Interesting Structures On Mars 153
fear writes: "Meta Research has just released a new report on what they call 'Artificial Structures on Mars. Much of it is obvious nonsense ('animal-like shapes,' for example) similar to seeing things in clouds, but some structures look interesting: spots, tubes 1, tubes 2, track, 'vegetation', 'trees', triangles, strange lines, T. Which geological and climatic processes cause the formation of such structures?" Though I see no trees or vegetation, these are still fascinating images of Mars, and Meta Research looks like an interesting, off-beat site to check back to.
"You are not authorized... (Score:1)
Funny the way some sites choose to respond to getting the shit kicked out of them by a bunch of nerds.
Well some of them are obvious anyway... (Score:1)
Re:Strange lines? (Score:2)
Down that path lies madness. On the other hand, the road to hell is paved with melting snowballs.
Re:Strange lines? (Score:3)
Down that path lies madness. On the other hand, the road to hell is paved with melting snowballs.
BORKED! (Score:1)
geez (Score:1)
Anyway, nature has a lot of way to form perfect (at the distance) geometric forms, but I look forward to 2020
Hugs, Cyke
Art Bell and Richard C. Hoagland (Score:2)
To listeners of the Art Bell show [artbell.com] and to readers of Aliens, Aliens, Aliens [aliensaliensaliens.com], reports of artificial constructs on Mars is old hat. Richard Hoagland [enterprisemission.com] has been arguing the case for Mars for years. What's sort of interesting are remarks made by Arthur C. Clarke [enterprisemission.com] about those "crystal tubes". Add that to former government workers [go.com] coming forward en masse claiming that the US government has a lot more information on extraterrial life that old videos of "Close Encounters", things are getting pretty interesting for UFOlogists.
My interpretations (Score:3)
cb
Re:Geological Structures... (Score:2)
Seriously. I could probably make these guys cream their shorts by taking some blurry black and white photos at Yellowstone and telling them they were "unreleased NASA photos of Mars".
Re:"New" report? (Score:3)
Look, it is a simple fact that our brains are wired to see faces in things. Any arrangement of three dots in a circle ends up looking like a face to us. "Strongly" in this case just means "also has a dot for the nose." It's also a simple fact that on a planet the size of Mars (or Earth) you're going to see a lot of crazy things in natural formations. Of all the mounds of dirt on Mars, one looks a lot like a face. Yawn.
Sure, it _might_ be aliens... but the face itself isn't _evidence_ that aliens did make it.
Re:Geological Structures... (Score:4)
Keeping the mystery alive about the 'face' does two things: keeps interest in Mars high, and keeps all the conspiracy theorists from spending their time looking for the real conspiracies.
It's like Area 51 -- The government being all cloak-and-dagger about it keeps every high-powered telescopic lense focused on _it_, rather that the _real_ top-secret anti-gravity alien-technology aircraft flight test center, which is probably somewhere north of Walla Walla, WA.
Triangles? (Score:2)
Either that or they are ALIENS!
I'll believe it when I.. (Score:3)
spelled in Martian rocks.
On a more serious note: erosion patterns
on earth are well-studied and characterised.
Not so on Mars. 100 years from now every
formation on Mars will have an explanation.
Ehh, pardon ? (Score:2)
one of you techheads should program a random terrain generator linked to a webpage and have a voting system to see if a person sees anything in that picture.
Sorry, but terrain is not formed by "random forces". Craters f.ex have a special known form, depending on what formed them, they can look like a bowl (wolcanic) or various impact craters (asteroids). But none of them would actually be with almost vertical walls and a flat floor as this one looks like [metaresearch.org].
Same goes for riverbeds and only rarely does landscape actually form something that resembles a triangle. [metaresearch.org]
The way we should interpret those images is just "wow, neat, but like most reports it doesn't prove anything"
--
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb15CB32EF3AF9C0E5D727
Re:"New" report? (Score:1)
An Earthly Vision (Score:1)
This morning as I looked at my breakfast bowl, in amongst the swirling lines of porridge and milk, I swear I saw an image of Richard Stallman staring right back at me. Scared me half to death!
