "An iterative multi-resolution
shape
from shading algorithm and its application in planetary mapping,"
International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, Zurich, Switzerland.
[6] Carlotto, M.J. (1988), "Digital imagery analysis of unusual Martian
surface features," Applied Optics, Vol. 27, pp 1926-1933.
[7] Stein, M.C. (1987), "Fractal image models and object detection,"
Proceedings SPIE, Vol. 845, pp 293-300.
[8] Carlotto, M.J. and Stein, M.C (1990), "A method for searching for
artificial objects on planetary surfaces," Journal of the British
Interplanetary Society, Vol. 43, pp 209-216.
[9] Komro, F.G. and Hujber, F.N. (1991), "Mars Observer instrument
complement," Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets, Vol. 28, pp 501-506.
[10] Malin, M.C., Danielson, G.E., Ravine, M.A., and Soulanille, T.A.
(1991),
"Design and development of the Mars Observer Camera," International
Journal of
Imaging Systems and Technology, Vol. 3, pp 76-91.
__________________________________________________
MARK J. CARLOTTO was born in New Haven, Connecticut in 1954. He received
his
B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees from Carnegie-Mellon University in 1977,
1979,
and 1981, respectively. He has been employed by TASC in Reading Massachusetts
since 1981. From 1981 to 1983 he was an Assistant Adjunct Professor
at Boston
University where he taught courses in computer architecture and image
processing. At TASC he is currently a Division Staff Analyst and is
involved
in a variety of projects related to multispectral image processing,
content-based image retrieval, and information visualization. He has
written
one book and almost fifty technical papers in the areas of digital
image
processing, pattern recognition, and optical computing. He is a senior
member
of the IEEE.
On Improbable Claims
Tom Van Flandern
Meta Research
Often we heard arguments for fantastic claims based on a long list of
coincidences very unlikely to happen by chance. Yet frequently they
are all
chance occurrences. Why is this so when the odds were against it, and
how can
we keep from being fooled by such circumstances?
I will mention just two common causes of deceptiveness among many known
to
science. The first is selection effects. You go to the airport for
a trip,
and while sitting there, you have a premonition that something might
happen to
the flight. Still, you board anyway. En route, an engine catches on
fire and
the plane makes an emergency landing. You remember your premonition.
Isn't
this near proof of a supernatural occurrence?
It turns out that you, like most people, probably have such premonitions
almost every time you go to an airport and think about your mortality
and how
your fate will be in the hands of others. But such thoughts are quickly
forgotten after all normal, safe flights. We remember them and transfer
them
into long-term memory only if some event reinforces the thought and
causes
you to ponder it.
In general, we are much more likely to remember improbable events and
associations than normal or frequently occurring ones. So our memories
contain many "selection effects" caused by forgetting most of the normal
data
and remembering only the abnormal data. It's the same if you think
of someone
and they call soon thereafter. Was it "psychic", or a selection effect?
The
latter explanation is usually the simpler and therefore the preferred
one.
The second common cause of deception is also based on seemingly unlikely
statistical coincidences. In any truly random data set, many regular
patterns
can always be found. For example, if we have a star chart with a million
stars, we might find an unusual shape formed by stars that has less
than one
chance in a billion of happening by chance. So are some mysterious
super-beings moving stars around? This is not as likely as the simpler
explanation: In every random data set capable of forming billions of
random
patterns, it is virtually certain that some 1-in-1 billion pattern
will be
found formed by chance.
In general, we tend to be deceived because our minds often do not recognize
how truly vast is the number of possible coincidences that can occur.
So when
a few of them do occur, as they must if the odds are right, we tend
to be
amazed simply because the odds against that particular coincidence
were very
great. The odds against a flipped coin coming up tails ten straight
times are
1024-to-1 against. But if we make several thousand attempts, the odds
become
pretty good that it will happen one or more times.
In science, an improbable event that has already happened is called
"a
posteriori" (after the fact), and generally is taken to have no significance
no matter how unlikely it might appear. By contrast, if we specified
a certain
specific highly improbable event in all its detail "a priori" (before
the
fact), and it happened anyway, that would be significant, and we would
be
obliged to pay attention.
As all this pertains to the "Face" on Mars at Cydonia, the discovery
of the
face-like object was an a posteriori event. No one predicted it, nor
could
they have done so based on known facts. But once our attention was
called to a
particular object in a particular place on a particular planet as possibly
being of artificial (constructed) origin, anything else found out about
it
that is highly improbable but related to the artificiality question
becomes a
priori. We can safely ignore a posteriori claims, but not a priori
ones.
At Cydonia, almost everything we see in the new, high-resolution "Face"
image
fulfills highly unlikely a priori predictions. So when we found a "nostrils"
feature, that was impressive. The fact that the relative size, positioning,
and orientation is also correct for nostrils makes it a significant
a priori
prediction. The additional fact that no other nostril-like features
can be
found nearby means that our minds are not free to pick and choose such
face-like features we may want to see. Because it is a priori, that
single
feature would be strong evidence for the artificiality hypothesis by
itself.
