The Mars Mystery Page 11

  On first view the City is not overly eye-catching. Closer inspection, however, brings a surprising number of features to the fore—features that sometimes seem to click into a semblance of order.

  The Fort, again, is particularly noteworthy. Its two gargantuan walls are perfectly straight, and the inscribed hollow they house is parallel with the outer walls and regular in shape. Wind may be able to scour the outer parts of a rock formation in all manner of ways, but what geological force could excavate the interior of such a formation into such exact conformity with its exterior?

  THE HONEYCOMB

  The part of the Fort that looks most “artificial” is its western side. It was here, perusing DiPietro and Molenaar’s reprocessed Viking images in 1983, that Hoagland discovered what he terms “the Honeycomb.” This peculiar formation looks like a series of cubical cells arrayed in a deliberate architectural configuration against the Fort. It has been disputed by other AOC researchers who argue that it is merely an anomaly of the SPIT processing program.

  The McDaniel Report provides a balanced view: “Carlotto’s photoclinometric and computer enhancement results do not reveal the cell-like structure seen in the SPIT-processed images. They do, however, reveal a series of regular, terrace-like bands at the southwest corner of the Fort in the area associated with the ‘honeycomb.’ This may be part of the fine detail that generated the honeycomb effect, or it may be an independently existing, but equally anomalous, feature.”3

  McDaniel and a colleague, Dr. Horace Crater, did some research of their own in the City area and discovered a number of additional characteristics smacking of artificiality—for example, specific measurements between the various small oval mounds housed around the complex, and meaningful measurements in the main structures. We will consider these measurements in more detail in a later chapter.

  NO EXPLANATION

  What are the chances of such artificial-looking objects occurring naturally—particularly when there are so many of them in such close proximity to one another? Since NASA’s official view is that all the structures are 100 percent natural, its scientists have struggled to find natural solutions to this problem. Cal Techs Dr. Arden Albee sums up:

  Cydonia—the “structures”—this pattern that’s there, was looked at way back early in the Viking days as an area in which a strange kind of erosion had occurred, and had not been fully understood. So from a geological point of view, the area is one which is of scientific interest and would have been photographed Face or no Face. It does indeed have some strange structures, but they appear to be the effect of some kind of erosion—whether it’s wind erosion or exactly what isn’t very clear. The people who have looked at these Cydonia “structures” are looking at them as erosion features, trying to understand.4

  So, officially, as of yet there is no natural geological explanation for the Cydonia structures. All that NASA can really offer to oppose the well-thought-out and thoroughly argued case that has been made by scientists like Carlotto and DiPietro is an assumption that a natural explanation will eventually be forthcoming. Maybe so. But it is also possible that other information may leak out about the Face that will take it out of the realm of the natural forever.

  12

  The Philosophers’ Stone

  All is number.

  PYTHAGORAS

  At that time shall the stones speak … the secrets of the deep shall be revealed.

  MERLIN, IN GEOFFREY OF MONMOUTH’S

  THE HISTORY OF THE KINGS OF BRITAIN

  Hic lapis exilis extat precio quoque vilis

  Spernitur a stultis, amatur plus ab edoctis.

  Here stands the stone from heaven,

  ’Tis very cheap in price!

  The more it is despised by fools,

  The more loved by the wise.

  ARNALDUS DE VILLANOVA, ALCHEMIST, D. 1313

  CARL Sagan was a dedicated opponent of all those who suggested that the monuments of Cydonia could be evidence of intelligent extraterrestrial life. Yet in several of his works of fiction and nonfiction, Sagan argued for the likely existence of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. Contact, released as a feature film after his death in 1997, describes the first encounter—in the form of a binary code received by radio-telescope—between mankind and an alien civilization. This is, in reality, how most scientists today predict we will ultimately make contact with an alien intelligence.

  In Cosmos, his best-known work, Sagan states:

  There is something irresistible about the discovery of even a token, perhaps a complex inscription, but, best by far, a key to the understanding of an alien and exotic civilization. It is an appeal we humans have felt before.1

  Sagan then refers to the discovery of the Rosetta Stone in 1799 by a French soldier working in the Nile Delta at Rashid (Rosetta). On this stela the same inscription appears in three languages—ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, demotic (the ancient Egyptian cursive script), and Greek. It was this stone that enabled the French scholar Jean Francois Champollion to crack the code of the hieroglyphs and translate them for the first time. Sagan continues:

  What a joy it must be to open this one-way communication channel with other civilizations, to permit a culture that had been mute for millennia to speak of its history, magic, medicine, religion, politics, and philosophy.

