Figure 1. Part of Viking image
70a13 showing “Face” at Cydonia. Contrast was
adjusted separately on sunlit and shadowed
(outlined) sides to bring out details of both at
comparable lighting levels. Bright border of
outline is an artefact of brightening everything
inside the outline. |
Abstract: The
MGS spacecraft took a high-resolution photo of
the “Face on Mars” in April, 1998. That image suffered
from four handicaps: a low viewing angle; a low Sun
angle from the direction under the “chin”; an almost
complete lack of contrast; and enough cloudiness to
scatter most of the light and eliminate shadows. To add
to these difficult circumstances, JPL-MIPL personnel,
apparently judging that the controversy over
artificiality would not be ended when the actual photo
was released, processed the image through two filters
having the effect of flattening and suppressing image
details. This step is documented at a JPL web site. Here
we do image processing correctly and present the results
of computer corrections to compensate for the poor
lighting and low viewing angle. The actual image shows
clearly the impropriety of the JPL-MIPL actions because
the visual impression of artificiality persists.
However, appearances after a discovery are not a valid
basis for drawing conclusions, but only for forming
hypotheses for further testing. This is called the a
priori principle of scientific method. The 1976
Viking imagery allowed the formation of competing
hypotheses, natural vs. artificial origin, and tests to
distinguish them. When applied to the high-resolution
MGS image of the Face, all artificiality
predictions were fulfilled despite a lack of background
noise. The combined a priori odds against a
natural origin of the Face on Mars are 1021
to 1.
Background
The “Face” at Cydonia on Mars is
shown in 1976 medium resolution Viking spacecraft
image 70a13 in Figure 1, and in the Mars Global
Surveyor (MGS) spacecraft strip-image
SP1-22003 in Figure 2. The mesa is about 2.5 km tall by
2 km wide, and extends several hundred meters above
ground level. The appearance is much less face-like in
the high-resolution MGS image in Figure 2 than in
the original Viking image in Figure 1 for the
following reasons:
(1) The MGS
spacecraft took its image from a low-perspective angle
well to the west, rather than from nearly overhead as in
the Viking spacecraft view. Mainly the western
half of the “Face” is seen in Figure 2, with the eastern
half largely hidden behind the nose ridge.
(2) Sunlight shines on
the Face mesa from the low west in the Viking
image, but from the low southeast in the MGS
image. The latter tends to distort facial features, much
like a flashlight held under the chin.
(3) The Viking
image had a normal variation of grayscale levels to
provide contrast between adjacent features. The range of
grayscale levels in the MGS image was inadequate
to provide the amount of contrast normally utilized by
the human eye.
(4) Following analysis,
it became apparent that the major face-like features on
the mesa have the characteristic that they cast shadows
that enhance the face-like appearance at almost any
Sun-angle. For example, the eye socket is a depression
that contains the shadow of its walls while the Sun is
anywhere but overhead. It is similar for the mouth
feature, which casts a shadow into the ravine between
the lips at most times of day. The facial appearance is
enhanced by such shadows, but is difficult to separate
from the background when the shadows are absent. By bad
luck, the sunlight was so scattered by thin cloud cover
that light on the Face was mainly ambient
(omni-directional, shadow-free) light. This partially
ameliorates difficulty (2), but creates a greater
problem by removing one element important to the
perceived appearance of the mesa.
Figure 2. Part of
MGS image SP1-22003 showing “Face” at
Cydonia. Inset locates “facial” features. Contrast
is adjusted separately on the two sides, with the
sunlit portions outlined. Dark border of outline
is an artefact caused by darkening everything
inside the outline to bring out its
details.
|
Photographs of actual human faces
and of face sculptures taken under similar viewing
perspective and lighting conditions as prevailed for
Figure 2 are commonly no longer recognizable as faces.
The image in Figure 2 initially leaves the question of
the degree to which the mesa resembles a face
unresolved. Various features of Figure 2 can be cited on
both sides of the issue.
Unfortunately for the objectivity
that scientists are supposed to maintain, the Jet
Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) apparently was unhappy that
the high-resolution image received by its spacecraft did
not immediately settle the artificiality controversy.