Macka
tubes (Score:4)
One thing to note when we look at stuff that's come back from mars is that the most of the planet has not been viewed with the narrow angle camera at all -- for example, go here [msss.com], select a region, then look at the clickable map -- the little light blue tracks are the places where the narrow angle views are available.
"tubes" = dunes? (Score:4)
Notice some parts look like the "tubes" that people show from mars photos, but when you see them merging into large dune areas they appear to be just sand dunes?
Re:*sigh* (Score:2)
Some remarks (Score:3)
Geometries? Yes, there are geometries. There are lots of them. But I would stop far from claiming artificialities on them. They can be the cause of very natural phenomena, having enormous dimensions. Such things are, for example, very large impacts that produce a "rombic wallpaper" pattern for hundreds of even thousands of kilometers.
Mars has tons of water. The Hell with what NASA claims as they have shown no worser in lies as in facts. Yes, this water is far less than what we have on Earth but it still manages to create small underground lakes and ponds in such places like South Arabia Terra. In the past it covered all Northern Hemisphere and even such higher landscapes like Arabia Terra.
Mars suffered of some weird phenomena that wiped out most of its surface water in very short time. Near Mons Olympus and in some highlands on Acydalia, there are clear traces of megafloods that nearly caved a good piece of Mars crust. In geological terms people name these things scablands, as for a similar landscape in Washington State of the same name.
There is a very high chance that some biology existed in Mars. And some features are very suggestive that some of it survived and exists nowadays in Mars. Note that I believe on NASA results as much as I believe that the Face of Mars was built by an alien mind. In fact the study of several documents and the tragedy of Professor Wolf Vishniac lead me to conclude that there were people on Viking Project that falsified results and produced a scientific analysis with a very biased weight. In fact, there were people inside the project, like Professor Horowitz, who were not only aggressively opposed to the prospects of life in Mars, but also tried to undermine the work of some members of the team, and specially the work of Vishniac.
If there were lill green men on Mars, than 99% of their world will be impossible to be seen as this world was completely washed out.
The Face of Mars is probably the product of a living being but one as much as dumb as our trees, corals or liquens.
There is a goemetry on Cydonia. But it is hard to determine its nature. The most probable is the pure result of physical forces of natural or near natural origin. Anyway the probability of terraformation cannot be put fully aside.
The most terryfying in Mars are not "formations" or "geometries" or even "faces". The most scaring are craters. For nearly 5 years I have been studying them and came into one conclusion. In Mars craters are far from being interpreted only as a natural phenomena. In some places their distribution correlates with landscape formations that are completely independent in origin. There is even one hill that possesses a ring of more than 10 craters sorrounding nearly 90% of its cliffs. Much like if someone pointed straightly to the sides of this hill. Curiously they are nearly equal in diameter for a large part of the hill.
NASA lies. Yes it lies. But not only. It also shuts down the voices of those who dissent. Or helps to shut them down. Why? No its not an alien conspiracy. Just some people claiming for "Good Science" love to be "more popists than the Pope himself". And maybe some governmental short-mindness and underground politics is also in place.
Shyea, where's the real coverup!? (Score:1)
Re:Strange lines? (Score:1)
Disturbing new martian features (Score:1)
http://members.nbci.com/_XMCM/primall/mahir/mahir_ ring.jpg
Re:Do you understand sarcasm? (Score:2)
As for Art Bell, I have heard pieces of his show when I get up to take my dog outside in the morning, and for the most part its just as valuable as this article.
Oh come on. Art Bell can be way more entertaining than Slashdot. "Antichrist Line", anyone?
Fuck ya if ya can't take a joke.
C-X C-S
Porous silicon (Score:1)
Notice? (Score:1)
---------------------------
"I'm not gonna say anything inspirational, I'm just gonna fucking swear a lot"
Re:I found this site the other day on plastic.com (Score:1)
Re:I found this site the other day on plastic.com (Score:5)
After examination, I still think it's a load of crap. I've had to make this point on other fora recently; it's getting silly.
Pick up any issue of Fortean Times. Examine its 'simulacra' section. Therein you'll find examples of everyday objects that look like people, things, whatever.