  Today we are again seeking messages from an ancient and exotic civilization, this time hidden from us not only in time but also in space.

  If we should receive a radio message from an extraterrestrial civilization, how could it possibly be understood? Extraterrestrial intelligence will be elegant, complex, internally consistent, and utterly alien.

  Extraterrestrials would, of course, wish to make a message sent to us as comprehensible as possible. But how could they? Is there in any sense an interstellar Rosetta Stone?

  We believe there is. We believe there is a common language that any technical civilization, no matter how different, must have. That common language is science and mathematics. The patterns of nature are everywhere the same.2

  Sagan is writing about receiving an alien message, expressed in the universal code of mathematics, in the form of a radio signal. Yet what if the message was not sent as a radio signal but was built into the surface of a neighboring planet?

  CULTURAL BLINDNESS

  Could it be possible that we are so educated to expect communication via a radio-telescope that when we get other signals we ignore them?

  Is a humanoid face on Mars so obvious that it is passed over without thought? For scientists waiting for a series of regular beeps to surface from an oceanic roar of electronic background noise, would the Cydonia landscape be just too clear a signal—so clear that it seems ridiculous?

  In his book Lila, author and philosopher Robert Pirsig tells of sailing into port at Cleveland, when because of misreading the chart he believed he was actually some 20 miles upshore in a completely different harbor. Yet the landscape seemed to tie in with the chart—until he remembered having discounted discrepancies between the map and the land, convincing himself that changes had been made to the shoreline since the chart was produced.

  How could he have made such a mistake in the daylight? Didn’t he have his eyes open? Writing about himself in the third person Pirsig states:

  It was a parable for students of scientific objectivity. Wherever the chart disagreed with his observations he rejected the observation and followed the chart. Because of what his mind thought it knew, it had built up a static filter, an immune system, that was shutting out all information that did not fit. Seeing is not believing. Believing is seeing.

  If this were just an individual phenomenon it would not be so serious. But it is a huge cultural phenomenon too and it is very serious. We build up whole cultural intellectual patterns based on past “facts” which are extremely selective. When a new fact comes in that does not fit the pattern we don’t throw out the pattern. We throw out the fact. A contradictory fact has to keep hammering and hammering, sometim
es for centuries, before maybe one or two people will see it. And these one or two have to start hammering on others for a long time before they see it too.3

  Are our scientists so bound to existing beliefs that they are immune to the facts being unearthed at Cydonia? Because they were expecting a radio signal, and because it was the preconception of the time that there was never life on Mars, did figures such as Sagan simply filter out what they were seeing when possible artificial structures were first identified on the Red Planet? The McDaniel Report asks us to consider what would have happened if the same information had come in from much farther away in a more “conventional” form:

  Imagine that a digital pattern of radio signals originating in deep space has been received via the SETI radio telescopes. Translated into images by computer, the first image is that of a humanoid face wearing a peculiar headpiece, and the second is a pentagonal diagram [like the D&M Pyramid] having unique proportions and redundant mathematical constants…. Would NASA file these images away, like some lost Ark, claiming they were merely “a trick of radiation and noise?” And if a portion of the signal appeared to have been distorted by interstellar static, would NASA stop listening on that frequency, saying the message was not complete enough?

  THE LANGUAGE OF STONE

  Where are ancient Egypt’s radio transmitters? Quite simply, the knowledge we have of ancient Egypt was not received by radio. Instead we have relied on the survival of artifacts bearing inscriptions and other useful data. But even if no hieroglyphs had survived at all, we still would have been able to learn a great deal about the Egyptians from their colossal buildings. A stone pyramid, in other words, may not be able to travel through interstellar space, but as a “signal” of intelligence it lasts longer than a radio transmission—being one of the most stable forms in nature. If any race, human or alien, wished to leave a message in stone, they could choose no better vehicle than a pyramid to transport it down through the ages.