Strong public statements ridiculing the “Face” and the
serious scientific investigation thereof had previously
been issued by certain scientists working for JPL,
Caltech (which owns JPL), and JPL contractors, and by
other supporters of robotic space exploration (managed
and controlled almost exclusively by JPL) over manned
space exploration (for which little science or funding
goes to JPL). Indeed, the laboratory and MSSS, its
contractor for the MGS imaging mission, initially
refused to take the high-resolution images of the “Face”
on the stated grounds that it would be a waste of public
funds and a slap at the integrity of the scientists in
the program. They were ordered to take them anyway by
NASA Headquarters.
When the first picture arrived at
JPL, its Mission Image Processing Laboratory (MIPL)
passed the image through two filters, a low-pass filter
and a high-pass filter. It is difficult to see how usage
of these filters on this image before release to the
media could be scientifically justified. Indeed, usage
of the high-pass filter gave an especially damaging
impression. From Adobe’s Photoshop software, we find the
following description of the function and purpose of
this filter:
“High Pass Filter: Retains edge
details … and suppresses the rest of the image. … The
filter removes low-frequency detail in an image … The
filter is useful for extracting line art and large
black-and-white areas from scanned images.”
The usage of these filters on the
“Face” image is documented on the JPL web site
<http://mpfwww.jpl.nasa.
gov/mgs/target/CYD1/index.html>. The same day that
the raw spacecraft image data was received at MSSS and
posted to the Internet, the JPL Public Information
Office (PIO) released the MIPL-created, filtered image
shown in Figure 3 to the world media.
Figure 3.
High-pass-filtered “Face” image released by JPL to
the world media.
|
As a direct consequence of this act,
it has become extraordinarily difficult to get material
on this subject considered in the scientific community.
For example, a technical abstract on the subject of
Cydonia submitted by this author in the summer of 1998
for oral presentation to the Division of Planetary
Science (DPS) of the American Astronomical Society was
rejected. This was the only rejection of an abstract by
a member in good standing at this meeting, with over 600
other abstracts accepted. Rejection of a
member-submitted abstract is a rare event (unprecedented
for this author) because presentation of papers before
peers is the primary means of getting feedback before
submitting written versions of papers to journals for
peer review, and because justification of conclusions is
not normally provided in an abstract. The DPS abstract
review committee based its decision on the evidence they
had seen with their own eyes in the image released by
JPL-PIO to the media. On appeal, they reversed their
decision and accepted the abstract for a late poster
paper; but the damage had already been done. The subject
matter of Cydonia and the “Face” on Mars was by then on
a list of topics not suitable for consideration by
certain mainstream technical journals such as
Nature magazine. By editorial policy, papers on
the subject of the “Face” can no longer receive peer
review at that magazine.
Whatever your opinion about the
artificiality of the “Face” may be, and whatever the
actual merits of the issue may be, it seems beyond
dispute that allowing world opinion to be based on the
image in Figure 3 was scientifically inappropriate. When
considering why this happened, we appear to be left with
an unhappy choice between dishonesty and incompetence.
Correcting the
Photographic Shortcomings of the MGS “Face”
So what would the Face mesa have
looked like if the image had been taken under better
lighting conditions from an overhead perspective? Modern
computer image enhancement techniques can do an
excellent job of simulating different lighting and
perspectives without significant alteration or
distortion of the image content. The results presented
here are the combined efforts of three professionals
skilled in computer graphics and image enhancement.
Boris Starosta noted that, because of the abnormal
lighting conditions, the negative of the April 1998
MGS Face image looked more like the 1976
Viking image than its positive. Boris began with
the MGS negative (shown in the left panel of
Figure 4), and switched the lighting so that the source
of illumination was northwest (upper left) of the Face
and creating shadows accordingly. This view is shown on
the cover of this issue and in the center panel of
Figure 4. Mark Carlotto had previously mapped heights on
the Face using shape-from-shading and triangulation
techniques, allowing him to change viewing angles, for
example, to overhead. This process is called
“orthorectification”. That view is shown in the right
panel of Figure 4. Mark Kelly optimized the brightness
and contrast for the purpose, then put the transition
between these steps into an animation, available on our
web site at <http://metaresearch.org>. The
starting, middle, and end images from Kelly’s animation
are shown in Figure 4.
