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For anyone not familiar, this photo was snapped by the NASA Mars rover Curiosity: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images/msss/00184/mcam/0184MR0925102000E1_DXX

by RaecKK 12y ago

For anyone not familiar, this photo was snapped by the NASA Mars rover Curiosity: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images/msss/00184/mcam/0184MR0925102000E1_DXXX.jpg http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images/msss/00184/mcam/0184... Zoom in all the way, scroll up and to the right as far as possible, then scroll down just a tiny bit and look at the rock. That rock has a face on it? Definitely a WTF from me. I am so tired of seeing visual evidence dismissed by people who refuse to even consider it if it's not endorsed by some large "respectable" institution. You mean to say this rock is just a naturally occuring anomaly? Really?

mikeash 12y ago
Pareidolia is a thing. And the Face on Mars is the top example on Wikipedia! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia Yes, that rock is almost certainly just a naturally occurring anomaly. People are built to find faces, even in things that aren't actually faces.
mjgoins 12y ago
I've never so strongly wanted to simultaneously up-vote and down-vote a comment.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
sp332 12y ago
Cropped version, and other imagery of the region https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cydonia_%28region_of_Mars%29#.22Face_on_Mars.22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cydonia_%28region_of_Mars%29#....
kbenson 12y ago
Uhh, yeah? I don't see anything. I can't even find where I'm supposed to see a face. If it's that hard, perhaps what you are taking as obvious is simply because you've already identified it as a face so are subconsciously looking for it? We've known for a long time that we are hardwired to recognize faces in sets of items that are definitely not faces, so why is it so hard to believe that you're falling prey to the same thing?
- RaecKK 12y ago
  cropped with contrast added: http://postimg.org/image/n0nci70xp/ http://postimg.org/image/n0nci70xp/
  - mikeash 12y ago
    It's a rather amazing coincidence that the "teeth" are the exact size and position of the JPEG macroblocks, wouldn't you say? The "eye" precisely occupies four macroblocks, too. Hmm.... I don't suppose you have an uncompressed original to compare to....
    - kbenson 12y ago
      And now I can see it, since it was explicitly pointed out. That doesn't make me think it's anything other than visual artifacts as you suggest, or a random bit of coloring.
    - kjs3 12y ago
      "Cropped with contrast added" == "imaged processed until I got to see something I wanted"
    - RaecKK 12y ago
      I linked you to the original photo at NASA.gov, if you want to reproduce: - Install Gimp - Download the original Nasa image linked here: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images/msss/00184/mcam/0184MR0925102000E1_DXXX.jpg http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images/msss/00184/mcam/0184... - Open the picture with Gimp. Crop out the face. Under the image tab, choose scale image. Scale the image to 300 percent of original size. There is an interpolation option when scaling the image. You have to choose Sinc Lancoz 3 because that is the interpolation option that will preserve the data in the jpeg pixels. If you choose cubic or linear it will be lost. - Under the colors tab, open curves. NASA obscured this image by destroying it's dynamic content, so you will need to expand what is there by pulling the line to perfectly match the top and bottom of the image data. This will render the jpeg blocks and show you the image data they contain. - Under the filters tab, mouse over enhance and choose the last option "Unsharp mask". Apply unsharp mask twice with the default settings. The picture will become clear enough to show.
super_mario 12y ago
Images taken later with better (higher resolution) equipment demonstrate the "face on Mars" is an optical illusion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cydonia_(region_of_Mars)#.22Face_on_Mars.22 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cydonia_(region_of_Mars)#.22Fac...
jkaunisv1 12y ago
Do you mean the rock about 40% down the image, at the bottom corner of a lighter colored diamond of terrain? Because all I see is an "eye" and maybe a mouth and none of it looks particularly sculpted/carved. I've seen more face-like images in the random shadows on my ceiling.
jstalin 12y ago
Maybe you linked to the wrong photo, but I'm not seeing what you're referring to.
- RaecKK 12y ago
  this: http://postimg.org/image/n0nci70xp/ http://postimg.org/image/n0nci70xp/
huxley 12y ago
In the late 1890s, a group of gentlemen-researchers named Henri Duveyrier, Victor Largeau, Erwin von Bary and H. S. Cowper found something incredible, what appeared to be a megalithic structure in Tripoli. Upon further investigations they found large numbers of them throughout northern Africa, they described all kinds of megalithic structures: dolmens, menhirs, cairns, cup stones, and sacrificial altars. Speculation was that this was a previously undiscovered Neolithic civilization, in describing the Senams, Cowper wrote "there had been originally no less than eighteen or twenty megalithic trilithons, in a line, each with its massive altar placed before it." Amazingly each altar had an obvious drain trench where blood from the sacrifices flowed. Cowper even speculated at one point that the builders of these cyclopean structures were involved in the raising of Stonehenge. They were all well-respected, H.S. Cowper had done some early significant work identifying and describing megalithic structures in the UK, so obviously he knew what he was talking about. A book with the findings was published to great anticipation. Unfortunately as the book was going to press, an article was written by J. L. Myers, Arthur Evans, and W. Gowland who actually knew what those structures were. They were Roman-era oil presses. For a brief period of time, Cowper denied this was possible pointing to Berbers that referred to the structures as idols, but for anyone who knew anything about Roman oil presses, these were fairly commonplace. That's the long way of saying that the human mind has a tendency to find patterns and to try to explain those patterns based on their expectations. But sometimes a cyclopean altar is just an oil press.
