Statue on Mars? New Images and Commentary

Out of all that I have said, that is what you picked to comment on? I can only assume that you agree with the rest as you chose something that was obviously not a serious theory, hence the comment "Simpson's did it". If I were to seriously respond to your question, it would be: "How can you or I being of limited intelligence compared to an omniscient God possibly conceive, or even imagine what an omniscient God need to, or not to, do?"

Stop focusing on the wrong part of the story :P

Here is the entire 50 MEG Image. If you zoom in toward the bottom left corner, you will find the rock/alien/statue thing. The resolution is quite good and it really does stand out form anything in the entire panorama.

" . . . or Marvin preparing his iludium Q38 space modulator . . . "

lol

I have only just stumbled onto this string this morning. I consider myself a realist with a sense of humor. Lots has been said regarding the article, its author and its chief antagonist (in the literary sense). I observe from the text above many of the same common traits of human beings that are exhibited on every Discussion Board or Forum that I visit on any topic from real estate to sports to politics to science.

There are pronouncements, judgments, anecdotes, experiences, beliefs and actual attacks (no iarnuocon, you are not necessarily paranoid and yes, I copied and pasted your moniker to ensure accuracy).

Bottom line for me is that I cannot say with any certainty exactly what we are being shown in that image. Having spent extensive time hiking through and studying the amazing and jaw-dropping Canyonlands of the American Southwest over the last dozen years, I could, if I wanted to, conclude that this is a natural formation. That we are just viewing one more example, similar to the thousands of other examples that I could show you, of the common phenomenon that iarnuocon alluded to above as " . . . the human mind putting a familiar pattern on insufficient information . . . "

But, what if . . .

What if some intelligent life once existed on Mars?
What if an advanced civilization once existed on Mars?
What if they are still up there, laughing at our futile attempts at playing "Where's Waldo?" upon the surface of their planet? (Something like the old story of the seven blind men with the elephant.)
What if the image pictured above really was not a natural phenomenon?
What is "someone or something" placed a statue in that spot in some bygone age or 5 years ago?
What if Marvin is really up there, hiding behind a nearby rock, preparing his iludium Q38 space modulator?

Wouldn't that be cool?
Wouldn't that be extraordinary?
Wouldn't that create a buzz in the scientific community?
Wouldn't that create a serious buzz in America, the likes of which has just not been present for the last 30 years?

In my lifetime, I have read more than my share of the requisite amount of Science Fiction and Alien Life Form books and short stories written in the last 110 years or so. My claim to fame a couple of decades ago was that I had actually seen nearly every Sci-Fi film ever committed to celluloid from 1927's "Metropolis" through the era of George Pal and his Cold War-tinged films to the alarmist era of "Planet of the Apes" and "Soylent Green" around 1970 to the farcical "Space Balls" of Mel Brooks in 1987.

What I notice is that everybody sees that which they wish to see. Whether it is H.G. Wells in his novel "War of the Worlds" and his 110 year old assertion that intelligent life definitely exists on Mars and that it is solely bent on our destruction, or Jodie Foster in the movie "Contact" parroting Carl Sagan's assertion that if nobody is out there, it would be an awful waste of space, or Isaac Asimov and his view of an empty galaxy, devoid of intelligent life until humanity populated it as the theme throughout his Robots and Empires short stories and novels and his epic "Foundation" double trilogy. At one time, I really believed that our human race was all there was in the Universe. Later in my life, I really believed that aliens were out there and coming here, sure to destroy our civilization and way of life.

Lately, I have been more in the camp that says it really would be a waste of space if all that existed in terms of intelligent life is us. I mean, we can't even agree on what we all believe we are seeing in that small handful of pixels in that image above taken from the vast red landscape in which it was shot.

I would like to believe that I would have a similar sentiment as that expressed by Jack Nicholson doing double duty as the character Art Land in the 1996 film "Mars Attacks! when he says, " . . . If the Martians land, they're gonna need a place to stay! Just like everybody else! . . . " That sounds about right to me.

Otherwise, I may just have to sick Marvin the Martian on you all.

there are two shadows in the back round. Maybe those can help you find out what the object is if its a shadow or not

Someday some of the commentators should study a little science, the scientific paradigm results from the understanding of facts "on the ground." One does not eliminate the possibility of a carved statue or monument by saying it couldn't possibly exist because of one thing or the other, or because the demigod Carl Sagan says it couldn't. If you look at that panoramic view, forget the statue and look at the outline on the ground immediately to the right of the rover. You will see the unmistakeable outline of the foundation of some building or construction. Nature doesn't on its own create building lot outlines with the triangular lot next to it. I've seen enough title searches , zoning maps, and building plans to realize that what is there is artificially created, then washed away so only the outline of the construction remains.

