Something is definitely up. They DID take down those Mars Curiosity thumbnails. Proof:

Ok I have a few ideas to throw around on this topic.

1. I don't buy in any way saving server space. This is not 1980 technology here. You can go to wal-mart and get a 1tb hard drive about the size (exterior cheap model) of a kindle. Now given NASA has been planning this for years and has access to tech we only wish we could have. It is not unreasonable to see them easily having something that would take up the space of a closet that would have the capacity that could store more info than we can think about.

2. The argument t that the "finger" is a natural rock. People use some common sense here for crying out loud. Unlike the face of mars this is taken IMO from no more that 4 feet away with very modern cameras. Also as one poster pointed out there has been NO EXAMPLES ANYWHERE of "fingers" with this much detail/phyisical accuracy/ and special features (the fingernail). I also say "show me other examples".

Now on the finger why does it have to be organic in nature to be legit? I make the proposition that it came from a statue and not living flesh. That would explain how it survived a theoretical disaster (ex meteor strike) or hypothetical war. Artifacts like this have been found on earth after thousands of years of rain, growth, war, ect.

3. Nasa is fighting for its financial life folks. In this economic time money is very tight and cuts WILL BE MADE. The only way NASA can survive is for public opinion to get excited again. It would be in there best interests not to have or limit major flubs in photo's. So I propose that accidental deletion of such major pictures with such clarity would not be deliberate.

4. Only one thing people fear loosing more than even life itself is power. While scientists brag that they think life is out there and want to discover it. They would loose alot of power if after all the denials, all the apparent coverups, and attack on the attacks on scientists who don't go with the program. One specific example is the scientist who found the mars meteorite. He went though great lenghts to remove contamination and found evidence of fossil microbs. They darn near ran him out of a rail and only after "it was lost in a lab fire" did they leave him alone.

Now see what would happen if they admitted life on mars (for example) and people realized they have been lied to. Along with the scientist themselves having to admit they are fools and they were wrong?




After all these ideas I have thrown out here is my theory of whats happening.

1. Due to the necessary of PR they need to release the pictures as fast as possible.

2. Given the technology today a greater number of pictures are being recieved along with them comming at a faster rate. They also have a greater clarity than in years past that people not only know about, but know how it works. The people are not going to accept that there is even a one day delay while (in the past) they could take their time to edit out "inconvient and damaging" evidence.

3. Given 1 and 2 it is inevitable something will (and appears has) slipped though.

4. NASA is not stupid and can learn from its past coverup mistakes.

So I think NASA has gotten smarter. They have found (which is unavoidable) some bugs in whatever safeguards thy had in place to catch what they did not want us to see and something in the early stages (example the finger, rocks with details that are strangely like earth, ect). So they had a "convient and easily explainable" computer error in the first few detailed pictures. As they "attempt to solve the problem" they are improving their detection and editing algorithems (computers can do this more easily now than ever).

Meanwhile they appear to be fixing a common on earth computer "glitch". If they keep it only to a few (abit important to us) pictures the plausable deniability is maintained.

One wound have a tough time (but not impossible) proving that (given this is coming from hundreds of thousands of miles) that a it is not just a "bug".

Then the next bunch of pictures come out that are already being pre-edited as they are being released (by powerful computer programs that make photoshop look like 50s cut and paste.

Then they could say..."see there are no more pictures of fingers, odd rocks, other damaging evidence to support the origional pictures. See we told you it was just a computer gltch


Vola conspiracy continued.

What do you all think about this theory?

I've been following this series of Mars image threads with interest but I certainly have no idea at all as to NASA's motivation for replacing the original images with lower res versions.
The only thing that makes sense to me to account for this action is an attempt to hide or disguise something that was clearly visible in the original higher quality images. Obviously removing the images completely after they had been displayed on the web would be out of the question as that certainly would stand out and point to the fact that NASA had something to hide. So the next best thing would be to downgrade the image quality and try to hide whatever it was in background pixellation if an attempt was made to enlarge the lower quality images.

With that in mind, I decided it wouldn't do any harm to take a very close look at the higher resolution image and run it through a program called SizeFixer that does a really good job of enlarging images and minimizing the amount of degradation introduced.

Truthfully, I have to say that all I could see was just the ground around the rover's tire covered in pebbles and rock fragments. But there was one thing that did catch my eye. In one particular section of the ground, there seems to be 4 elongated "artifacts" that have a smooth and rounded exterior. These 4 are the ONLY examples that I could find after a meticulous search. The other notable feature is that ALL 4 of them are aligned in the same approximate orientation which, coupled with their long, smooth surfaces, seems to me to be statistically improbable.

Anyway, take a look for yourselves at their unusual and unique shapes. However, unusual they may appear, most likely they ARE nothing more than rocks or stones.

reply to post by scrounger


It's plausible. Very.

But people like Phage will grasp at straws.

It all comes down to the core of this thread and my question:

Why were we able to get the missing images to the NASA official panorama for SOL 3? Why weren't they included in the image if they had them? But they weren't on the server????? I want Phage's answer because that's what it all comes down to.

