00:00.00 kinkella Hello and welcome to the pseudo archeology podcast episode 116 I am your host Dr Andrew King Kella and tonight we analyze in depth the face on. Mars now. What's the deal with a face on Mars you might be telling me or saying to me or thinking about well here's the deal I think a lot of us have heard of this 1 right? The face on Mars. The idea that there is this structure on the martian surface that resembles a human face right? And of course the follow up idea that this is the leftovers of maybe not even necessarily an alien race but proof. That earlier humans that we no longer know of have made journeys to mars and beyond right? did that actually happen. Well we can all say it together on 3 1 2 3 now. Um, but don't you wish it did man I do and I I kind of sort of remember when this first came out now I'm almost too young for kind of the first flush of the face on Mars and. 01:33.98 kinkella Why am I going it over this today. It's because I saw it just as I always do right? You guys have probably heard me say this before I kind of cruise through the internet every so often just looking for pseudo archeology stuff or I keep my ear to the ground you know, um, as things come up in. Social media or just pop culture and the face of Mars came up again and honestly I'm so bumped I forgot where I just remember noticing oh hey face of Mars I should do this one so the backstory to the face on Mars is it's based on a photo. Taken in 1976 by the viking one orbiter. So what's the viking one orbiter the viking mission. Um, from 1976 was a satellite. We shot from the earth to Mars and the satellite goes around mars taking photos and there was also a lander I think most of you have probably heard of this based on the viking lander from 1976 that was the really probably the most famous part of the whole thing where they actually had a lander go down to the surface of Mars. And take photos from the surface of Mars for the first time ever really really cool stuff right? So the photo of the face on Mars is not from the lander. It's from the orbiter right? So there's the satellite that stays in martian orbit. 03:08.74 kinkella After the lander has gone down and this image when you see it, you've seen it I think it's pretty iconic. It just looks like this sort of face staring straight out into the heavens. It looks like it's kind of. Part of a square pyramid almost It's sort of squarish and then you have this sort of eyes and mouth look to it now loving this story I was initially worried that I couldn't really do it for this show because I'm like isn't that part of astronomy. But. No friends. It's a part of Zeno Archeology that's right xeno archeology spelled with an x and this is a science where if somebody is looking for extraterrestrial cultures and their remains. You are then a xeno archeologist. So I can wrangle myself into this by putting on my xeno archeology hat for a day so I count so this photo comes out and of course every pseudo archeologist goes way down the rabbit hole on this and they look around. The area and there's also sort of vaguely pyramid shaped structures. We refer to them as hills in modern english but you put those all together and of course this is some sort of not just singular martian face but evidence of. 04:41.59 kinkella Complex societies that have built multiple structures now unfortunately technology gets better and they sent more satellites. To Mars to take more photos like the Mars global surveyor and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter those guys in the early 2000 why am I so against them because they destroyed my face on Mars and what I mean by that is they took pictures with better pixels. And you could tell was just hills boo boo mars global surveyor so to give you guys an idea this is this is what's so crazy about technology those photos from 1976 the best ones. We're at a resolution of about fifty meters per pixel. So we're talking about like imagine a square of one hundred and sixty feet you know or more a lot of those photos are even worse. That's kind of at its best that would be a single pixel so you can see how this face on Mars would have been. Created it's ah it's a combination of the shadows on the natural surface at a certain time of day and the pixel count being really low the later images by like the Mars global surveyor you're looking at like 1 pixel per meter or even better see so you just have. 06:13.83 kinkella Such better resolution and then it's sort of like ah it shows you for sure that there is no such thing as a face on Mars and again doesn't that bum you out I want there to be a face on Mars can I have one of these I keep asking that to science. And science keeps saying no stupid science but we can have a little fun with how we perceive these things. Ah the term paradolia is. 06:52.84 kinkella The idea that we as humans put meaning onto meaningless actually I should say that again. The term paradolia means that we as humans put meaning into meaninglessness right? So if we see a cloud and we go oh that looks like. Ah, hot dog you know or we see ah images on toast and we think they look like Jesus those are all examples of that. Why our brain just sort of does this thing and it does make life more worth living right? but it is ultimately. Just making meaning out of a meaningless optical illusion. So that's what you have with the face on mars now even though it was disproven in the early two thousand s and again in a very simple way. You just see ah updated images and you go. Oh yeah, there's no face. Damn it. You know of course this story never will ever ever ever end but part of me does kind of want to keep it my pocket just for fun. You know and check this out I really. Like it when books or science fiction use stuff like the face on Mars as a backdrop you know I just think it's fun and stuff like that. You know this is where we can. 08:25.32 kinkella Have fun with these kinds of things in what I would call like a correct manner or a manner that makes sense where we don't take it too seriously, we have a little fun with it and there is 1 example of this in my life that. I think really did this well and that example is of course Zach Mccraken and the alien mind benders what is Zach Mccraken and the alien mind beners. Are you serious Kingin Kella yes I am and you're going to have to wait for the break in order to figure out what Zach Mccrakin and the alien mind beners actually is.