Is it Bigfoot? A Tusken Raider from the first “Star Wars” movie? Or just a rock? British newspapers went crazy Wednesday morning about an image from Mars that appears to show a humanoid figure descending a shallow hillside. The “alien” is actually a blurry detail in a huge panoramic photograph snapped on the edge of Mars’ Gusev crater by NASA’s Spirit rover in early November, and posted on NASA’s Web site on Jan. 2. Naturally, it took the Photoshop skills of dedicated bloggers to find the “humanoid.” “NASA scientists have been puzzled by the peculiarly life-like image,” declared the Times of London, despite the apparent fact that no one from NASA has had any comment. The skeptical Web site BadAstronomy.com, however, scoffed, “Puhlllleeeeze. A man? It’s a tiny rock only a few inches high. It’s only a few feet from the rover!”
Yes, its alien conspiracy day on DU. The original NASA photo is here. You can zoom in and spot the Martian! Hint: its in the group of rocks on the bottom left side.
MEEEZZZZ FORRASSSS MARZ
its only an ugly rock!
Its justa rock, and comparing it to the rover’s low gain antenna, not a very big one at that. Maybe 2 or three inches tall tops. Oh, and its probably an igneous rock given the coloration before all the photo-editing. Mars is littered with rocks like these.
As an aside there are a number of other problems with claiming it is something alive.
1. There is no motion to the image it appears in.
2. It only shows up in that one frame of the composite.
3. Due to these previous issues if we do assume it is alive it is probably a plant.
4. Making the assumption that it is alive, then given the probable size of the object, and finally making a final assumption that it is not a plant, we would be dealing with something like a mouse that moves slower than a three toed tree sloth.
5. You have to make a whole lot of extremely questionable assumptions based on your own belief that a rock isn’t a rock despite what highly qualified geologists and biologists say to believe this thing is a life form of any sort.
Bob, no way. The photo is really the little guy who NASA hired to do maintenance on the rover. How do you think that thing is still running? He’s up there fixing it and cleaning the solar panels. He got caught in view of the camera and had to do his best mannequin impression.
Obviously, the place is populated. In the full image, I found the clear evidence of a sculpted boulder that is in the shape of the sacred Martian Frog diety, another humanoid head poking up from behind a rock, and a fat, almost michelinesque figure who is clearly wearing a happy face visage.
Closer inspection may reveal more. Much more.
It is just a small martian taking a crap leave him alone… hahaha
# 32, Anonymous,
its only an ugly rock!
Not after a few beers !!! It’s a cute rock. With a lovely tush and beckoning smile, …
alright, we can officially declare Mars belongs to us Earthlings now. Little Martians can not defeat giants like us!!!! I think
greetings earthlings i find it funny that u people r goin crazy over a picture of me am i like a rockstar or something
It looks to me like the rock is well endowed just below that arm… It’s definitely not Mr. Bigfoot.
Okay, didn’t we spend a whole bunch of money on sending stuff to Mars…to detect WHAT? Why is everyone so skeptical? Has anyone suggested that it could be some kind of a relic, possibly sculpture? I mean you’ve got all these interesting “tricks” of shadow and light. How many of them are going to be explained away in this fashion without further investigation? And speaking of digitally enhancing images, I could believe that NASA would be more than happy to debunk any evidence of civilizations that may be found, for good reason as we wouldn’t want unnecessary competition when preparing to send humans to the red planet. I would imagine if a rover was running around this planet sending back pictures of people, the same skeptics would be explaining those away as swamp gas. Let’s all try to keep an open mind, sheesh. It all hasn’t been discovered yet ya know ! People can’t believe that this may be some sort of relic but they can believe that a rock found here has fossilized bacteria on it…supposedly from where? Mars was probably the first human experiment that went badly…we seem to be ruining this planet quite well, where will we go next?
If you zoom in on the picture, you can see other strange objects near the rover . There is what looks like an axe head and part of a handle. You can also see something that looks like a pitcher of some sort. It has a perfect round opening and what appears to be a handle. There are other objects that don’t look like rocks. It is almost like NASA stopped at the spot to look at the items on the ground. Zoom in and look close. You will see them.