This one is caused by gravitational lensing-the light from the stars in the background is being bent, via gravity, around the star in the foreground, creating the illusion of a sphere of light. Despite this functional ambiguity, as soon as you recognize it as a face-like structure, it sure starts looking like a face.Ī Smiling Gravitational Lens Image: NASA/ESA.Īnother creepy face in the cosmos. We see what could pass as eyes, and an outline that looks more like a cat's head than anything else. This is a nebula that looks like some kind of demon, something out of Lord of the Rings. The Ghost Head Nebula Image: NASA/ESA/Mohammad Heydari-Malayeri. And when we see something that looks like a face carved into the surface of another planet, it grabs our interest in a big way. The 'Face' on Mars is simply a freak coincidence (camera and lighting conditions) combined with our evolved capacity to rapidly recognize things that look like faces. But, if you believe that some object you're looking at is a representation of a face, then you will begin to see the facial features that you're expecting to see. I mean, you can't just believe that you're Superman and then start flying. To an extent, our internal beliefs are responsible for shaping our external reality. You may even be convinced that it's really there. If you're still following along, you should be able to see a face. The Sleeping Old Man on Mars? Image: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona. Even the HiRISE image can be made ambiguous if you look at it long enough and apply some imagination, you can start to see certain facial features popping out of that rocky Martian feature.ĭon't believe me? Just think 'sleeping old man' and look again: Ultimately, this is less a story about human faces appearing on Mars and more a story about the inner workings of the human mind. Again, you can't un-see what has already been seen. Image: Dan Levesque.ĭon't get caught up admiring my artistry for too long. It's stuck in your head every time you look at the same image or the same geological feature.Ī Woman's Face on Mars? Image: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona.

The thing is that, once you've seen the outline of a humanoid figure (mouse-over the image), you can't un-see it. The Man on Mars? Image: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona.ĭon't tell me you didn't see it all along. Therefore, our inherent logic in this case is: observe a face carved into the surface of Mars-someone must have done it-must have been aliens. The side-effect of this is that we a) see faces everywhere, and b) make assumptions about the origins of phenomena we observe in the world. The former allowed us to better track animals and understand seasonal cycles, while the latter allowed us to recognize individuals while living in larger groups or tribes. As our species evolved hunting and gathering in large groups, we developed the skills of pattern recognition and facial recognition. The culprit here is human psychology itself. It's just the right amount of obscurity to get our visual senses tingling. The other side of the face is blocked by shadow, but our brain automatically fills in the rest. The protruding peak in the middle creates thenose, while the sunk-in areas give the illusion of an eye and part of a mouth.

If we look closely, we can see how the clearer modern image (left) could give rise to the older and less-detailed image (right) under certain lighting conditions and poorer optics. Image (left): NASA/JPL/University of Arizona. These images were taken over 30 years apart. **Here are the two side by side, one from 2007 and one from 1976: That doesn't mean the first picture is fake, just that it's a coincidentally weird picture of just one of Mars' many surface features. So, either there really was a face-and it somehow got covered up-or there was never a face at all. NASA's modern HiRISE imager currently in orbit around Mars captured this same feature some 30 years later:Ī face on Mars? Maybe not. Later, as more advanced probes with improved optics ventured to Mars, image detail improved dramatically. At the time, Viking was cutting-edge technology, and it sure looked like there was a human face carved into the surface of Mars. That's right-an image of a feature on Mars that resembles a human face. NASA's Viking probe took that photo 40 years ago. The face on Mars, captured by Viking, circa 1976. Our brains just trick us into thinking there is. There is no face on Mars, nor is there a heart on Pluto.

Face of mars before and after