I've already seen on other websites commentary that the "Arthur Clarke's Banyan Trees" cast no shadows so cannot be trees, when the shadows are large and obvious, and the fact that the images are of trees is totally obvious. If you think otherwise, just leave, you can make no contribution here, you don't know science, you don't know construction, and you probably don't know anything else.

In reading "Hollywood Joe" , above, I would like to relate something. I have seen UFOs three times in my life, when I was about 6, in 1965 when I was 18, and then the last time over Bradley Beach NJ in 1976 or 1977. No one from the vehicles introduced himself, herself, or itself to myself. It was utterly frustrating over Bradley Beach because as I ran to get under the vehicle, it kept sliding away, as though it knew it were being observed. My running was not good, as I had just given up the habit of smoking three packs of cigarettes a day. I know for a fact there is life beyond this planet of ours.

Aside from that I was briefly acquainted with the assistant public relations officer of Edwards Air Force Base, who was the father-in-law of a friend of mine. His story was that the Air Force regarded UFOs as extremely advanced versions of our space probes, and that they were "manned."

This has nothing to do with any discussion of where UFOs come from, I do not think that monumental architecture on Mars was built by a UFO-flying culture. What one should remember, if you ever took much of a college biology course, is that one cubic centimeter of soil, say from any of the lower 48 states, will contain probably 50,000 or more species of microorganisms, bacteria and viruses, and probably 100,000 or more specimens of each species. If there is a professor of Biology out there, please verify this or make me stand corrected.

If a soil sample from Mars is released on the Earth our higher life could readily and quickly, within weeks, be compromised. Now forget soil samples: the best statistics for UFOs is that there are, world-wide, since at least the end of WWII, some 300,000 "landings" of UFOs per year. A "landing" is where a UFO of whatever configuration sets down on the ground or hovers directly above it, a "hatch" opens, and some sort of being comes out and does something, picks up a plant, or walks around, takes water from a reservoir, or whatever. Stop and think however, that once the hatch is opened, their germs come out and ours go in.

It puzzles and troubles me that there is no published results of microorganisms existing on Earth that vary from our standard genetic heritage. The Apollo moon space suits shed hundreds of microorganisms per second, the contaminated arm of the Surveyor that was retrieved had germs that were cultured after it had been on the lunar surface several years. Germs survive. Should not both we and the numerous UFO cultures have wiped each other out, just as Amerinds were savaged by Old World diseases explorers brought to the Western Hemisphere? I know what I have seen but a great argument against the reality of UFOs and UFOnauts is that the interactions of their microorganisms on our ecosystems would have been noticeable and perhaps fatal. In other words, we shouldn't even be here.

Bringing back soil from Mars is very possibly the greatest possible health hazard to human life imaginable. Airborne Martian pathogens might flourish beyond any description; the Viking landers reported intense activity in their onboard labs, some say chemical, some say organic. Do we risk bringing Martian soil back to Earth under any conditions until human volunteers has lived for a lengthy time in a closed environment with the stuff, in a facility that is quarantined to the extent that the human volunteers, if they start to die, will be abandoned, live and in living color in front of the world?

We need manned bases on the Martian moons as soon as possible, and we need to verify with robot landers the various tree species now growing on Mars. We need dozens of Spirit rovers going over every shred of evidence of Mars as a former home to civilization.

Another theory worth consideration.

"...very little consideration is given to the concept that some (entities) may simply exist on the earth (or other planets) in a way that isn't usually perceptible to us. We continue to assume that we can perceive everything that is "real" with our 5 senses despite all the evidence to the contrary. An overzealous belief in a science and philosophy of materialism has probably resulted in an irrational amount of faith in our physical senses.

If real unseen beings exist on Earth, it seems likely that inhabitants of other planets may be as hidden to our 5 senses as the jinn are! So much life is crammed into a single cubic inch of backyard soil that it is unlikely that the potential inherent in a whole planet is just wasted.

This egocentric, gotta-have-it-on-my-terms and see-it-with-my-eyes mindset has probably always been the biggest impediment to advances in scientific knowledge. Before the invention of the microscope, medicine denied the existence of microbes. Even though we can't see microbes, radio and TV waves, we now accept that they exist. We should also accept that we may not find life on other planets so long as we insist that it will be like our life and apparent to our 5 senses.

