Faces from the Chasmas

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by rderosa</i>
<br />Take the same kind of images on Earth, and you'll get the same results.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Personally, I think you are wildly wrong on this point. There are instances of interesting pareidolia on Earth. But people are fascinated by them, and almost all of them are known and on a few internet sites that specialize in such things. I doubt any really good ones are unknown. Yet there appear to be &lt; 10% as many images on Earth as on Mars, even though both have similar land areas.

More relevantly, Earth has more noisy backgrounds than Mars, which are the easel on which pareidolic images are painted. But many good images on Mars are of higher quality than anything pareidolic on Earth.

None of these particular points support a claim of artificiality on Mars. But they do argue that your claim is invalid. We have lots of satellite images of Earth at all resolutions. However, Mars is unlike Earth in having lots of high-quality artwork, whatever its origin. -|Tom|-

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by tvanflandern</i>
<br />We have lots of satellite images of Earth at all resolutions. However, Mars is unlike Earth in having lots of high-quality artwork, whatever its origin. -|Tom|-<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Maybe, but it would be interesting to see just how similar they really are. I'm talking about MRO-like images from Earth at the same distance and resolution and number of images. If they exist, I'd love to see them. The first thing I would do is count them.

rd

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Trinket</i>
<br />Claims of pareidolia are nothing more than a surrender of your ability to distinguish between reality and fiction. Many researchers don't have these mental limitations.. And have never needed to create new language to describe "their" uncertainties.. Trinket<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">I think this is something I can talk about. In my opinion this statement of yours, Trinket, shows that there is still something you either don't get about pareidolia, or do get but disagree with.

Pareidolia is not something that we have uncertainties about or have a difficulty in distinguishing between reality. Make no mistake about it: <b>we know it's pareidolia</b>. Our whole premise is that we are starting from known cases of pareidolia and working outward.

By the way, I like your collection. I think it will be valuable some day. Just like Neil's. But, like I said to Neil, I don't necessarily think it will be for the reason you intended.

rd

My model for artificial structures on Mars is similar to Trinket’s (apparent model) in that some faces will be on the borderline of seeming pareidolic especially if viewed at the “wrong” scale. Where we differ is that mine always require at least a suggestion of secondary features when viewed at the intended scale, and correct proportions. Although I think that the builders often used the natural terrain and modified it, sometimes only marginally (just a little) to give it a face-like appearance when viewed at the correct scale. Also of course it bears repeating that we are looking at ancient ruins. Whatever the construction method, and whatever these faces looked like when they were new, we can’t forget that we are looking at very old ruins—if artificial.

(As a side note, although Tom is correct in that we must be willing to engage our critics, it is too easy for the process to get nasty in a forum like this, so I am going to try to keep my engagements to a minimum, especially avoiding attacks that would require responses in kind or redundant arguments.)

Here are a couple of new faces in the vicinity of “Wil Faust’s Mound” and “Curiosity.”

First some repeats.










And some new ones.

(edited to add links:)

Wil Faust Mound, Curiosity (West Candor Chasma):
www.msss.com/moc_gallery/e01_e06/images/E06/E0600269.html
hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/PSP_002841_1740

Around a year ago and earlier, when we were discussing the Nefertiti family, there was much discussion of the “bright-toned spots” which we assumed were bright reflective boulders strewn all around the Nefertiti object. MRO has re-imaged the area about 10 km from the well known Profile Image, The location is called the Claritas/Syria Contact, and now may forever be known also as a “dust-raising” feature also, for two reasons: one good and one not so good. The good one is that the terrain may be covered with frozen volcanic dust, which, when hit by meteorites, raises a local dust storm. The not so good reason may be that this is a good excuse (if one is needed) not to image Nefertiti any time soon. Be that as it may, here are the “bright spots” (unenhanced) seen under hi-res, the contact area seen as a bright ridge, and also the original MOC context image of the area.

(edited to add links:)

Nefertiti (Claritas Syria):
www.msss.com/moc_gallery/ab1_m04/images/M0305549.html
www.msss.com/moc_gallery/e01_e06/images/E05/E0501429.html
hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/PSP_001972_1655


Claritas/Syria Contact (context)



Bright Spot 1



Bright Spot 2



Bright ridge



(Edited)

One of my speculations at the time had been that perhaps the builders seeing the “bright spots” from above (for they were surely a space-faring civilization) had the idea of a “constellation of stars,” and thus painted Nefertiti as a kind of Zodiacal object. Anyway, here’s Nefertiti again shown with the bright spots in just the right places.




Neil DeRosa

Neil (and Tom and others), to paraphrase Freud, "Sometimes an impact crater is just an impact crater". And that pretty much sums up my argument against this whole Martian art fantasy.

I could be wrong, though. Maybe the Martians were so clever as to direct the impact of space debris to create a "constellation of stars". In fact, maybe they went so far as to blow up planet K themselves and a moon (or two or ten) to create just the right canvas for their grand artistic vision. Maybe...wait for it...they created US so that there would be other beings to appreciate their work, only something went terrribly wrong and it tooks us millions of years longer than planned to advance technologically to the point that we can explore other planets while their great works slowly deteriorated so that only 0.0000000001% of humans can actually see their civilization's crowning achievment anymore. Or maybe, we're not the species that was meant to see it. Maybe, it's...wait for it...whales. And 10 million years from now they will have evolved info spacefaring creatures more advanced than us in every way. Damn! You know, I gotta admit, when you discard reason and objectivity the answers are a lot easier to come by and its a helluva lot more fun too. (Note to Moderators: This is not ridicule. Its an <i>a priori</i> prediction).

JR