The OP plus the above question means that something is or was up. I don't care what anyone says. And the more I don't get an answer to that, the more I will wonder.

Hello Im New

Ive not got photoshop or anything like that but i do have a camara phone and took these. All ive done is used photoDJ to auto level . i can see the plato and the pyamid and maybe someone looking for the finger. sorry the pics are Bad Quality, has anyone played with the levels to bring out more detail i can see shadows under things hovering.

i would love to see the whole zoomable pana with a little auto level
anyway here they are..
L0stSheep

Regarding your "ideas"

1. It's not about saving "server storage", but about saving bandwidth and reorganizing (re-locating) media files to different volumes/disks or even from a server to another to relief disks I/O. And all of that will also require some web developer to relink those media files in the web page in question. This requires time and a certain level of synchronization between people or departments that sometimes is not achievable for institutions or companies which don't have their core business on web "services".

2. I could show you a hundred plus natural formations here on planet Earth that look like something familiar to us. This means nothing, specially when you don't have anything near it to corroborate such claim. Show me the rest of such statue or other rocks that resemble other parts of such "structure" and I will start to accept that as being a finger. Otherwise it's just a rock that happens to resemble a finger, nothing else.

3. The very reason NASA is fighting for it's financial life shows that they are not finding anything too extraordinary from a governamental stand point to justify it's costs. Or do you really think that if NASA had found traces of a lost civilization on Mars the US government would be even contemplating the idea of cutting it's budget?

4. I don't know which science books or sources you've been reading, but most scientists nowadays agree that there are other life forms out there. They just don't tend to agree on the hypotheses of intelligent life forms like "greys" and whatnots. Personally I think it's too pretentious of us to think we are so special to the point of believing that we are the only intelligent life form on the entire universe. Well, to be honest I not only think that we are not the only ones in the universe, but also not the only ones here on this very planet Earth. After all, we are not that smarter than other animals familiar to us which some consider inferior to us.


Regarding your "theory"

1. PR is PR. So today, tomorrow or next week will still cause the same effect for them. Besides, they are in control of the entire "show". So they can very well say that these images are fresh while they are not, it's up to them to set everything, from dates, delay to what's fresh and what's not.

2. I still don't know how anything of this really works, otherwise I would probably be working at NASA my self. I only understand how parts of it work and how certain technologies might have been employed to achieve it, all the rest I and can only imagine and at best have a guess. Assuming anything different from this is either pretentious or makes of you the answer to all of NASA problems.

3. When it comes to public safe, national security breaches, intelligence risks and billions into play, nothing of that size slips. Since NASA is still funded by the government and there are loads of different interests into play here, they most certainly would not bite the hand that feeds them. Otherwise by now we would know most of our government secrets, or from any government for what is worth. And yet we can even find out how the next iPhone from Apple will look like.

4. Exactly. They are not. That's exactly why they wouldn't let anything "slip".


In the end the average Joe doesn't give a rats rear end if NASA got pics from Mars. Most see it and go "Cool, that's awesome! Hey... have you seen that Lindsey Lohan showed her boobs at someone's wedding party?", and that's the reality. For most NASA's Curiosity pics are nothing more than a Tweet.

The lunar landing is long gone and space projects no longer have much of an appeal for the masses. It only appeals for the scientific community, armed forces, etc and bunch of fans of the X-Files series that wanna keep looking. These are the ones that help them keep funded.

So if they (NASA) are trying to stir things up by doing controlled leaks to keep people interest, I must say that they are doing a really terrible job.

reply to post by L0stSheep


You don't need any of those gadgets. All you need is to take a screen shot by pressing the "Print Screen" key on your keyboard if you're on Windows and then pasting that into a image editing application which can be the nothing fancy Microsoft Paint.

And beware that using levels (auto or not) can introduce patterns that are not really there, specially when dealing with 8bit imagery from compressed sources displayed in 8bit displays with limited colorspaces (gamut) which are uncalibrated.

Originally posted by impaired
reply to post by scrounger

 

It's plausible. Very.

But people like Phage will grasp at straws.

It all comes down to the core of this thread and my question:

Why were we able to get the missing images to the NASA official panorama for SOL 3? Why weren't they included in the image if they had them? But they weren't on the server????? I want Phage's answer because that's what it all comes down to.

Actually, I don't think you "want" Phage's answer. The funny thing is, you know that already.
And actually, i think you're just a little attention-seeker who enjoys keeping a pointless and silly thread going about rocks on Mars which happen to look like faces or "fingers".

You know, you had a good start with me because this (and the other) thread started well, with a guy making a panorama with great Mars images - but has now reached rock bottom with pages of pages of people seeing "faces" and body parts and the usual NASA conspiracy mixed in, plus stupid conspiracy fantasies because some filenames on a server didn't match.

Those two rocks that seem to be water worn are very intriguing.

Of course they could just as well have been worn via sand storms as much as anything else but what does stand out is that they are sitting atop all the rough and rugged broken rocks, which on the most part are partially buried.

This would imply that the 'water' worn rocks have found themselves in situ much later than the rugged/broken rocks although show signs of a lot more erosion,

What springs to my mind is that they arrived at that destination from a watery part of the planet via a flashflood, it could also explain the compactness of the sand, I would expect it to be much looser like that of a desert.

