“Unveiling the Martian Illusions: Strange Rock Formations and the Fascinating World of Pareidolia

2023-09-08 00:26:00
A NASA probe spotted strange-shaped rocks on the surface of Mars. The Perseverance probe, a car-sized robot, took pictures of two separate rocks, resembling a shark’s fin and a crab’s claw, according to NASA’s description. The images are the latest example of a phenomenon known as pareidolia, which is the human brain’s desire to make sense of what the eye sees, creating meaning that is not real. The most famous simulated phenomenon on the Red Planet, when NASA’s Viking 1 spacecraft captured, in 1976, a picture of what looked like a face carved on the surface of Mars. And “NASA” explained to the public, at the time of publishing the image, that it was just an illusion caused by the shadows. In 1998, NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) took pictures of the so-called “face on Mars”, which was ten times clearer than the images of the Viking 1 vehicle, and revealed that it was a rocky outcrop with a natural appearance. The Perseverance vehicle was launched to Mars in 2020 to search for signs of ancient life on the Red Planet. The rover is currently exploring an ancient river delta within the Jezero crater, which was filled with a deep lake 1,600 feet deep.
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