The Jinn concept challenges us to realize how limited our perceptions are. Things really don't work quite the way we think they do. Life is an ever deepening mystery! Most of us aren't comfortable with making that a part of our working hypothesis, but our explorations will be enriched and strengthened if we do."

An excerpt by Lydia Mancini from

""

Stop to consider that of all the odd things that may exist, we know that "spontaneous combustion", in which a human body is burned (cremated) to ashes, including the bone (1200 deg F), really exists, and is totally unexplainable, since surrounding, flammable furniture and furnishings are at most slightly charred. As far as I know, there is no scientific explanation as to how this occurs.

Matter and energy are interchangeable, "physicality" as a word possibly doesn't pass the "Scrabble test." Telepathy exists but cannot be reproduced on demand, but none of this is terribly relevant to the question as to whether or not that "statue" is a real artifact or simply a chance wind-blown sculpture.

The rovers' purpose is the discovery up close of new things. NASA would have us believe they are doing science by showing how layers of soil demonstrate past wet conditions on Mars, and by stating some meteorites came from Mars and have microfossils in them. Right now there is a real question and the answer can be obtained with no additional funding or expense on the part of NASA or the federal budget or another launch with its long travel time delay simply by turning the Rover around and going back to where the statue is and doing extreme closeups. This has to do with the reproducability aspect of scientific research. If it's all light and shadows we'll just see an uninteresting rock. But the thing can be imaged through an entire Martian day (24hrs 37min) with shadows from more than one angle. Wouldn't it really be something if it turned out to be a shrine, perhaps with an inscription in the rock underneath it! This would knock the socks off of organized science and organized religion here on our own little isolated planet and would demonstrate that life and intelligent life permeates the universe. Maybe if people started to write their congresscritters this would be done. Maybe some rovers would be sent to set down among the trees around the South Pole, and maybe some rovers would be set down in Cydonia to get real good closeups of the Face and its associated structures, mesas, mounds and whatnot. This is science.

What if one of the rovers comes toodling around a hill and spots a shrine with a cross-like object in it with a carved biped shown to be stretched out by the arms and attached to the cross with nails? What if an undeniable crucifix were discovered on Mars, artificially produced? Shades of "Red Planet Mars" and/or "Rocketship X/M"? By the way, do any of these machines have geiger counters on them, can anyone tell me that? They now want to put a microphone on them to hear "Martian sounds", but what about simply putting a standard AM/FM transistor radio on each of them, with a scanner? How about that? Would only weigh a few ounces. Is this stupid? Just what if the Martians saw their end coming and set up transmitters with recordings to tell their story, long after they would have perished? What if ? NASA, aside from not knowing what science is all about (since they depend so much on pleasing the Congressboobs who fund them), lacks imagination and a sense of humor. Those people running NASA, almost all of them got their start from reading '50s and before sci-fi stories and comics. We need a new stage in science and exploration. I've been waiting all my life for real space exploration and we have a bunch of boorish dullards running the show.

Well, I cannot criticize one way or the other the ideas the brain boys at JPL have for exploring Mars since I haven't seen them. The first item of any realistic plan is quarantine. The lunar astronauts were covered with dust from walking on the moon and so may be Mars astronauts, who will be picking up Mars microbial life and donating earth microbes to the martian biosphere. Space may be so silent because perhaps a lot of planetary civilizations that started exploring neighboring planets in their own systems killed themselves off in the name of science. NASA gave us the space shuttle, now admitted to be a waste, as it flies low, slow and seldom and make sensational landings, in pieces. It builds a low earth orbit space station, when it should be building a series of ships that function dually as space stations and the first ships to fly to Mars' orbit. NASA came up with plan after plan for the space station, spending more on the plans than the current space station costs. And probably NASA is still funded below the funding level of the Food Stamp program. We need to establish bases on the two moons of Mars, declare a quarantine of the Martian surface until we have brought up samples of Martian soil and of their plant life for a decade or so and seen how well long term astronauts on Phobos and Deimos react to them. These bases would be a second screen because the volunteers to go there would stay there until they die, either naturally or of Martian "bugs."
Take lots of morphine along. The closest they could return to earth would be a quarantined lunar base. This is real science.

Is it so hard to believe that in an infinite universe, with several billion years of evolution time or creation if you so believe, that there just might have been life created and possibly destroyed in another place other than our little world?

Are we so pompous and full of ourselves that we think we are alone in this universe?