If it's got a beard, it must be Jesus
If it's got a quiff, it must be Elvis
Why is the "okay, so cydonia wasn't really alien. But this is" considered a valid argument for these structures being anything other than natural?
God & Aliens (Score:1)
It still looks like a face! (Score:2)
http://www.metaresearch.org/solar%20system/cydo
Tubes or sand dunes? (Score:1)
Shon
/. (Score:1)
Taco, what have you been up to?
--
Another site devoted to this type of thing (Score:3)
Sometimes I wonder ... (Score:1)
Most of the comments for this type of stuff do nothing but proclaim anyone with a little imagination as a nut job.
The fact is, IF we do not get off this planet and expand then we as a race are doomed and eventually there will be no trace we even existed.
So the structures some see on Mars may be natural, but at the same time they may be artificial, until we go there ourselves to find out we won't know for sure. I think an ever so slight chance that there is artificial structures on any planet or moon in our solar system needs to be investigated thoroughly and as soon as technically possible.
We trace our own history back almost 4 million years, yet many fail to realize that 4 million years is a drop in the bucket of time compared to the age of just our solar system, a LOT could have happened on the planets circling our sun in that time.
Certainly if at some point a civilization existed on Mars way back when there may be a chance some structures were built that we may be viewing the remains of now. Consider that on Earth, if we were wiped out today evidence of our own existence would persist on the surface for around 1 billion years, after which time it would become more and more difficult to find such evidence at surface level.
There are lots of questions about our own history, questions about just what level of technology ancient civilizations may have had.
Open your minds a little folks, encourage our leaders to spend more on exploring our own solar system than they currently spend on silly shit like weapons of war which ultimately aren't going to do us much good in the long term.
Then again, maybe NASA does know more than they let on (after all, just why aren't we going to the moon anymore?). Personally I think any knowledge that would disprove or bring into question religious beliefs would be suppressed in the US because a majority of the people are believers in such rubbish.
Trips
A _real_ image of /. (Score:3)
http://www.metaresearch.org/solar%20system/cydoni
--
The tubes are... (Score:1)
Analysis of Global Surveyer Image on Mars (Score:2)
Its a good read.
T&! on Mars? (Score:2)
Looks a lot like Earth. (Score:5)
The only features that did seem a little strange were the 'trees' images. While they could be lava flows, lava is usually not that fractal or inhomogeneous. They do look more like natural vegetation, although without scale on the images it's impossible to tell. So I'd dismiss immediately any claims of intelligent artifacts on Mars, but there may be some tantalizing possibilities for primitive forms of life.
That's nuthin! (Score:2)
They even signed (or at least initialed [seds.org] it. This is sometimes calle the coathanger cluster, but clearly it's a fancy letter "T").
Re:"New" report? (Score:1)
Here's your "face" (Score:2)
Doesn't look much like a face to me.
--
Ray Bradbury's 'The Silver Locusts' for one. (Score:1)
Re:Looks a lot like Earth. (Score:1)
ancient cultures on other planets if you believe it's absolute fact you probably also believe in Xenu. Don't get me wrong I'd rather like to hear of our discovery of extraterrestrial cultures (other than ones we may make in the future
Dubunking alien proof... (Score:2)
Then, we still won't really believe it. We'll have all passed it off as some government conspiracy.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Over reaction here I think ... (Score:1)
Is it evidence of aliens
At least someone with an eccentric bent is looking at these images in detail
As for Tom Van Flanden. He's an interesting character to argue against
Peter
The face is saying something... (Score:1)
Re:Whee! (Score:2)
On a smaller scale for geometric regularities, think about the hexagonal features of the Giant's causeway in Antrim, Northern Ireland.
Not to mention the ability of non-sentient life to form these straight line and circular structures too.
As for your final point, you might enjoy reading "The Olympus Gambit" by William Rollo. It's hard to get, but a fun read about just that possibilty.
Re:It still looks like a face! (Score:1)
For me the unfiltered imagage show just a hill, not much more.
Ok. I'm one of these guys, that don't see the man in the moon (or face in the moon) either...
Re:"New" report? (Score:1)
What makes you think I referred to that picture?
