Nefertiti's Family

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Imagine one person has an original Mona Lisa.

Then imagine another person with an artwork the same size and shape, materials, paint, era, frame, as the Mona Lisa, but all it is is a collection of dots. The owner of the artwork walks into a famous museum and says, "I'd like to sell my copy of the Mona Lisa for $2,000,000."

The curator looks at him, incredulously, and says, "that's not a Mona Lisa, that's nothing but a collection of spots." To which the owner replies, "oh no, it's exactly like the Mona Lisa, watch."

So he goes and gets the real Mona Lisa, splashes paint thinner on it, brushes it with a wire brush, sand blasts it, and after five such treatments, it's nothing more than a collection of dots. He takes his picture, stands it next to what's left of the Mona Lisa and says:

"See it's the same as the Mona Lisa."<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Okay, you win the "analogy of the year" award! This is EXACTLY what my problem is with all of this. It's not that I do not believe that intelligent life exists outside of Earth. It's not that I do not believe Mars or the missing planet may have had intelligent life walking on them at some point. It's just that any time new pictures of Mars show up, everyone is so excited about it that they play with the images until they see what they want to see. Those who are more traditional say "Look, it's just rocks", and those who want to see artificiality say "Look, it's a sculpture!". Some, like Cydonia, are worth detailed investigation. None, however, are going to be proven with Photoshop.

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"Regret can only change the future" -Me

"Every judgment teeters on the brink of error. To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty." Frank Herbert, Dune 1965

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Dangus</i>
<br />It's just that any time new pictures of Mars show up, everyone is so excited about it that they play with the images until they see what they want to see.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Yes, I agree. That's why it's important to seek to improve the situation, not dumb-down the existing data.

The way we look at it is that each new piece of information should add to your existing information. In a way the R07 strip confirms the existence of M03 and E05 like Neil said, so that's an important point. But that doesn't mean we gain anything by making the higher contrast image look like the lower contrast image.

What we want to know is why does the lower contrast image (R07) have lower contrast and detail than M03 or E05? That's the question we presented. And we hope to answer it.

rd

rderosa writes: "That's why it's important to seek to improve the situation, not dumb-down the existing data."

While it is always a good idea for someone with knowledge and experience in an area to steer the procees in the proper direction, thereby avoiding the necessity of "reinventing the wheel," and preventing an unecessary tangents; on the other hand, the creative process of discovery often involves a lot of trial and error. While it's important for this kind of exchange of ideas to be cordial and respectfull, everyone will make mistakes along the way, and sometimes the "dumbest" seeming idea might have a grain of truth in it,and lead to some new insight. Some of the greatest discoveries in history were made by accident.

Again, no one is claiming absolute knowledge, we are just trying to understand something that may be remarkable to the "nth degree."

Neil

I think with adjusting brightness and contrast you do make some bold changes. I mean, what time of day were each of these shots taken in compared to the older ones? What was the time of year, the angle of the sun, the exposure time on the camera. There's so many important pieces of the puzzle that I just don't think are being factored in. Important pieces too.

Cydonia interests me. Not because I actually think it is a humanoid face, but rather because of the way the base of it is shaped. It has a very unnatural looking base. I won't be suprised to find at some point in the future that it's not a sculture at all. It might even have been a base or something. Who knows. Or maybe it was a sculpture in progress that never got finished completely? I would find it amusing if Cydonia only looks like a human face because some intelligent designers(hehe) never actually got done carving it.

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"Regret can only change the future" -Me

"Every judgment teeters on the brink of error. To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty." Frank Herbert, Dune 1965

Hi everyone,

So I found the R12 strip online (thanks Neil). Here it is:
barsoom.msss.com/moc_gallery/r10_r15/images/R12/R1201454.html

And I also checked out all the strips adjascent to it, because there were 7 strips right in that same area. The five closest strips to the Nefertiti stip (including the Nefertiti strip itself) had messed up brightness/contrast settings. I think it is fair to call it "messed up" because certainly it reveals much less data than the camera has proven capable of. It also appears to be the only messed up strips in the whole Phoenicis Lacus map region. I find this suspicious, because I cannot think of a reason why adjusting the camera so that it blacked out all but the very brightest spots in the image would be helpful. And it certainly is not a coincidence that every time the camera happened to photograph this area it malfunctioned. These photos were taken on different dates. Check this out for yourself. Here is the link to the main region:

barsoom.msss.com/moc_gallery/r10_r15/mc17.html

And here are the five strips that are messed up, including the Nefertiti strip that is first, with the date and time each one was taken

barsoom.msss.com/moc_gallery/r10_r15/images/R12/R1201454.html
(date of image: 2003-12-13T08:29:56.45)

barsoom.msss.com/moc_gallery/r10_r15/images/R10/R1002070.html
(date of image: 2003-10-12T16:53:27.58)

barsoom.msss.com/moc_gallery/r10_r15/images/R11/R1101925.html
(date of image: 2003-11-12T12:41:54.41)

barsoom.msss.com/moc_gallery/r10_r15/images/R13/R1301984.html
(date of image: 2004-01-13T04:19:32.57)

barsoom.msss.com/moc_gallery/r10_r15/images/R14/R1400688.html
(date of image: 2004-02-05T19:31:58.83)

And here are the two ok strips that are farthest to the West of the Nefertiti strip, but still in the same general area:

barsoom.msss.com/moc_gallery/r10_r15/images/R12/R1202370.html
(date of image: 2003-12-20T13:10:41.65)

barsoom.msss.com/moc_gallery/r10_r15/images/R10/R1003303.html
(date of image: 2003-10-19T21:34:39.67)

And I must also add to Dangus' comment that I think the Mona Lisa analogy fails to demonstrate anything. I do not think the messedup strips confirm anything, for the sole reason that the "existence of the images" does not need to be confirmed. We all know the images are there. Everyone can see them. The question is only whether they are natural or artificial. The only thing that can be confirmed by the messed up strips are that they are, indeed, strips showing the Nefertiti area, We can confirm this because the bright spots match. This, however, says nothing about whether the Nefertiti image (which is not visibile on the messedup strips) is natural or artificial.

Emanuel

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by emanuel</i>
<br /> We can confirm this because the bright spots match. This, however, says nothing about whether the Nefertiti image (which is not visibile on the messedup strips) is natural or artificial.
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

It might be helpful if you go back and read the post I started this discussion of the new strips with. The one where I start with an "alignment grid" from JP Levasseur showing how the strips "match". That way you can see what exactly we did or did not say. You can see what we were "mystefied" about.

You know which post I'm talking about? The one that answered all of Dangus' questions at the outset.

rd