And is it so hard to believe that in a solar system that we know can support life and does support life, might have supported it elsewhere at a time when conditions might have been different?

And If you believe in global warming, is it so hard to believe that an ancient civilization might have messed up there world and had to move elsewhere?

And if you think we are beyond being hit by an asteroid that could knock the living crap out of this planet and destroy it like might have happened to Mars, you are sadly mistaken.

This rock very well could be that, just a rock.

But then again, it is possible it might be a statue of your ancestor.

It's unlikely that the societies on Mars messed up their planet; one has to only look a short time at the solar system to realize that it's the aftermath of a gigantic traffic accident. Earth and Venus are gravity locked in that Venus, when on the same side of the sun as the earth, presents the same face to the Earth. Venus also rotates backwards compared to the other planets. The Earth and Mars have virtually the same axial tilt and length of day and Mars has a very eccentric orbit, just outside the Earth's magnetic tail. Simply by studying ancient calendars it is apparent the Moon has occupied orbits around the Earth that have varied, and according to one pre-Roman people in Italy (from Velikovsky), there was once a sky without Moon, meaning it's a recent acquisition. And so on. There was a massive water episode throughout the solar system, resulting in Uranus 6000 mile deep highly saline warm water ocean (70 deg F, if I recall correctly, but I will stand corrected), Saturn's rings are tiny H2O pellets and grains and so on, there is much more and too much to put here.

Mars was inundated, as was the Earth and all the other planets of this solar system. (to be continued)

To AB:

Where is "The Escape Velocity" available? What article are you referring to? In the middle of everything else I am doing, including trying to put an elderly van through state inspection, I am trying to give some real idea as to the seminal work in planetary physics done by Velikovsky, whose name seems unknown to the majority of young people today. This is because of major universities and groups like NASA and JPL completely banning his work. Such openmindedness in science.

I'm writing from general knowledge and reading Velikovsky and others since the 1960s.

I found Escape Velocity on the Internet. This does not solve the problem of introducing this information to major universities or science research centers where one's career is at risk for mentioning such things or names as "Velikovsky." Science relishes research on the extinction of species by a meteor or asteroid hit 65 million years ago, but not 15,000 or 3,000 years ago, or the fall of naptha and meteors over the midwest in 1871, causing the Great Chicago Fire, for example. Mankind in Amnesia. Velikovsky should have a chair named after him in every major university in the country. One magazine article does not suffice. They now ooh and aah when they find an extrasolar planet the size of Jupiter many times over within a distance from the primary closer than Mercury is to our own primary. Where it could not have formed.

Velikovsky is denounced as fringe science or some variety of hoodoo. Some things he got very very wrong, but mostly he did seminal work from original sources perhaps as only one with his multilingual background and Jewish faith could. Whoever reads my commentaries should read "Lucifer's Hammer",
or what happens when civilization collapses due to a comet fragmenting and striking the northern hemisphere and wiping out most of civilization. When we are at the stage when we could push it aside.

More to come, hopefully, especially in the form of commentary on this.

I took a trip with my son very recently to Mt. Rushmore. When the sun hits at just the right angle, some of the faces cannot be made out and look like natural outcroppings of rock. I think that this case along with the "face" on Mars is similar. When one goes through the Wisconsin Dells, the tour director points out natural outcroppings of rock that are supposed to look like different things. However, one needs to use their imagination to see what they are pointing out. The pictures from Mars show things that are so obvious that no imagination in necessary and should be taken seriously and studied and the information shared freely with the people.

Censorship and mind control in this "free" society extends into all subjects. The Warren Commission closed the debate on who killed JFK, but now it appears that even RFK was gunned down by a conspiracy, the two of them by some combination of Cubans, and/or Mafioso, and or right-wingers, possibly in association with the CIA or FBI, and this without any hysterical finger pointing. Yet we have a presidential election in which all the major issues are ignored. If our political life can be so controlled, it is obvious that science can be stage-managed as well, for an example, simply review the current global warming nonsense, but stop to see just how much money Al Gore & Company make on it.