"New" report? (Score:5)
Cydonia is the region of the famous "mars face" (which doesn't look like a face anymore on pictures with higher resolutions---thanks to Mars Global Surveyor) and there have been plenty of reports about the mars face and the other "artifical" structures around ("city", "pyramid" and so on.)
See here for an example:
http://www.psrw.com/~markc/marshome.html
Here's a mirror in Germany (if that's slashdotted also
http://home.t-online.de/home/zimmert/marshpge.h
Martian soil (Score:2)
First, the mineral composition of Mars is different from earth. This means new kinds of dust that pile up differently than the earth dust.
Second, Mars has quite a lot of microscopic dust, while on earth all that dust is quickly blown by strong winds to oceans.
Third, the martian low-pressure atmosphere and very peacefully changing weather causes the soil to move in a way very different from earth. On Earth, the weather is much more chaotic.
Seeing unexpected order is nothing special, as it is routinely generated by the self-organization of matter in open thermodynamic systems (such as "weather"). We can see it in stars, we can see it on the Sun, we can see it in the sand desers of Earth. And Mars is nothing but a huge and geologically diverse desert.
Re:Scale (Score:1)
/. on Mars!! (Score:1)
Probably the Techno Talking Babes [after-y2k.com] or Neil & Bob [goats.com]
Re:Sometimes I wonder ... (Score:1)
Only if you include evolutionary ancestors. Modern man has been around less than 300,000 years or so.
-Legion
*sigh* (Score:1)
That "weird phenomena" [sic] is the fact that Mars' atmosphere is so thin that liquid water can't possibly exist at the surface--it would boil away. And good science is good science; bad science doesn't need NASA's "lies" to be considered bad.
-Legion
Re:Arthur C. Clarke on the Tubes, etc (Score:1)
-Legion
Scientific literacy dead: film at 11 (Score:1)
Wild speculation that Mars was a moon that broke off from another world, where we were part of the same species as the supposed Martian inhabitants (who used the "moon" as a grafitti wall) is not, in any sense of the word, a theory. It's not even a hypothesis. Hell, it doesn't even qualify as a reasonable *guess*, and that's putting it mildly.
These people are fucking kooks, and *that's* putting it mildly too.
-Legion
Re:Strange lines? (Score:1)
I hope your server's anguished screams don't keep you up at night.
-Legion
Re:I'll believe it when I.. (Score:2)
--
this could be real! (Score:2)
it is however more likely, that in any given set of thousands of pictures of desert, espcially ones which are heavily impacted by extra-planetary bodies (like mars or the moon; whos surfaces are both effected heavily by meteor showers), you will find a picture of a dolphin, a scorpian, and probable one with your social security number.
there are most likely going to be good explinations for all of these photographs, even the ones which appear as those they can not occur naturally (like perpendicular lines, which may have been the result of two seperate carbon dioxide flows).
And cats purr to mysticly heal themslves. (Score:2)
We really need a "psuedo-science hogwash" category.
Zoomed in image with even stranger formation ! (Score:1)
http://www.planetquake.com/unitool/m3a/temp/slide2 3a.jpg [planetquake.com]
I wonder what geological and climatic processes caused the formation of slashdot ?
Re:Slashdotted.. or? (Score:1)
Really? Think I must have missed it - what books?
Re:When did /. join Art Bell? (Score:1)
Re:Do you understand sarcasm? (Score:1)
Tubes = lava tubes? (Score:2)
On earth, at least, these perfectly natural formations crop up in Hawaii, California, Australia (Queensland and Victoria), Madagascar, Mauritius and probably lots of other places. So why could they not occur on Mars?
All it would need is a volcano with the right geochemistry, a bit of a slope and copious basalt flows.
Dave Bunnells web site will show you: http://www.goodearthgraphics.com/virtual_tube/virt ube.html [goodearthgraphics.com]
Re:Geological Structures... WAVE ROCK (Score:2)
For me, these guys lost all their credibility when they failed to give accurate information about where the pictures came from. Why not link back to the original NASA pics?
Re:Doesn't everyone read Skeptical Inquirer? (Score:1)
Skeptical Inquirer debunks everything and so has no useful scientific purpose. The fact is people don't mistake a saucer flying 15 feet over their car for the moon or Venus! Certainly not thousands of people.