But when we consider the perspective, lighting, and contrast Limitations
of
the new image and use old Viking images to fill in missing items, we
now see
that a priori predictions for a "pupil" and an "eyebrow" are also fulfilled.
These are a priori even if no one had verbalized them because the face
hypothesis implicitly predicts such facial details before the fact.
And each
feature is unique on the mesa and its surroundings, and properly shaped
and
positioned relative to the face with the right relative size and orientation.
All this makes the a priori probability of chance operating vanishingly
low.
But there is much more. The eye socket is a well-formed 3-D cavity and
not in
any way shaped by shadows. The mouth is smooth and regular with inner
and
outer portions, curled just below the nose, and continues to the opposite
side. Viking shows reasonable bilateral symmetry, although the Mars
Global
Surveyor image cannot because of its low viewing angle. The headpiece
is
smooth, regular, and symmetric. It is crowned with a huge crest feature
just
north of the mesa. The "enclosure" or headdress feature is smooth,
symmetric,
and right-angled, and is complete expect for a small possible "entranceway"
or
break in one corner. The facial decorations are smooth, linear or symmetric,
and appropriate for their relative locations with respect to a face.
Before seeing this new image, we knew that "fractal" content implied
a
natural origin, while regularity, angularity, and symmetry indicated
artificiality. I see almost no fractality with the exception of the
nose
bridge, the feature least protected from wind erosion. I do see smooth
lines
and curves, right angles and corners (including one in the "furrowed"
eyebrow), and lots of symmetry, especially detailed symmetry in the
headdress
enclosure. And that symmetry is not simple symmetry, as when duplicating
a
profile, but full 3-D symmetry. For example, the enclosure wraps all
the way
around with both its inner and outer boundaries, yet remains of uniform
height
and symmetric shape. Nowhere does the mesa overlap or get confounded
with this
boundary.
The whole amazing "Face" mesa stands isolated in a totally flat, barren
desert. It's not as if there are lots of natural formations around,
and this
one just happened to look like a face. And all of this says nothing
about the
rest of the strip image, which also contains some surprises. Even the
other
major formation in the strip image, although it doesn't look like any
recognizable shape, does appear far too non-fractal and regular to
have arisen
as a natural formation. Although its boundary has an irregular outline,
it
wraps all the way around. The uniform parallel white strips that appear
to
radiate from the southeast boundary also have no precedent among natural
features in the solar system.
The reason I have concluded that the case for artificiality of the "Face"
is
well-established is the fulfillment of so many a priori expectations,
combined the lack of extraneous features that might allow us to see
patterns
that might arise by chance. We have almost no degrees of freedom, yet
everything in the image appears to work. Each of the new a priori points
such
as the nostrils, mouth curl, pupil, and eyebrow has individually only
very
small chance to occur at all, let alone with the correct relative size,
shape, location, and orientation. Each such feature by itself indicates
artificiality at perhaps 1000-to-1 odds (some much more) just because
of their
a priori nature. Collectively, they say "artificial" beyond a reasonable
doubt.
It is not the odds of occurrence of these features that is convincing,
because even a long list of 1,000,000-to-1 a posteriori coincidences
has no
persuasive ability. It is the low probability of these features combined
with
their a priori nature that makes them persuasive. Real faces do have
just
such features, and all major facial features are present in the martian
"Face". In truth, the thought never crossed my mind before the fact
that the
Face should have eyebrows, nostrils, pupils, and a lip curl. But of
course, if
it is a real face depiction, it should have those features. Anyone
could have
predicted those things, but most of us dare not hope for so much. Now
we have
them!
SUMMARY: Based on the best available high-resolution, contrast-enhanced
Mars
Global Surveyor image and the best old Viking images, the "Face" mesa
contains regularity, angularity, symmetry, and the fulfillment of a
priori
predictions based on the artificiality hypothesis such as the appearance
of
nostrils in the nose, mouth shaping just under the nose, an eyebrow
over the
eye socket, a pupil in the eye socket, a separated vertical enclosure
of the
whole mesa with near perfect symmetry and corners, a crest over the
headpiece,
and the almost complete absence of extraneous or non-contributing features.
These enhance earlier findings of bilateral symmetry, 3-D contouring,
a lack
of fractal features that are the trademark of natural objects, plus
a
culturally significant location on the old martian equator and a culturally
significant upright north-south orientation. In my considered opinion,
there
is no longer room for reasonable doubt of the artificial origin of
the face
mesa, and I've never concluded "no room for reasonable doubt" about
anything
before in my 35-year scientific career.
Tom Van Flandern
Peace,
The Web Master
Mark Webmeister <face2isreal@yahoo.com>
http://www.face2.0catch.com/
Face II at Cydonia on Mars: The Anunnaki?
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-
Near Pathfinder Anomaly Analysis
Possible artifacts in Ares Vallis
http://www.mufor.org/ares/
The M-TRAC Project
A private, unmanned mission to Mars
http://www.mufor.org/mtrac/
Meta Research (Washington, D.C.)
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