NASA needs money and will alter the results of its missions to accomodate the views of the funding bodies and the "experts." Please notice that although Princeton made Velikovsky a Professor Emeritus, almost all other major schools have ignored him. No school right now teaches courses on lunar or Martian artifacts (or pictures thereof.) It's all "UFO crazies' stuff!!" It is obvious to me there was a flourishing civilization on Mars, probably up until a few thousand years ago, but no one at all in the paid science community will comment on it or even acknowledge it. From my one contact at Edwards AFB I know that the USAF regards UFOs as being real interplanetary or interstellar ships, and the newspapers in the 1950s pretty much acknowledged this but now there is nothing but silence about it and UFOs do not merit a mention, let alone a discussion.

to AB: You didn't answer anything about the article, but the real matter here is that published and government-financed science will not discuss Velikovsky, UFOs (which have nothing to do with each other, by the way), the real reason for the destruction of Chicago in 1871 or many other matters. I assume you are referring to the article in Escape Velocity, but you don't cite where it can be found. Velikovsky did seminal work on planetary physics, and, no , he cannot be relegated to an article in one of some number of magazines that are regarded as fringe publications by organized science. You seem to be trying to be a little bit too aloof with this two-sentence comment of yours, which deals with no specifics. Major science, establishment science, should long before now been dealing with the issues brought up in Worlds in Collision et seq but doesn't.

The point I made in my last comment was the ease with which the establishment press can present any opinion or hogwash as the truth, from the JFK assassination, to global warming with its idiotic example that Venus demonstrates a runaway greenhouse effect, to the present Presidential campaign in which most real major issues are avoided. That was the point. No, the Warren Commission has nothing factually to do with interesting imagery from the landers on Mars, but the fact that the Warren Commission pulled the hoax of the century in naming so and so as the lone gunman and all the rest of it, and the media bought it is a striking example of how propaganda is shoved down our throats as fact.

That NASA, for example is just now publicizing water on Mars, when, in fact the original Viking Orbiter (One or Two I forget which one) imaged, clearly, geysers on Mars, in 1976 or 1977 shows how science is managed. Too many people take the news at face value, gullible readers all. I remember, for another example you will not like, how the newspapers the day after the 1968 Democratic Convention described the chaos, in detail, as a police riot, which it was, and then, without blinking an editorial eyelash, totally quashed that interpretation in later stories.

If you want to get back to UFOs, the first story about the Roswell crash described a flying disc, and then it magically became a weather balloon (to be followed by swamp gas in the Hillsdale Michigan case.) I knew it was a bit risky to talk about the Warren Commission in a discussion group on this matter, but I think it is important that readers know that over the years (I am 62) I have watched news management which is censorship which is propaganda distorting reality beyond our wildest imaginations. I will try being more lucid or whatever may appeal to the average reader of this forum, but I will become more lengthy in my remarks by so doing.

Reality is, no one seems ready to discuss, rationally, the civilization(s) on Mars which were wiped out, in a cataclysm well described by Immanuel Velikovsky, drawing from his sources.

There is more to it.

1. There seems to be a gravel road leading up to the 'statue.'

2. Below the left side of the large hill in the background, there is a smaller hill, upon this hill there seems to be another statue with an extended pointing arm.

3. Just above the channels on the right side, lying slanted on the side of an incline is what appears to be a carved rectangular block with a side-view humanoid head complete with beard, eye, ear and some kind of head-dress, reminiscent of carved king or warrior statues on earth.

Just where can this second statue be found, and the side-view face? When making the statement above, it is always handy to reference the source, no one else has mentioned this.

Im sure it was just the driver who had gone for a pee and on the way back he got caught by Nasa remotely requesting a photo. :)

Seriously though, very strange but Im sure Nasa could note the position and find a top down photo to see if the rock (or the driver) has moved from that position. Its not exactly rocket science to figure it out. However, if I was NASA, I would just let people get excited about it, it takes the eyes off them spending too much on junk. :D

Oh, should really also mention the phonomena of floating rocks, just google image "floating rocks" and you will find all sorts of optical illusions from bad light / obscure lighting positions etc

Sometimes a picture of a statue is a picture of a statue. Dal1980's comments seem to me sophmoric, to say the least. There seems to be a group of people infatuated with the idea that because there are such things as optical illusions ( ranging from mirages to the types once publicized in OMNI magazine) and the ability of programmers to make fake pictures, that everything is questionable
and subject to debate. Google's " floating rocks" have nothing to do with the imagery under discussion. The second paragraph says it all, "spending too much time on junk." That may well be Dal1980's problem.

The lighting conditions for the rock statue and surroundings are excellent. It would be nice to have a second series of images, to see the face of the statue in light rather than shadow. This forum does not need pseudosophistication and glib statements about optical illusions, especially from people who probably could not handle a simple and elementary physics equation dealing with light reflection or refraction, but whose knowledge is all external, or make believe, in computers, so they need not study or understand anything.