NASA's mysterious 'man on Mars' photo

The idea that there may be life on Mars has been around for centuries, but the theory got a boost from photos taken by the NASA robot Spirit. The images, taken in 2004 and released in January 2008, show a vaguely humanoid figure amid rocks on the Martian landscape. It's not clear from the image what the scale is, and some believe it is a human. The "man on Mars" suggestion started out as a joke on a blog but soon became an international story as conspiracy theorists took hold. A headline in U.K.'s Daily Telegraph read, "Bigfoot on Mars? NASA Captures Alien Figure." However far-fetched the explanations, the photo does show an image that could be interpreted as a human form. But what is it?

It's hard enough to accurately recognize figures and faces across a room. Mars, depending on when you measure it, is about 35 million miles away. The best telescopes aren't of much help in determining surface features, and that's why NASA sent robots with cameras to Mars.

The reason many people see a figure on the Martian landscape is the same reason that people see faces in clouds, Rorschach blots, and coffee stains. This phenomenon, called pareidolia, is well known in psychology, and it is the cause of many supposedly mysterious and miraculous events (including the famous "Jesus in the Tortilla"). Examples are all around us; in fact, if you have a New Hampshire state quarter, you have an example of pareidolia in your pocket or purse (take a look).

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Strong evidence for this psychological explanation lies in the fact that the Spirit image does not look like Martian life (since we don't know what life oil Mars looks like), but instead resembles life here oil Earth--specifically human life. The image is the result of human interpretation. If you look at the entire image (not just the close-up), you will find several rocks and features that resemble non-human Earth life, such as armadillos and snakes. For all we know, life on Mars could look exactly like the rocks and boulders that Spirit has been photographing for years.

This is of course not the first time that NASA images reportedly showed evidence of Martian life. Richard Hoagland claimed that 1976 photographs of the Cydonia region of Mars showed a human-like face and was clear evidence of aliens. The "Face on Mars" was eventually disproved by later Mars Global Surveyor photographs of the same region in far higher resolution than was possible in 1976.

According to astronomer Phil Plait of the Bad Astronomy Web site, if the image really is of a man on Mars, he's awfully small: "Talk about a tempest in a teacup! The rock on Mars is actually just a few inches high and a few yards from the camera. A few million years of Martian winds sculpted it into an odd shape, which happens to look like, well, a Bigfoot! It's just our natural tendency to see familiar shapes in random objects."

Even though logic and science suggest that the image is of a rock and not an animal, UFO buffs and conspiracy theorists will continue to speculate. Wouldn't it be ironic if the figure on Mars was actually a man in a Bigfoot costume?

Benjamin Radford is managing editor of the SKEPTICAL INQUIRER.

COPYRIGHT 2008 Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal
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