Digital enhancements of pictures often show better detail than the original. A fuzzy picture can be brought into focus.
- James - [IMAGE]
Re:When did /. join Art Bell? (Score:1)
The reason we have stopped human exploration of space is so that people who can't keep the secret won't see anything. That is why a 'tourist' going into space is such a danger to NASA. People will now see this as a viable and profitable business and lots of people will go into space and reveal what they see.
- James - [IMAGE]
A Wellknown crackpot (Score:1)
Re:"New" report? (Score:2)
However, I bet that won't stop the nuts from interpretting them as being the results of alien civilizations etc.
Re:It still looks like a face! (Score:2)
Watch the animation (it's one of the other links) that morphs between these three pictures to see the "advanced image processing techniques" techniques in action. Dubious image processing techniques would be a more fitting term. It looks like some kook pulled and tweaked the image until it resembled with what they wanted to see.
Just a TAD kooky... (Score:5)
Administrative contact: Michael Van Flandern
Technical contact: Kevin Van Flandern
Mouthpiece for: Tom Van Flandern, big-time Cydonia-face, um, "enthusiast".
Have yourself a browse through metaresearch.org and you'll find out all sorts of interesting things. Like, apparently the speed of gravity is "not less than 2 x 10^10 c [metaresearch.org]", and therefore probably infinite.
Feel free to read some stuff on Jerry Pournelle's site [jerrypournelle.com] about this guy.
Here's another URL [ucr.edu] that directly addresses the gravity-speed thing Tom Van Flandern loves so dearly.
If he were a bit more dedicated, he'd qualify as a real, quality, Usenet kook. I don't think he quite makes the grade, though.
Re:here we go again - updated (Score:2)
For more on that moon thing, by the way, Fortean Times [forteantimes.com] still have an old article up about it.
Whee! (Score:2)
Yanno, if you took one flake of dead skin off your arm and slipped it into a scanning electron microcsope, it would look exactly like all of the above photos.
I guess the moral of the story is, if you look at a blob-shaped cumulus cloud hoping to see a giraffe, you will see a giraffe.
The presence of sentient life is easy to spot. Symmetrical placement of objects; Placement or creation of objects/material with straight lines and the presence of (near) perfect circular anything. None of these appear naturally according to any rules we can think of. The wind doesn't stack rocks, vegetation or fuel cells in convenient piles near one's hovel.
Wouldn't it be funny though, if Mars is in fact totally dead (like our moon) but we are stumbling across some OTHER civilation's space exploration program?
Scale (Score:2)
The problem though was that the structures were only a few feet wide, he had neglected to put a scale on the images.
Basically, many features look like something they are not, when viewed in the wrong scale. Also these images have no context, ideally there should be a pair of images, the fine resolution ones, together with a larger scale one showing the context. Ask any archiologist and they will tell you, any object is next to useless out of context.
Before I start taking any of these sorts of things seriously, I want scales and context.
Virgin? (Score:3)
Heck, if those Greek dudes could decide that those five stars look like a crab, and these seven look like a bear, then who knows what they would find on Mars?
Geological Structures... (Score:4)
Spots: ? Looks like they cranked up the contrast like crazy. Tubes 1: Pretty clearly barcan dunes in a valley.
Tubes 2: Ditto
Track: Ditto (ho hum)
Vegetation: Another one where it looks like they cranked up the contrast like crazy - these actually look like sunspots (?). If they're actually from Mars, they are lava flows.
Triangles: No clue - need to see in different light angles
Strange Lines: These are dust devil/tornado tracks - pretty cool, eh?
T: There are a bunch of these near Valles Marineris (which is a 10km+ deep version of these long, blunt-ended vallies. Their formation is a source of major contention. Probably a faulted graben feature.
Remember the "face" on Mars? That one was very effectively debunked with the MGS images. As long as you show individual images, you can pretty much see anything you want, but if you look at them in different light angles, you can start to piece together what the features actually are. However, if they actually showed those (or read the science), they'd have nothing.
Ink Blot Tests (Score:2)
That being said, I think that alot of what folks see looking at mars is sort of what you get looking at the old ink blot tests. you can see all kinds of things there, when all it really is, is ink on papaer. Probably most of it is that way.