Was the high res image containing the 'numbered' rock (www.abovetopsecret.com...) removed at any point?

ETA: I'm really looking forward to Curiosity to start roving away from the landing site where there should be no human contamination.

reply to post by billy197300


I doesn't look like a rock, it looks like a coin... When I looked at it sharpened I saw a ridge around the edge, kind of like a quarter...

I don't see anything other than naturally occuring corrosive stones and sand So why would they take down these images ...... Only jkg , Interestingly though I can see quite a few of the stones what could be perceived as Fossil Like, to be exact Worm Fossils but these are only images , not really hands on is it? Not Concrete? or in this case Rock Solid

Well- I fixed the pic so no one has to worry about those "weird things" in them.




Sincerely, NASA Photo Retouch dept.


KIDDING! At least about the NASA part. I used Photoshop CS6. One scary F'n piece of software. This little item called "content aware" was used. I simply shoved what I didn't want in the pic to just the bare edge of the pic.

How much you wanna bet that pic will be 'fixed' by NASA in the same manner I just demonstrated....

Edited to add: I also did the typical "red, red Mars" coloring for added fun-ness. I think I know why they do that, BTW- hides their shenanigans.

Originally posted by impaired
I put this in the Gray Area. Let's see if this makes it out.

So I was explaining in my last thread that I was being censored, yada yada yada.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

I claimed that as I was downloading the images to the panorama I ended up making, the missing data (white spots of my image) were there in high resolution and then taken down right before my very eyes and put back into low resolution thumbnails. A claim that couldn't be proven.

Until now.

Well, I went to Wikipedia to check some things out:

en.wikipedia.org...



Notice the image right there:



(I downloaded it from Wikipedia in the 1200x1200 high resolution image and re-uploaded it here just in case)

Now go here to the NASA site and look for the file:

mars.jpl.nasa.gov...

If by the time you go there and the 1200x1200 just happened to "magically" appear, I even took a screen shot of it a few minutes ago

And the proof:



(Notice the time and date on my computer - scroll and look down to the right).

So Wikipedia has the full resolution image of that thumbnail, but when you try to click the direct link, the thumbnail comes up:



Knew I wasn't crazy.

And to those who are saying "I didn't think you were". Thanks. I do appreciate that, but I was saying that to myself for the most part. I. KNOW. WHAT. I. SAW.

edit on 8/15/2012 by impaired because: Added Wiki image

edit on 8/15/2012 by impaired because: This time to clarify the issue of the thumbnails.

Maybe NASA owns the pictures, kind of like Getty Images owns theirs? If they are registered by NASA, then NASA owns them and you have to pay to use them.

reply to post by WarminIndy


Wrong. They're public domain - free. Our tax dollars paid for them. And they're on the NASA site. How would we have to pay to use them when we can just download them (now)?

reply to post by wylekat


Please tell me more about this "content aware" thing. I have CS 5. I didn't even know
CS 6 was out. What the hell?

better resolution of the rock:

"Please tell me more about this "content aware" thing. I have CS 5. I didn't even know
CS 6 was out. What the hell?"




All About Photoshop cs6 This is the Adobe direct link. My explanation boils down to "magic".

I got this because I am a student at an art school- and we got upgrades a couple weeks back for the CS5. The video presentation we saw had the person in charge of the company (I think) take a tree and a watermark, and scoot them *everywhere* on the pic.

What about this fossil?

Thanks for posting this..
I remember when the two Rovers spirit and opportunity in the beginning were sending back some awesome Hi-Rise images, then one day checking the new images I thought to myself: WOW!!! they really don't look High Def. anymore, I guess they were too clear !!!
Here's two images that show what I believe are skulls, especially in image no. 2. NASA said the skull (toward the left bottom of the pix) is really a rock.. If it's only a rock why didn't they take multiple images at different angles to show that it's a rock, can't make that claim with just one image! Now on Image no.1 top left looks like one or two skulls!!


1. marsrover.nasa.gov...

2. marsrover.nasa.gov...

Originally posted by impaired
reply to post by WarminIndy

 

Wrong. They're public domain - free. Our tax dollars paid for them. And they're on the NASA site. How would we have to pay to use them when we can just download them (now)?

edit on 8/17/2012 by impaired because: (no reason given)

If they are public domain then they are free. I went to this site by NASA Photo Permissions and read that. I will agree you are right.

NASA material is not protected by copyright unless noted. If copyrighted, permission should be obtained from the copyright owner prior to use. If not copyrighted, NASA material may be reproduced and distributed without further permission from NASA.

Only material not specifically copyrighted can be used. If these pictures were given to public domain, then they are free to use. Where is the link to the site the OP got them from?

NASA should be acknowledged as the source of the material except in cases of advertising.

While the OP did say the images were from NASA, he should have hotlinked to the site he got them from. Without that hotlink, he could have just posted a picture someone took in the desert and said they were from NASA.

reply to post by MCL1150

Nice, but- you missed the robot in the first pic, next to the large clump of rocks in the middle.

second line