Mars picture - can someone explain this?

I'm positive this has been posted a million times before but I want to hear some opinions on the following picture:





Now, I'm no expert at analyzing pictures from NASA of the moon, space and all of that, but this is one of the most controversial pictures I've seen of anything NASA has ever taken.

There's no way that this is natural. Has NASA come up with an explanation? But anyhoo, I'd like to hear someone give some ideas as to what it could be, and I'm talking an explanation as far as debunking it.

[edit on 24-11-2009 by krull11]

reply to post by krull11


I'm pretty sure this one has been debunked numerous times. I'm no expert on the equipment NASA uses to take Mars images but it's either compressed/pixelated, colored funny by scientist, or is a composite of different grids.

Whatever it is it doesn't look like artificial structures to me and if it were proof of some lost Martian civilization we probably would have sent a robot or landed on MARS by now. People always assume NASA is hiding something, nonsense I think they know no more than we do and if they did find any real conclusive evidence of life somewhere out there in the solar system they'd do their damnedest to prove it 100% true not hide it away, unless of course that life was visiting Earth and was in league with the governments of the world but then this picture (if it were proof) would have never been seen...

reply to post by krull11


As I've said ad nauseum, people always see things in blurry and overpixelated photos whether of Mars of the Moon. When someone can provide a clear, high resolution photo showing something that is not natural then we have a topic worthy of a thread.

Any idea where the original of this is? I've checked this one out in Photo Paint, and what's really interesting (my first impression was pixelisation) is that the lines actually follow the landscape (up down, angles, etc) which appears to eliminate pixelisation. Of course, it would be good to the original photo in hi-res.

I seriously have no idea what this is. I mean there are perfect squares there. Even if it's blurry and low resolution there are... perfect squares, which doesn't come off as natural to me at all. I'd like to hear an explanation for it.

I'm not sure what NASA or anyone else puts on the net publicly but I think it may be over somewhere on the NASA official pictures section. I'll probably have a field day with looking for it in a bit here.

[edit on 24-11-2009 by krull11]

i cant see a thing... it looks like a normal, bad visual picture of ridges and landmass.

what exactly is it you are saying is here??

maybe if you drew some coloured arrows in pointing to the blurry shadowy thing you think is actually something?

i swear, the more of these i see the less i feel confident in siding with teh idea that something is out there. sure there is enough real evidence without this kind of jibberish..

i used to be a believer but the more hoaxes, cgi and just straight up crazy nonsense i see is convincing me that the whole field is worth abandoning wholesale.

seriously people, look at what you think your seeing, take a step back and think, what will someone else see. if teh answer is "crazy" dont post it. your not doing any favours. just degrading real debate.

*sigh* can i have my 5 minutes of life back that this post stole?

Originally posted by krull11
I seriously have no idea what this is. I mean there are perfect squares there. Even if it's blurry and low resolution there are... perfect squares, which doesn't come off as natural to me at all. I'd like to hear an explanation for it.

I'm not sure what NASA or anyone else puts on the net publicly but I think it may be over somewhere on the NASA official pictures section. I'll probably have a field day with looking for it in a bit here.

[edit on 24-11-2009 by krull11]

skype does this to pictures of my son while we are talking.. its a digital conversion artifact. the number of times i speak to my wife in boxy pixellation is not countable on one hand! use your brain!

reply to post by krull11


Even if it weren't pixelated or an artifact of the photo process/equipment and these really were big squares it wouldn't mean it was artificial. People forget that shapes, geometry, exists in nature. Just take a look at the Giant's Causeway or the pyramid conical shape that volcanoes or mountains tend to be in (not symmetrical or perfect but still that shape). So squares are not necessarily artificial.

But like I said I don't think this is anything but a pixelated photo, those don't look like structures, they certainly aren't three dimensional or leaping out from the surface.

I didn't post this thread to waste anyone's time. I posted it to see what others think about it.

www.marsanomalyresearch.com...

I don't think anyone is understanding what I'm pointing out here. But maybe I'm confused. Are you guys trying to tell me that all of these squares, rectangles, and other shapes is just pixelated stuff?

yes... in a nutshell..

thats exactly what it is.

reply to post by krull11


Thats what they are saying.
Skipper is "famous" for claiming compression artifacts are actually "anamolies". He also favors older, lower resolution images over newer ones.

Thanks, that's what I was looking for.

now normally, i would disagree with phage, but to be honest, the more i se ehim post the more i agree.

he does know his stuff.. and applying science and reason to a subject is always welcome..

pixellation. plain and simple. seriously digital cameras are crap. they have no choice but to grid an image them save it. when it gets decoded often the grid stays.

serioulsy i see it everyday talking to family on skype. or are you saying my wife and son have blurry boxes all over thier faces?

This is a common situation where compression of a picture causes artifacts within the conversion process. The reason why there are compressed images is because file sizes of uncompressed pictures can be very high and take several minutes to download. An example of an uncompressed image is called a RAW file. RAW files will be void of compression artifacts. In the compression process, the computer finds patterns in the image and converts the patterns into smaller patterns. The final result is an image with the same dimensions, just different ways of displaying the image to make the size smaller. These artifacts are leftover because sometimes the compression goes a little too far. The patterns you see is the compression program finding patterns and converting them to simpler patterns that did not turn out so well.

Hope this helps.

I think the OP is reffering to the random, grid like stamps on the surface. NOT THE LAND MASS ITSELF.

Im not an expert but iv never seen Nasa photos with this stamp on them, and if the source is genuine, they would be all over the image, not just 'picking' selected bits out.

They certainly are strange, as pixelation wouldnt form like that, as someone has already stated, they actually follow the land mass. It is possible however, but ALOT of time would have to be spent on it.

The perfect squares arnt of interest to me, but this symbol like stuff on the whole of the bottom right hand screen is unbelievable.

If the source is genuine.... as in from NASA there is no natural explanation i can think of for those patterns.

reply to post by Encoded05

The source is not NASA. It is ESA.
The patterns appear to follow the land mass because the image comes from an overlay of a visual image over digital data. It is not a true image.




[edit on 11/24/2009 by Phage]

Thank you phage, that proberly clears it up to be honest.

I would guess its that rather than compression artifacts. If it was compression that caused the anomalies it would appear across the whole image, or at least on every similar bit of data (colour with most compression) As theres massive sections of the image without the shapes of a identical colour.

reply to post by Phage


it is a pixalated image of rock and nothing more.

reply to post by Encoded05

These are not necessarily the typical jpeg artifacts we often see. There are other forms of data compression and image processing.

On the basis of the three- and five-channel stereo data we have produced Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) with pixel resolutions of 200 m. Terrain models of higher resolutions (50 m/DEM pixel) were derived in selected areas, as surface textures, illumination conditions, dust load of the atmosphere, and prevalence of compression artifacts vary from place to place.

www.asiaoceania.org...

Yes, the images have been processed but that is quite normal. We are not taking colour photographs, we have to combine the different colour channels which requires processing time. Each of the four colour channels operate with a filter of different wavelength (red, green, blue and infrared) and produce data sets which have to be combined and calculated on to a digital elevation model.

www.esa.int...

Thanks Phage, the idea that the pixelation was following the landscape bothered me a bit; as you say, not the normal pixelation you're used to seeing. This clears it up.