My old friend Nick Strobel has this great site called Astronomy Notes, which I use all the time when I need to look up some astronomy fact. He emails me that he has added a new feature: a Flash movie which starts with an overview of Mars and zooms in on the "Face".
I just watched it and it’s fun! He includes the original Viking image, and the 3D side views from Mars Express.
I got another email from a friend mentioning that Hoagland hardly ever mentions the face on Coast to Coast AM anymore. Why can that be…?
January 14th, 2007 at 8:55 pm
Nice movie. Given the buildup, I half-expected the final image to have Richard Hoagland’s face superimposed on the rock outcropping. At least it wasn’t a Face on Mars version of the stupid dancing Elf movie that made the rounds last month.
January 14th, 2007 at 8:55 pm
BA,
Hoagland may have gone silent about the face, but his buddy Mark Carlotto is still making all sorts of noise about it (including an article published recently in JBIS). You might want to expand your “Face on Mars” pages to cover folks other than Hoagland…
Lorne
January 14th, 2007 at 10:27 pm
When we finally get established on Mars, we should finish the job the aliens didn’t. This whole “Is it a face or isn’t it” discussion is just too controversial.
January 15th, 2007 at 12:05 am
You know, if Hogland had just billed his “insights” as a SciFi disaster story, he could have sold it to Hollywood and laughed all the way to the bank. I’ve become bored by all the “end of the world” asteroid/comet/volcano stories. Why does it seem there are so few that offer hope?
I got to thinking about comet mcnaught(a dangerous thing to do, I admit) and the possible stories that could evolve from an orbital change induced by a close solar approach(happens all the time, I hear). If the comet were to impact Luna at just the right angle(however unlikly) to launch some lunar debris into a million year earth orbit, wouldn’t the close availability of such handy resources tempt entrepreneurs to go for them? All kinds of hopeful possibilities arise from THAT scenario. Plus all those delivered volatiles from the comet now buried deep(but not TOO deep) within the moon. Water anybody?
Ah, I’m an incurable optimist.
Gary 7
January 15th, 2007 at 5:16 am
Nice flash movie. Yeah, Gary, you’re quite right: Hoagland could have put his energy into writing science fiction stories and sold books that way, rather than trying to pass his imagination off as real. Now it’s too late – he can’t save face and he’ll just be remembered as a kook.
“He can’t save face…” I really didn’t intend that pun, but it works. (-8~
January 15th, 2007 at 6:36 am
Hmm, some of those shots looked more to me like an eroded monument than the other photos I have seen before,lol
Then again the “face” definately resembles Peter Boyle from that Mel Brooks movie, so aliens couldn’t have built it, unless they did so with technology to make it look much older than it is. Maybe they got those techniques from God.
Could you imagine an advanced alien culture that is in love with b movies? We would rule the galaxy!
January 15th, 2007 at 11:19 am
But wait! After the initial zoom-in, just before it shows the original Viking 1 photo that made the “Face” famous, look just beneath… it shows a buried skull! SweartoGod. It’s uncanny.
This proves that pirates populated Mars.
I’m off to the presses…
January 15th, 2007 at 7:02 pm
Polarbeast Says: “But wait! After the initial zoom-in, just before it shows the original Viking 1 photo that made the “Face†famous, look just beneath… it shows a buried skull! SweartoGod. It’s uncanny. This proves that pirates populated Mars.”
Yes, it’s uncanny. I’ve been using that image as my wallpaper at work for a few months (trading off with the one of back-lit Saturn). I never tell anyone about the “skull”, but they all catch it on their own.
- Jack
January 17th, 2007 at 1:14 pm
not a nutt, iq 165 an artist of 45 years. Listen to me straight on and put
all the cute things to say aside. What this “face” and other features in
the sorrounding countryside indicate is a violence so vast, so brutal, so
efficient…pointing to highways beneath the Carribean, cities below the
Meditteranian, buildings below the Gulf of Mexico and “Lord Knows What-all”, plus enough cocktail ice spinning around Saturn for a large party that already took place and also to the fact that you`ll not have the technoligy to play copycat for a while yet. That FACE peers down on 30,000 year-old heads dug up while heads are being chopped off a few miles away. (nothing new to the British) It`s been watching the entire time..Why
aren`t we embarrassed?
February 18th, 2007 at 2:53 pm
Sorry, but the “Malin” photos (that were used in an “turn-around” animation at theWeb) aren’t real photos for me! They never were!
They were produced by 3D programs. Look to the textures! I am an artist.I draw, profissionally, so I have a “good eye” for this kind of thing. They are “artistics” images, not photos!
The other ESA photos (signed by G. Neukun, not by Malin) shows an half face, not diferent of all seen before. The eroded side may have been airbrushed, for to hide some aspects, too. It’s not impossible!
What seems to me a proof of cover-up: How many photos were taken, to produce that Web animation? (not the “flash” film; I am talking about the ESA animation).Do you all have a “small notion” of how many frames are necessary to produce an animation? The Mars Express didn’t take all that photos, at various angles, for make the animation, for sure! It’s impossible, they don’t make this sort of thing and they don’t seems photos!
It’s Malin trying to trick all of us, again !