On the other hand, if there were little green robots out there running around, a place like mars might not be a bad place for a base, although the asteroids would be better suited for most operations. So it spotting structures from space would not be unusual.
Of note in this discussion are this story [go.com] from last week on ABC News, about a group of 20 ex military and others coming forward and saying that their were just to many weird things going on. You can see the real Video of the original press conferance here: http://www.connectlive.com/events/disclosureprojec t/ [connectlive.com] in two parts, (p1 = 1h45m, p2 = 0h55m)
If this comes up as legit, then I would be surprised to NOT find something on Mars. but alot of it is likely nothing at all.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire [eplugz.com] comic strip
Arthur C. Clarke on the Tubes, etc (Score:2)
This has been taken to heart by a well known site, famous in fringe circles as one of the more serious sites in the fringe science area:
Clarke Item One: http://www.enterprisemission.com/images/arthur.jpg [enterprisemission.com]
Clarke Item Two: http://www.enterprisemission.com/sir.htm [enterprisemission.com]
An Explanation?: http://www.enterprisemission.com/can.htm [enterprisemission.com]
Take with the usual pinch of salt.
Although I can see the possibility for weird politics inside nasa.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire [eplugz.com] comic strip
Re:Arthur C. Clarke on the Tubes, etc (Score:2)
http://www.enterprisemission.com/empire.htm [enterprisemission.com]
There does seem to be some weird politics behind the scene, above and beyond the actual science.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire [eplugz.com] comic strip
sample florida ballot (Score:3)
It also happens to be punchcard #4 of the DeCSS code. The MPAA better follow up on that one, there is quite clearly a threat of loss of proportion as never before imagined.
Wow! (Score:2)
3D art! (Score:4)
Seriously, this is crap!
Re:Geological Structures... (Score:2)
Actually, the image that supposedly debunked the "face" was doctored by NASA. They subsequently released an undoctored version that still looks like a face to me, despite the angle of the photo, and despite the less than ideal lighting...
If NASA really wanted (or were able) to debunk these theories, they'd take a number of images of the face, different angles at different times of day. Then they'd release them without the heavy processing, the way MGS pics are usually released.
NASAs resistence and obfuscation regarding the face has cultivated an air of mystery and suspicion.
That's No "!", it's a "/." (Score:2)
Definitely the former... (Score:2)
Mars has had this climate for long enough that some of the pretty little animals that are represented didn't exist in the forms that we have of them today when the climate is confirmed to be as it is now. So, this would mean that someone would have been 'artistic' enough to put the shapes on now, and now the climate eats away at them.
Also, if there is intelligent life on Mars right now, they would have to know what these animals look like in order to carve them into the surface of their own planet. They could receive our TV brodcasts, but then wouldn't you expect coca cola signs? they are a helluva lot more common than some quadraped mammal on TV. If they sent some kind of supersensitive probe here to look at what our world looks like so they'd have a picture, it is possible that we would have detected it's orbit, and probably shot it down or at least tried some form of stuff against it.
Basically, my argument is that unless the research is WHOLLY scientific, not "look at the pretty animals", we won't get anywhere with dumbasses like these people trying to publish stuff like this. All credibility of the earlier stuff is destroyed with the later stuff, and I'd be ashamed if I had been someone who contributed work to that and then saw that as the end product. I hope that this gets laughed all the way to
"Titanic was 3hr and 17min long. They could have lost 3hr and 17min from that."
Re:"New" report? (Score:2)
When did /. join Art Bell? (Score:2)
When do we get stories on hair replacement systems that work? Or how about, amazing 400 pound babies. Or everyones favorite, the "Devil's face seen in smoke of burning building"
Is OMNI still publishing?
Strange lines? (Score:2)
Hmm, whilst on the topic of strange lines, I was wondering if anyone here could tell me what these strange geometric lines are that I saw when I was flying over Russia (at about 35,000 ft) on the way back to Europe after a holiday in Japan:
Big white diamond [cus.org.uk]
Thick line [cus.org.uk]
Grid lines [cus.org.uk]
I do not think these are not roads, rivers, or pipelines - all of which have been suggested to me so far...
