Photo: NASA/JPL/UArizona
Have you ever looked at a photo of our planet taken from high up space, one showing human settlements and their intricate patterns of buildings, roads, and parks? They kind of look like this, right? Well, this one is from an alien world, and it, of course, is not what it seems.
At first glance, the image seems to show something that looks like a black and white representation of a sprawling urban area, built on a series of islands separated by a dark sea, with long bridges connecting them together, and buildings crammed in some places more than in others.
If you see (or, more to the point, perceive) the image in this fashion, that’s pareidolia acting up. You’re not looking at a booming city, on Earth or elsewhere, but at a photo of a bunch of rocks, in a place on Mars that the people who release it didn’t even bother naming.
We don’t have buildings, roads and bridges, and not even a sea, of course. We do have instead “some very interesting light-toned rocks and narrow ridges,” and, of course, sand dunes.
The photo was taken by the HiRISE camera in orbit around the planet back in 2011, and was requested by the people over at NASA and the University of Arizona, who run the hardware, in a bid “to look for jointing and layering,” and better understand more about the planet some humans might one day call home.
The photo was taken from an altitude of 250 km (155 mi) above the surface, which of course explains how the tiny features on the ground get to rearrange themselves into a pattern our brains can understand, or relate to.
But, as is the case with most of the things we see on Mars, things are not what they seem.
If you see (or, more to the point, perceive) the image in this fashion, that’s pareidolia acting up. You’re not looking at a booming city, on Earth or elsewhere, but at a photo of a bunch of rocks, in a place on Mars that the people who release it didn’t even bother naming.
We don’t have buildings, roads and bridges, and not even a sea, of course. We do have instead “some very interesting light-toned rocks and narrow ridges,” and, of course, sand dunes.
The photo was taken by the HiRISE camera in orbit around the planet back in 2011, and was requested by the people over at NASA and the University of Arizona, who run the hardware, in a bid “to look for jointing and layering,” and better understand more about the planet some humans might one day call home.
The photo was taken from an altitude of 250 km (155 mi) above the surface, which of course explains how the tiny features on the ground get to rearrange themselves into a pattern our brains can understand, or relate to.
But, as is the case with most of the things we see on Mars, things are not what they seem.
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