The face that was spotted on Mars has had a lot of chins wagging, but there’s a lot you don’t know about it.
It all began in 1979 when the American Viking 1 Orbiter came across something odd on the planet’s surface. As per ESA, NASA said in a July 31, 1976 press release that there was a formation that ‘resembles a human head’.
Now, you’ve got to admit that it does look like a face, but how did it get there?
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Well, there are so many theories as to how the face came to be, however, they aren’t all realistic.
Where was the 'face on Mars' seen?
The strange formation was spotted in a region of the Red Planet known as Cydonia.
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Cydonia is close to where scientists discovered a large rock on Mars they named ‘Pooh Bear’ as it looks like the animal.
What is the biggest theory?
Of course, the biggest theory as to why there is a face on Mars is that there was a Martian civilisation.
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For many, this was proof that people had lived there as how else could such a structure come to be?
Considering there was a square found on Mars too, it seems like this new bit of evidence also points to extra-terrestrial life.
From the pyramids, to the wonders of the worlds, people have always claimed that anything of this size had to be down to aliens, and considering there is no human in space capable of building a face in the surface of Mars, it’s pretty compelling.
But wrong.
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What is the 'Mars face'?
Instead of being a natural formation in the shape of a face, or a structure that was created by Martians, it’s simply an illusion.
Where the face is situated is known as a mount called mesa, and this is a wide and flat area. Now, because of the camera quality back in the day, the light played a trick on the shadows and made it look like a face.
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As camera quality improved over the years, the face faded away. In reality, it's erosion.
The Red Planet was once filled with water, and the mesas in Cydonia are supposed to be icy, and through the changes in time, the surface is bound to take on different shapes - like the shape of a face, for example.
A recent study of mesas in the Chryse Planitia region found that ‘Mars’ climate was dramatically different in the distant past’, as per scientist at the Natural History Museum Dr Joe McNeil.
He said in a statement: “The mounds in Chryse Planitia are rich in clay minerals, meaning liquid water must have been present at the surface in large quantities nearly four billion years ago. As a result, the mounds preserve a near-complete history of water in this region within accessible, continuous rocky outcrops.
"The European Space Agency’s upcoming Rosalind Franklin rover will explore nearby, and could allow us to answer whether Mars ever had an ocean, and if it did, whether life could have existed there.”
Britt Jones