WARNING: Images are each 1.6Mb in size, and I'm not able to connect to the machine to upload smaller copies right now...
-- Pete.
Re:Scale (Score:3)
Däniken is one of the many authors who have claimed they were runways.
Among the reasons to take his theories with a bucket or two of salt (even if one disregards his other examples of blatant ignorance about how to present a credible "proof") one find interesting discoveries that show that a large portion of the lines connects sites of importance to the old Nasca culture, such as buildings of religious importance, water sources etc.. That explains most of the straight lines.
As for the figures, one of the more credible theories is that they were used for seremonies. There are indications of seremonies that involved walking along the lines of the figures, that are consistent with other findings at the Cahuachi site, the ruins of a city now believed to be a religious center for the Nasca culture.
Dänikens central thesis, which is nothing more than ignorant conjecture, is that the figures must have been created by ETs, or with the help of ETs because no humans where capable of doing so at the time. Which is the same as assuming that a nobody at that time had ever tried what even many children discover by themselves: Using rope, wire or thread to scale a figure.
What the writing says (Score:2)
Analysis accompanying several of the images (#49, #52) notes the appearance of "writing". You might wonder what the Martians might wish to communicate at such a grand scale.
"Coincidentally," back in February, I painstakingly "enhanced" the images of magnetite chains in Martian meteorite ALH84001, which NASA announced appeared to be of "biological" origin.
My Photoshop skills are "rudimentary," but, like those intrepid explorers at "Metaresearch," that did not deter me from improving these blurry images to reveal their hidden meaning.
What I have uncovered is quite startling. As you can see, those clever Martians were not content to communicate on the "meta" scale, they made sure to leave us messages at the microscopic level as well.
http://www.galiel.com/aybabtu/magnetitechain.jpg
(the "original" NASA images, clearly "modified" by "agents" of "THEM", can be found here:e s/magneticbacteria/bacteria.html
http://amesnews.arc.nasa.gov/releases/2001/01imag
The "press" release is here: http://amesnews.arc.nasa.gov/releases/2001/01_11AR .html
The "truth" is out there, people. It's way, way, waaaaay out there.
P.S. (Ever notice how both "NASA" and "THEM" have four letters? Kinda makes you wonder, doesn't it....)
Flout 'em and scout 'em,
and scout 'em and flout 'em;
More (Score:2)
Graham Hancock has a really well written, and comprehensive web page [grahamhancock.com], with a page of links that specifically deal with this subject here. [grahamhancock.com]
There is a lot of information there, and on the linked pages, about recent discoveries, and not so recent discoveries. One linked page [home.net] refers to a set of lunar photographs released by Nasa in 1966.
I am not sure personally that this is evidence of anything too fantastic, aliens, conspiracies or the like, but whether it is or not, it is interesting to note that there are some phenomena that do not fit into our currently accepted scientific world theory, and that the investigation into them is going on quite specifically outside of the mainstream.
As Paul K Feyerabend put it, "Success in science depends not only on rational argument but on a mixture of subterfuge, rhetoric and propaganda."
I found this site the other day on plastic.com (Score:2)
You may think the site is a load of crap, but after examination you might think otherwise. Check you beliefs at the door...you might find something interesting...
Dust devil paths (Score:2)
I'm too lazy to post a link. Do a google search on +mars +"dust devils" or something
Structures on Mars (Score:2)
The authors of this site have said it all when they explain, in effect, that *...these images have enormous detail making possible several different interpretations.*
Several people have already provided excellent alternative interpretations, and all that I might add is that what they interpret as trees are most likely boulders. They have done this interpretation on the basis of what appear to be tall, straight shadows toward the upper right-hand corner. These look much more like changes in the exposure of bedrock or underlying soil in the prevailing downwind direction of large boulders.
Another point to keep in mind is that Mars has a gravitational acceleration about one-sixth that of earth, and many landforms may look unfamiliar on aerial photos because of the increased steepness of surfaces this allows.
Doesn't everyone read Skeptical Inquirer? (Score:3)
http://www.csicop.org/si/2000-11/
Re:I'll believe it when I.. (Score:2)
Looks nifty (Score:4)