![]() ![]() Our findings do not mean that oceans never existed on Mars, only that this specific site does not support the ocean hypothesis. Instead, features at this site are better explained as exposed and eroded rock layers that mimic shoreline shapes in low-resolution images. We examine a site that has been promoted in the literature as an exemplar of ancient shorelines and find that this site lacks a diagnostic shoreline shape. Shorelines should form flat “step-like” landforms at a near-constant elevation, so one critical analysis looks at the shape and elevation of proposed features. Here we present methods to determine whether any proposed ancient shoreline feature meets the requirements to be classified as a shoreline using these improved data. However, new high-resolution data allow for better and more complete analyses. Features have previously been traced out in relatively low-resolution images and interpreted as shorelines of episodic ancient oceans. Abundant evidence for past surface liquid water exists, but it is debated how much and for how long it persisted on Mars' surface. ![]() There is an ongoing controversy about whether Mars had ancient oceans. These results do not preclude the existence of an ancient hemispheric ocean, but the geophysical and high-resolution topographic data at this site do not support such an interpretation. These features are more consistent with material boundaries for lithological units exposed along a degraded crater wall. Lineaments appear blocky in nature at small scales, and they bifurcate, truncate, and merge along track. The topographic expression analysis identifies a few potential shoreline terraces along the historically proposed contacts, but these tilt in different directions, do not follow an equipotential surface (even accounting for regional tilting), and are not laterally continuous. Our results show these curvilinear features are inconsistent with a wave-generated shoreline interpretation. (2001, ) for the first time beyond Earth, focusing on a test case of putative shoreline features along the Arabia level in northeast Cydonia Mensae, as first described by Clifford and Parker (2001, ). In particular, we apply the validated topographic expression analysis of Hare et al. We present a toolkit for quantitatively identifying paleoshorelines using topographic, morphological, and spectroscopic evaluations. *You did know Slate has a video section, right? Lots of really good stuff there.Primary support for ancient Martian oceans has relied on qualitative interpretations of hypothesized shorelines on relatively low-resolution images and data. Take a look at it! You’ll have enough wonder to last a thousand lifetimes. There’s a vast, amazing, real Universe around you in every direction. And even believing in minor silliness means you’re giving up a precious bit of reality. It’s OK to chuckle over stuff like the Face on Mars. A lot of the time it’s just silly, but sometimes-far too often- people die because of belief in nonsense. A debunker’s work will never end, because there will never be an end of bunk to debunk! Ignoring big mainstream stuff like creationism, global warming denial, and anti-vaxxers, there will still always be nonsense like UFOs, astrology, ghost hunters, life in meteorites, and so on. You’d think that might mean eventually debunkers go out of business as well. It’s the fate of most pseudoscience, actually, to fade away as tastes change (or if the promulgators dumbly put an expiration date on their nonsense ). ![]() Even some hi-res ones.īut then better space probes were sent to the Red Planet, better images were taken at higher magnification and different lighting angles, and the Face disappeared in a puff of logic.įor a while you’d still get a glimpse of it in magazines and newspapers, and I’d get the odd invite to give my public talk. Mostly the idea was promoted by Richard Hoagland, about whom I’ve pretty much said everything there needs to be said.Īs the video lays out, the picture of the Face was first taken by the Viking 1 spacecraft in the 1970s, and it really does look like a face … just like low-resolution images of just about anything resemble faces. Despite being one of the silliest examples of pseudoscience in history, a few years ago it was Big News I even had a popular public talk I gave lambasting it. I hadn’t thought about the Face in some time it’s been a while since anyone’s really talked about it. I got a good chuckle out of a video Slate just posted over on the video section of the site *: a deconstruction of the “Face” on Mars. ![]()
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