Figure 4. Left: negative of the Face
as seen by the MGS spacecraft in April,
1998. Center: Lighting source switched from SE to
NW. Right: Viewing angle switched from 45° west to
overhead. Click on above image to view full
animation by Mark Kelly, whose web site is <http://www.electrobus.com/>. Need an animation
viewer? Click here
and see link at end of page.
| Before I studied image
processing myself, I worried that the biases of the
person doing the processing might contribute
significantly to the image seen. Now that I am more
familiar with the process, I can see that it uses
objective, standardized computer techniques, and does
not add features to an image that are not present in the
original. The techniques used are more like focusing a
camera – they change the camera’s view to one more like
what the human eye would see if viewing directly. The
exception is the left portion of the east (right-side)
eye, which was hidden behind the nose ridge, and for
which no data exists other than that in Figure 1. It was
therefore filled out artistically by assuming symmetry
with the other eye socket. ** [See footnote at
end.] **
The JPL personnel who
decided to release Figure 3 to the media were right
about one thing. If they had released the unfiltered
spacecraft image to the press, the controversy over
artificiality of the Face would not have been settled in
the minds of many fair-minded people.
Proof
that the “Face” is Artificial
The Viking images presented us with a mesa and a
reason to suspect artificiality – its seemingly
improbable humanoid-face-like appearance. However, as is
well known, face-like images sometimes appear in clouds,
profiles of mountains, and various other random or
visually noisy scenes. Moreover, humans have a tendency
to perceive order, even in the midst of chaos. A
scientific principle known as the a priori
principle, a part of scientific method, teaches us that
judgments of the significance of unexpected findings in
random data have ambiguous significance at best, and are
generally not significant. This is simply because
remarkably regular patterns frequently arise by chance,
even when the a priori odds are billions to one
against that happening.
For example, every deal
of 13 playing cards gets the player 13 unique cards. The
odds against being dealt those specific 13 cards are
635-billion-to-1. Yet every hand dealt yields 13 unique
cards with the same long odds against that particular
deal happening by chance. Whether the player receives 13
random cards or 13 spades, the odds against the unique
result of the deal occurring by chance are the
same.
By contrast, if someone predicts before the deal takes
place that he/she will be dealt 13 spades (or any 13
unique cards), and that prediction turns out to be
correct, we may be certain, at odds of 635 billion to 1,
that something other than chance was responsible for
this successful prediction. Both scenarios involved the
same event – a hand of 13 spades dealt to a particular
player from a deck of 52 cards. In one case, no correct
prediction was made in advance, nor was one possible. In
the other case, a correct prediction in advance of the
deal was made. The latter is an a priori
prediction, meaning one made before the result is known.
The expression a priori means “proceeding from a
known or assumed cause to a necessarily related effect;
deductive; based on a hypothesis or theory rather than
on experiment or experience; made before or without
examination; not [yet] supported by factual study.”
When an a priori prediction
exists, the results then become a test of the hypothesis
on which the prediction is based. A successful
prediction tends to support the hypothesis that
generated it, and a failed prediction tends to falsify
the hypothesis that generated it. The degree of support
or falsification depends on how probable or improbable
it was that the prediction would happen or fail to
happen by chance alone. A priori predictions are
a valid basis for testing scientific hypotheses. A
posteriori findings (made after the results are
known, but still sometimes called “predictions”) are
generally not a valid basis for drawing conclusions
because their significance is, at best, ambiguous or
indeterminate. The number of possible ways an a
posteriori finding might have arisen by chance is
usually vast and impossible to estimate in an unbiased
way. Ignoring the results of an a priori
prediction is no more valid scientifically than is
drawing conclusions from the results of an a
posteriori finding.
As this applies to the “Face”, all Viking images
were a posteriori, so no reliable conclusions
could be drawn from the data initially available.
However, the images did allow formulation of specific
hypotheses for further testing. The competing models
were:
- The “Face” is an artificial structure built
by an intelligent species (indigenous or visiting) and
intended to depict the face of a member of a
humanoid-like species, whether their own, ours, or
some other.
