Human face on Mars

Dr B G Punchihewa

There are eight planets revolving around the Sun. Mercury is the closest to the Sun, so we can call it the first planet. Earth is the third and Mars is the fourth. Planet Mars is at a distance of 228 million kilometres from the Sun, its diameter at the Equator is 6,780 kilometres.

This is about half the Earth’s diameter. On the surface of Mars, spacecraft has identified a figure, which has a striking resemblance to a human face wearing a helmet and staring straight up into space(1). The ‘face’ is about one kilometre across. It is located on a small mountain called Cydonia Mensae(2), between the southern and northern hemispheres of the planet.

This figure was first noticed, and described as a ‘face’ by the US scientist, Toby Owen, in the images sent by NASA’s Viking spacecraft in 1976 (1). What caused the face to appear on the surface of Mars?

* The plausible explanation is that this figure of a face is a natural topographical feature caused by a geological processes. The ‘face’ is probably a small mountain. There are numerous remnants of mountains in the same region, the fact that one of them has a shape similar to a human face must be treated as a coincidence.

* The unlikely possibility is that the face was carved by intelligent beings billions of years ago. In science fiction, planet Mars is supposed to have had ancient civilizations. “We cannot disprove this hypothesis”(1), in the same way we cannot rule out the possibility that the Earth is being visited by aliens, from planets outside our solar system, today in Unidentified Flying Objects.

However, there is no evidence that specifically points to this as an explanation. Therefore we think of the more plausible explanation – the natural geological processes have caused the appearance of the ‘face’.

We see objects of various sizes and shapes in the world around us. There is a general tendency for humans to imagine that some such objects look like items familiar to us.

For instance, we may see or imagine, faces in the clouds, mountains may look like animals or people, images of animals or gods in constellations. In the past, people of this country imagined that there is a picture of a rabbit on the moon, and believed that it was drawn by a god.

References:

(1) Bruce Jakoski. The Search for Life on other planets. Published in 1998 by the Cambridge University Press. Pages 169-171.

(2) Oliver Morton. Mapping Mars. Published by Fourth Estate, Harper Collins Publishers, London, in 2002. Page 181