abraininavat 12y ago
I am so tired of seeing visual evidence dismissed by people who refuse to even consider it if it's not endorsed by some large "respectable" institution Any time generally reasonable people seem to consistently disagree with you in a way that perplexes you, especially when it's you who is suggesting something extraordinary, it would be wise to strongly consider that you might be missing something. Not necessarily that they know something you don't know -- it's worth questioning whether you're hitting a bug in the programming of your brain. If you start thinking everyone around you is crazy, start worrying that you're crazy.
polemic 12y ago
If that's a WTF fror you, prepare to have your mind clean blown away. https://twitter.com/facespics https://twitter.com/facespics
- darkmighty 12y ago
  It's interesting the objects people make absurd claims about are almost always faces. We have a large part of our brain dedicated basically to that task, so we're always seeking faces in the noise.
  - mikeash 12y ago
    Indeed. It's never a statue of a fish, or a turtle, or a bird. It's always a face.
libraryatnight 12y ago
Is this good visual evidence, though? I feel like if you want to get upset about this sort of thing you should find better examples. I appreciate your sentiment, but that image hardly seems like something about which to be excited. That image looks like a rock and zooming in makes it look like a distorted rock. Coloring and manipulating the image is in my opinion getting farther from convincing there's something uncanny about that rock.
crusso 12y ago
"I am so tired of seeing visual evidence dismissed..." We know that humans and many other animals recognize faces in a heavily biased way. It's the evolutionary reason why some butterflies and fish have eye markings. Their potential predators tend to see faces and may be intimidated by the implied size of the creature with those eyes or mistake the direction that the prey is headed. Just from our own subjective experiences, we all see faces where we shouldn't: In clouds, in rock formations, in foliage, and even in burnt grilled cheese sandwiches: http://www.nbcnews.com/id/6511148/ns/us_news-weird_news/t/virgin-mary-grilled-cheese-sells/ http://www.nbcnews.com/id/6511148/ns/us_news-weird_news/t/vi... As human beings who want to do Science, we have to recognize the limitations and biases of our own hardware or we're doomed to fail at evaluating reality.
yiyus 12y ago
Yes, really.
tjradcliffe 12y ago
> I am so tired of seeing visual evidence dismissed by people who refuse to even consider it if it's not endorsed by some large "respectable" institution. You mean to say this rock is just a naturally occuring anomaly? Really? Of course it is. That's by far the most likely conclusion. Consider: Curiosity alone sends back between ten and 100 images every day that each contain thousands of objects (mostly rocks). So let's say there are 10,000 objects a day that people can look at (many more if you consider the tiny size of the "face" in this compressed image.) I can't find any actual data on apophenia and pareidolia (finding patterns and faces in randomness, respectively) but given what we know about it the incidence is unlikely to be less than 0.1%, which means we'd expect to see ten objects per day in Curiosity images that look something like a face or other recognizable object, so if a fraction of one percent of those instances are fairly realistic we would expect to see something "very face like" a few times a year. Those numbers are a bit hand-wavy, but they aren't out by orders of magnitude, and from them we can conclude that it would be pretty surprising if we didn't see something pretty facelike now and then in Curiosity imaging. If we didn't, it would be a major surprise. That we do... well, it's what we expect, so we dismiss it as evidence that what we see is of artificial origin. To do anything else would be to ignore what we know about human perception.
- mikeash 12y ago
  It's interesting to consider the numbers from the opposite direction as well. If this stuff is real, where are all the non-face artifacts? If you plopped a rover down in, say, the ruins of Troy, you'd expect to have a bazillion photos of pottery and arrowheads and boring walls for every photo of a statue of a face. Why aren't the rovers finding anything like that? Humans have no mental bias for seeing such artifacts in random noise, so of course "we find faces, faces, and more faces, and nothing else" fits the pareidolia explanation much better than the actual-alien-artifacts explanation.
lotsofmangos 12y ago
I see faces or figures in everything all of the time. I just now have looked at a 2 inch square of fairly coffee stained table and counted twenty of them. If I looked closer I could find as many as I wanted. String or hair tends to show me people in motion, blotchy surfaces are crammed with faces. I saw a really good one the other day when I was looking unfocused at the floor and caught two patches of ground with either eye that resolved themselves really nicely into a stereoscopic image of a cartoon dog.

