Human Figure On Mars!

Read all about it! Human figure found on Mars!

It looks like a tiny figurine to me but some people think it could be a living thing. It was picked up by the cameras of Mars-roving robot Spirit. Is this proof of life on Mars?

I doubt it. Sure it may look like a human shape but I think our minds are playing tricks on us. Even more amazing is that they have a name for these tricks, pareidolia.

Pareidolia is when you are able to see something significant in some vague random shape or image. It's the same thing that lets you see puppy dogs in clouds and Jesus in a potato.

But I think if you look closely at the Mars picture, you can see striations in the lower "skirt" part of the figure that match the striations seen in the nearby rocks. You can also see at least one other hook shape in a rock nearby that is similar in form to the "arm" of the Mars figure.

So it's all a big misunderstanding, sort of like the famous Cydonia complex on Mars. This was the image of the face seen on the surface of the planet from Viking 1 and later debunked by the Mars Global Surveyor.

I remember I was pretty upset when they showed Cydonia to be a regular hill rather than an ancient and partially buried version of the Sphinx in Egypt. How cool would that have been to have found another Sphinx on another planet?

But of course there are still people who believe Cydonia is a Sphinx and that the "government" is just covering it up by showing is all doctored images.

I guess we'll never know. Or will we?