- The “Face” is of natural origin, resembling
a humanoid face entirely by accidental chance combined
with our predilection to see familiar patterns in
otherwise non-ordered data.
With regard to some of the new data
provided by the MGS images taken in 1998 or later
with ten times greater resolution than the older (1976)
Viking images, these competing hypotheses and
their consequent predictions have a priori
status. Scientific method attaches significance to the
test results of predictions having a priori
status. Disputing or ignoring the results of tests of
a priori predictions, whichever way they go, is
itself a form of a posteriori reasoning,
generally of questionable validity because it violates
the controls against bias imposed by scientific
method.
For example, the artificiality
hypothesis predicts that an image intended to portray a
humanoid face should have more than the primary facial
features (eyes, nose, mouth) seen in the Viking
images. At higher resolution, we ought to see secondary
facial features such as eyebrows, pupils, nostrils, and
lips, for which the resolution of the original
Viking images was insufficient. The presence of
such features in the MGS images would be
significant new indicators of artificiality. Their
existence by chance is highly improbable. And the
prediction of their existence by the artificiality
hypothesis is completely a priori.
By contrast, the
natural-origin hypothesis predicts that the “Face” will
look more fractal (e.g., more natural) at higher
resolution. Any feature that resembled secondary facial
features could do so only by chance, and would be
expected to have poor correspondence with the expected
size, shape, location, and orientation of real secondary
facial features. Any such chance feature might also be
expected to be part of a background containing many
similar chance features.
In Figure 2, it is possible to see details in the image
(once the right correspondence to the Viking
image is recognized) that might have been intended to
portray each secondary facial feature – eyebrow, pupil,
nostrils, and lips. These are more plainly visible in
higher-magnification views with brightness and contrast
adjusted for each area because of the limited contrast
in the image. Such views may be inspected at
<http://metaresearch.org> in the Cydonia section.
Detailed study with image processing software shows that
these secondary facial features exist where expected by
the artificiality hypothesis, but nowhere else on the
mesa. This rules out a background of many similar
features from which we might pick out just ones that
fulfill our expectations. Moreover, each feature is
present at the expected location, having the expected
size, shape, and orientation. The odds are against any
of these features arising by chance, and against each
feature having any of the four listed characteristics.
Each of these probabilities has been carefully and
conservatively estimated in a fuller treatment of this
topic. [1] The combined odds against all of these
features being present and having all expected
characteristics to the degree actually present, when
taken together with the absence of similar features in
the background, exceed a thousand billion billion to one
(1021 to 1).
Strictly speaking, science does not prove physical
hypotheses; it disproves them. In that sense, all we
have done, technically, is rule out the natural origin
hypothesis at the cited odds. However, unless we can
formulate some other hypothesis competing with
artificiality that makes similar a priori
predictions, we are compelled to accept artificiality as
the most reasonable explanation consistent with the a
priori principle of scientific method.
[1] T. Van Flandern, H. Crater, J.
Erjavec, L. Fleming & H. Moore (2000), Evidence of
Planetary Artifacts, preprint available from Meta
Research (may eventually be posted to <http://metaresearch.org/>).
** Footnote added
00/08/14 **
I have since learned that the last two sentences of this
paragraph (immediately following Figure 4) are
incorrect. Mark Kelly filled in the small, missing
information using low-resolution Viking imagery, not
artistically. This was based on Mark Carlotto’s
shape-from-shading models that combine both Viking and
MGS images. Kelly used Figure 2 at Carlotto’s site,
<http://www.psrw.com/~markc/Articles/May7pred/index.html>.
This answers concerns expressed about the reality of the
extension of the mouth to the right (east) side of the
Face, and the presence of a complete eye socket on that
side. Both are real features, not artist’s
concepts.
Lan Fleming has done a critique of Kelly’s final image,
available at <http://www.vgl.org/webfiles/mars/face/newface.htm>.
He says, “While I pointed out what I see as a few flaws
in [Kelly’s] enhancement, I think the overall work is
valid and the result is powerful, which is why I went to
the trouble of doing a critique of it.” If you have not
already viewed the animated transition of the Face from
the MGS lighting and viewing angle to the Viking
lighting and viewing angle, it is well worth the effort.
[animation]
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