by RaecKK 12y ago

mikeash 12y ago

Pareidolia is a thing. And the Face on Mars is the top example on Wikipedia! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia Yes, that rock is almost certainly just a naturally occurring anomaly. People are built to find faces, even in things that aren't actually faces.

mjgoins 12y ago

I've never so strongly wanted to simultaneously up-vote and down-vote a comment.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

sp332 12y ago

Cropped version, and other imagery of the region https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cydonia_%28region_of_Mars%29#.22Face_on_Mars.22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cydonia_%28region_of_Mars%29#....

kbenson 12y ago

Uhh, yeah? I don't see anything. I can't even find where I'm supposed to see a face. If it's that hard, perhaps what you are taking as obvious is simply because you've already identified it as a face so are subconsciously looking for it? We've known for a long time that we are hardwired to recognize faces in sets of items that are definitely not faces, so why is it so hard to believe that you're falling prey to the same thing?

RaecKK 12y ago
cropped with contrast added: http://postimg.org/image/n0nci70xp/ http://postimg.org/image/n0nci70xp/
- mikeash 12y ago
  It's a rather amazing coincidence that the "teeth" are the exact size and position of the JPEG macroblocks, wouldn't you say? The "eye" precisely occupies four macroblocks, too. Hmm.... I don't suppose you have an uncompressed original to compare to....
  - kbenson 12y ago
    And now I can see it, since it was explicitly pointed out. That doesn't make me think it's anything other than visual artifacts as you suggest, or a random bit of coloring.
  - kjs3 12y ago
    "Cropped with contrast added" == "imaged processed until I got to see something I wanted"
  - RaecKK 12y ago
    I linked you to the original photo at NASA.gov, if you want to reproduce: - Install Gimp - Download the original Nasa image linked here: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images/msss/00184/mcam/0184MR0925102000E1_DXXX.jpg http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images/msss/00184/mcam/0184... - Open the picture with Gimp. Crop out the face. Under the image tab, choose scale image. Scale the image to 300 percent of original size. There is an interpolation option when scaling the image. You have to choose Sinc Lancoz 3 because that is the interpolation option that will preserve the data in the jpeg pixels. If you choose cubic or linear it will be lost. - Under the colors tab, open curves. NASA obscured this image by destroying it's dynamic content, so you will need to expand what is there by pulling the line to perfectly match the top and bottom of the image data. This will render the jpeg blocks and show you the image data they contain. - Under the filters tab, mouse over enhance and choose the last option "Unsharp mask". Apply unsharp mask twice with the default settings. The picture will become clear enough to show.

super_mario 12y ago

Images taken later with better (higher resolution) equipment demonstrate the "face on Mars" is an optical illusion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cydonia_(region_of_Mars)#.22Face_on_Mars.22 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cydonia_(region_of_Mars)#.22Fac...

jkaunisv1 12y ago

Do you mean the rock about 40% down the image, at the bottom corner of a lighter colored diamond of terrain? Because all I see is an "eye" and maybe a mouth and none of it looks particularly sculpted/carved. I've seen more face-like images in the random shadows on my ceiling.

jstalin 12y ago

Maybe you linked to the wrong photo, but I'm not seeing what you're referring to.

RaecKK 12y ago
this: http://postimg.org/image/n0nci70xp/ http://postimg.org/image/n0nci70xp/

huxley 12y ago

In the late 1890s, a group of gentlemen-researchers named Henri Duveyrier, Victor Largeau, Erwin von Bary and H. S. Cowper found something incredible, what appeared to be a megalithic structure in Tripoli. Upon further investigations they found large numbers of them throughout northern Africa, they described all kinds of megalithic structures: dolmens, menhirs, cairns, cup stones, and sacrificial altars. Speculation was that this was a previously undiscovered Neolithic civilization, in describing the Senams, Cowper wrote "there had been originally no less than eighteen or twenty megalithic trilithons, in a line, each with its massive altar placed before it." Amazingly each altar had an obvious drain trench where blood from the sacrifices flowed. Cowper even speculated at one point that the builders of these cyclopean structures were involved in the raising of Stonehenge. They were all well-respected, H.S. Cowper had done some early significant work identifying and describing megalithic structures in the UK, so obviously he knew what he was talking about. A book with the findings was published to great anticipation. Unfortunately as the book was going to press, an article was written by J. L. Myers, Arthur Evans, and W. Gowland who actually knew what those structures were. They were Roman-era oil presses. For a brief period of time, Cowper denied this was possible pointing to Berbers that referred to the structures as idols, but for anyone who knew anything about Roman oil presses, these were fairly commonplace. That's the long way of saying that the human mind has a tendency to find patterns and to try to explain those patterns based on their expectations. But sometimes a cyclopean altar is just an oil press.

