Thursday, April 12, 2012

An X-File?

Did you happened to see the stories about the NASA photographs taken of the mysterious monolith on Mars?  According to the story I read earlier today, every few years these photographs show up in the headlines and all the ufologists jump on the news.  If you saw the photos you might think of the alien monoliths depicted in "2001:  A Space Odessy".  I know, I did and I'm not alone in this.  I found myself searching for the apes in the photo.  The monolith looks oddly out of place on the Martian landscape.  Well, the scientists want to claim it is just a huge chunk of Martian rock broken from the mountains it stands near and if one were to build such a monument of sorts why would they place it in such close proximity to these mountains where it could get crush by said huge chunks of rock falling from said mountains.  They  point out the fact that when the photo was taken the sun was on the horizon creating an elongated shadow.  They also point out the HiRISE camera onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is able to photograph at 1 foot or 30 centimeters per pixel from the altitude of 180 miles or 300 kilometers and while this is good it is not quite good enough to bring out the images of the pits and crags in the rock's surface ... but it does explain the squared and sharp edges to the monolith, or does it?  It doesn't make sense to me as I look at the rounded edges of the pitted surface surrounding this huge piece of Martian debris.  Hmmm ... You know what they say?  The truth is out there ...

Silliness aside, it is an interesting article. 
The facts in this posting are based on the article "'Monolith' Object on Mars?  You Could Call it That" by Natalie Wolchover / LiveScience.com - Wed, April 11, 2012

No comments:

Post a Comment