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A myth based on the evolution-inspired belief in ‘aliens’ might now be put to bed.

Creation Ministries International Articles Magazines Store Events Media Donate Home Articles The ‘face’ on Mars BY GARY BATES PUBLISHED 05 OCT, 2009 A myth based on the evolution-inspired belief in ‘aliens’ might now be put to bed. First appeared in Creation 31(1) Pages 22 - 23, December 2008 Subscribe NASA/JPL/Malin Space Science Systems Figure 2. A 2001 picture from the Mars Global Surveyor revealed there was no ‘face’. NASA/JPL Figure 1. Viking 1’s image that started it all in 1976. While photographing potential landing sites for future manned missions to Mars, on 1 July 1976, NASA’s Viking 1 revealed some unusual features on the Martian surface. One structure which was roughly 1.9 km x 2.6 km (1.2 x 1.6 miles) looked like a human-like face complete with headdress (see figure 1). Suddenly, newspapers all over the world were proclaiming ‘The Face on Mars.’ In this same region of Mars, called Cydonia, other structures that resembled pyramids were seen. The images became a sensation, and very quickly thoughts turned to what type of aliens built them, and where they might have come from! NASA tried to calm speculation that advanced alien civilizations created the structures. But as I have discovered over many years of research into the UFO phenomenon, the true believers never let the facts get in the way of a good story. NASA’s attempted quashing only increased the conspiratorial notions that ‘true believers’ in the UFO movement already thought they ‘knew’—namely, that governments cover up the truth about UFOs and alien visitations. The idea that a long-lost Martian civilization built the structures was propagated mainly by Richard C. Hoagland, a self-promoting ‘science advisor’, who even assisted respected TV newsman Walter Cronkite during the Apollo mission broadcasts. NASA’s attempted quashing only increased the conspiratorial notions that ‘true believers’ in the UFO movement already thought they ‘knew’—namely, that governments cover up the truth about UFOs and alien visitations. The 1980s saw the UFO phenomenon explode. The book The Roswell Incident had taken root in popular culture with its false claims that an alien spacecraft crash-landed in New Mexico in 1947, and that the government hid wreckage and alien bodies retrieved from the site.1 In 1987 Hoagland released his book The Monuments of Mars: A City on the Edge of Forever, dubbing this area of Cydonia, ‘The City Square’. Controversy sells, and Hoagland’s claims became very popular. He went even further by claiming that intelligent races once existed on our own moon and also on the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. For years, famous UFO believers such as Erich Von Däniken in his best-selling book Chariots of the Gods (1968) had claimed that older, more advanced aliens had built the pyramids of Egypt and other structures. Now that ‘pyramid structures’ were seen on Mars, it seemed to add weight to claims about ancient extraterrestrials leaving their calling cards in our solar system. This also added weight to a theory of our origins known as ‘directed panspermia’2 in which primordial life on Earth was deliberately seeded by aliens, and evolution did the rest. So what were these structures? These rampant speculations were primarily based on two massive suppositions. That evolution was true because it occurred on Earth. Therefore, in a billions-of-years-old universe, alien races much older than our own could (even should) have evolved elsewhere, by now literally teeming throughout this enormous universe. If they were much older, they theoretically had the time to develop technologies much greater than our own. These space-travelling aliens could have created these artefacts thousands of years ago. That the structures on Mars were the result of purposeful design. But they weren’t, as will be shown. Were NASA’s denials a coverup? Despite the abundance of conspiracy theories, it should be remembered that space agencies like NASA would love nothing more than to find evidence of alien races. In recent years they have struggled for relevance and funding, and they know of the huge public interest in the possibility of extraterrestrial life. NASA’s long-running Origins program, which helped funding immensely, was created to search for life in space, and led to the modern field of astrobiology.3 Finding ETs would be a huge boon for NASA. However, more detailed photos of Cydonia by NASA’s 1998 Mars Global Surveyor expedition poured cold water on the ET claims about the ‘Face’. They revealed that the ‘face’ and ‘pyramids’ were no more than naturally eroded landforms (see figure 2). With the light at a certain angle the illusion of a face seemed to be present. But these pictures from a different angle showed little in the way of the sorts of design features that anyone could claim were purposeful. ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (G. Neukum), MOC (Malin Space Science Systems). Figure 3. The latest high resolution photos from ESA’s Mars Express confirm it is just a naturally occurring...