abraininavat 12y ago

I am so tired of seeing visual evidence dismissed by people who refuse to even consider it if it's not endorsed by some large "respectable" institution Any time generally reasonable people seem to consistently disagree with you in a way that perplexes you, especially when it's you who is suggesting something extraordinary, it would be wise to strongly consider that you might be missing something. Not necessarily that they know something you don't know -- it's worth questioning whether you're hitting a bug in the programming of your brain. If you start thinking everyone around you is crazy, start worrying that you're crazy.

polemic 12y ago

If that's a WTF fror you, prepare to have your mind clean blown away. https://twitter.com/facespics https://twitter.com/facespics

darkmighty 12y ago
It's interesting the objects people make absurd claims about are almost always faces. We have a large part of our brain dedicated basically to that task, so we're always seeking faces in the noise.
- mikeash 12y ago
  Indeed. It's never a statue of a fish, or a turtle, or a bird. It's always a face.

libraryatnight 12y ago

Is this good visual evidence, though? I feel like if you want to get upset about this sort of thing you should find better examples. I appreciate your sentiment, but that image hardly seems like something about which to be excited. That image looks like a rock and zooming in makes it look like a distorted rock. Coloring and manipulating the image is in my opinion getting farther from convincing there's something uncanny about that rock.

crusso 12y ago

"I am so tired of seeing visual evidence dismissed..." We know that humans and many other animals recognize faces in a heavily biased way. It's the evolutionary reason why some butterflies and fish have eye markings. Their potential predators tend to see faces and may be intimidated by the implied size of the creature with those eyes or mistake the direction that the prey is headed. Just from our own subjective experiences, we all see faces where we shouldn't: In clouds, in rock formations, in foliage, and even in burnt grilled cheese sandwiches: http://www.nbcnews.com/id/6511148/ns/us_news-weird_news/t/virgin-mary-grilled-cheese-sells/ http://www.nbcnews.com/id/6511148/ns/us_news-weird_news/t/vi... As human beings who want to do Science, we have to recognize the limitations and biases of our own hardware or we're doomed to fail at evaluating reality.

yiyus 12y ago

Yes, really.

tjradcliffe 12y ago

> I am so tired of seeing visual evidence dismissed by people who refuse to even consider it if it's not endorsed by some large "respectable" institution. You mean to say this rock is just a naturally occuring anomaly? Really? Of course it is. That's by far the most likely conclusion. Consider: Curiosity alone sends back between ten and 100 images every day that each contain thousands of objects (mostly rocks). So let's say there are 10,000 objects a day that people can look at (many more if you consider the tiny size of the "face" in this compressed image.) I can't find any actual data on apophenia and pareidolia (finding patterns and faces in randomness, respectively) but given what we know about it the incidence is unlikely to be less than 0.1%, which means we'd expect to see ten objects per day in Curiosity images that look something like a face or other recognizable object, so if a fraction of one percent of those instances are fairly realistic we would expect to see something "very face like" a few times a year. Those numbers are a bit hand-wavy, but they aren't out by orders of magnitude, and from them we can conclude that it would be pretty surprising if we didn't see something pretty facelike now and then in Curiosity imaging. If we didn't, it would be a major surprise. That we do... well, it's what we expect, so we dismiss it as evidence that what we see is of artificial origin. To do anything else would be to ignore what we know about human perception.

mikeash 12y ago
It's interesting to consider the numbers from the opposite direction as well. If this stuff is real, where are all the non-face artifacts? If you plopped a rover down in, say, the ruins of Troy, you'd expect to have a bazillion photos of pottery and arrowheads and boring walls for every photo of a statue of a face. Why aren't the rovers finding anything like that? Humans have no mental bias for seeing such artifacts in random noise, so of course "we find faces, faces, and more faces, and nothing else" fits the pareidolia explanation much better than the actual-alien-artifacts explanation.

lotsofmangos 12y ago

I see faces or figures in everything all of the time. I just now have looked at a 2 inch square of fairly coffee stained table and counted twenty of them. If I looked closer I could find as many as I wanted. String or hair tends to show me people in motion, blotchy surfaces are crammed with faces. I saw a really good one the other day when I was looking unfocused at the floor and caught two patches of ground with either eye that resolved themselves really nicely into a stereoscopic image of a cartoon dog.