Face size 2000m… created by landslides, etc.
A picture reminiscent of a bear’s face was paired with a picture of the surface of Mars recently released by researchers at the University of Arizona in the United States. The eye appears to have been formed by the formation of a crater, and the nose by the collapse of the surface topography. University of Arizona, courtesy of NASA
An imagined view of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), which NASA has been operating in Mars orbit since 2006. Courtesy of NASA
A cute bear-faced terrain has been discovered on Mars, the fourth planet of the solar system and a celestial neighbor of Earth, drawing attention from the scientific community.
The American science journal Space.com reported on the 30th (local time) that researchers at the University of Arizona, who are tasked with exploring the surface of Mars with the artificial satellite ‘Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO)’, discovered a topography that looks like a bear face drawn from the front, and has recently been in the public eye. said to have been disclosed.
This picture was taken on the 12th of last month by the high-resolution camera of the MRO launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) from 251 km above Mars. In the photographed bear face, the small eyes, cute nose, and slightly open mouth are clearly visible. The entire face has a round shape.
A researcher at the University of Arizona explained through the official social network service (SNS) that “the V-shaped nose appears to have been created by the collapse of the topography,” and that “the eye was created by two craters.” The researchers estimated that the round line that formed the outline of the bear’s face was left over from the accumulation of sediment in the crater. The diameter of the bear’s face reaches 2000 m.
MRO’s high-resolution camera, which captured the topography of the bear’s face this time, has the best shooting performance among cameras sent to other planets. MRO entered Mars orbit in 2006 and entered an observation mission.
A view of ‘Inmyeonam’ taken by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) in 2007. The small picture is Inmyeonam Rock taken by Viking 1 in 1976. Courtesy of NASA
In fact, this is not the first time that a terrain that stimulates human imagination has been discovered on Mars. Space.com analyzed that this is due to a psychological phenomenon called ‘Pareidolia’.
Pareidolia is a process in which the human brain assigns meaning to shapes or patterns that do not have a special meaning and extracts familiar shapes. A representative example is seeing a person with a scary expression or a demon face in the smoke rising from a fire site.
A similar thing happened on Mars in 1976. It is ‘inmyeonam’. Inmyeonam is a large rock discovered by the Viking 1, a probe sent by NASA to Mars at the time, during ground photography, and it resembles a human face.
The forehead, eyes, nose, and mouth are clear, and the outline of the somewhat elongated face is also visible. Humans also built huge structures in the days when they developed ancient civilizations. Because of this, speculation was mixed with expectations that there was once a prosperous ancient civilization on Mars.
However, since then, such claims have been sorted out due to probes that went to Mars with cameras with improved shooting performance. The MRO, which took pictures of the topography in the shape of a bear’s face this time, also took pictures of the human face in 2007, and it was confirmed that it was not a human face, but an ordinary boulder.