  There is, of course, the possibility that any artificial structure will contain cultural references and “messages” even if these are unintentional. For example, anyone decoding a structure such as the Parthenon in Athens would be able to derive from its construction the fact that it was built by an intelligent culture with knowledge of mathematics and geometry. As Sagan is the first to admit: “Intelligent life on Earth first reveals itself through the geometrical regularity of its constructions.”4

  KEYSTONE

  In 1988, Erol Torun, a cartographer and systems analyst for the U.S. Defense Mapping Agency, read Richard Hoagland’s book The Monuments of Mars. Later he wrote to Hoagland, saying:

  While I was impressed with most of the images presented and your description of them, the object that especially caught my attention was the D&M Pyramid. I have a good background in geomorphology and know of no mechanism to explain its formation.5

  The appearance of the 1.6-mile-long D&M pyramid on frame 70A13 is indeed puzzling. It has been calculated that it incorporates more than a cubic mile of material and that its apex towers almost half a mile above the surface of the surrounding plains. It is strangely buttressed at the base of each of its five corners, adding to its architectural majesty.

  Its most fascinating feature is to be seen on the southwestern facade forming the base of the pentagonal structure—the tip of which points toward the Face. This shows quite clearly a regular triangular plane that is similar to the side of a terrestrial pyramid. Quite frankly, from this angle, it looks artificial—no doubt about it. However, as with the Face, the evidence from the rest of the structure is not as clear. Damage to its eastern, shadowed, side spoils its regularity—and the fact that DiPietro and Molenaar first thought the pyramid had only four sides shows how indistinct this area is. It is also penetrated by a deep hole, previously thought to be a crater. Carlottos photoclinometric reconstructions have raised the extraordinary possibility that this hole could in fact be a tunnel. Subsequently there has been speculation that the pyramid might originally have been a hollow structure that partially collapsed at some point in its history—the collapse causing its obvious deformity and the apparent shortening of its right “leg” (the missing portion presumably being hidden under dust and debris).

  Such ideas cannot be more than speculation until higher-resolution pictures are obtained. What is not in doubt, however, is that the pyramid does have an unmistakably pentagonal outline. It was this shape, above all the others at Cydonia, that attracted Torun’s attention.

  WEIRD GEOLOGY AGAIN?

  Torun began his analysis by systematically researching known geological processes to see if any could have formed a pentagonal, five-sided pyramid. To this end he examined the effects of five different factors: water, wind, mass wasting (natural slippage of material due to faults, etc.), volcanism, and even crystal growth. His results were conclusive:

  Fluvial [river water] processes can be ruled out as mechanisms for forming the D&M Pyramid as there are no indications that water ever flowed one kilometer deep in Cydonia Mensae (one kilometer being the approximate height of the D&M Pyramid). It is also true that sharp-edged multifaceted symmetrical shapes are not characteristic of fluvial land forms.

  The D&M Pyramid is located on what has been described as “knobby terrain,” which stood above the once-flooded Cydonian plain. Though this area does show signs of water erosion (due to coastal tides), it is very slight.

  As for wind erosion, a favorite explanation of many scientists, Torun concluded:

  No dune will ever form a symmetrical polyhedron resembling the one under study. Flat sides and straight edges are unobserved in terrestrial or Martian sand dunes.

  Prevailing winds are not likely to have shifted periodically with perfect symmetry and timing. Even if this seemingly impossible condition were satisfied, another factor would prevent such an object from forming…. Locally reversed airflow can cut a flat surface perpendicular to the wind direction on the leeward side of a wind-cut hill. This locally reversed airflow, and associated surface-level turbulence, would prevent the formation of this hypothetical five-sided ventifact. Each time the wind shifted to a new direction, the reversed airflow would start erasing the edges formed by other wind directions. The end result would not be a pyramidal hill, but rather a round one.6

  Torun’s conclusions on this matter correspond to NASA’s own inability to reproduce pyramidal landforms in a wind tunnel. Similarly, no features formed due to “mass wasting” could account for a five-sided structure—the likelihood of five geological faults all causing land to slip to produce a bisymmetric polygon are next to impossible.

  Finally, as for “volcanism” and “crystal growth,” there is simply no evidence of volcanic activity in Cydonia, just as there are no naturally occurring pentagonal crystals. Even if there were, crystals are regular; the D&M, on the other hand, although bisymmetrical, contains different side lengths and angles.

  What about unknown erosional forces? After all, Mars and Earth are two different planets. Torun replies:

  All observations to date of the geophysics of Mars, its gravity, meteorology, geomorphology, etc., indicate that Mars is a place where the laws of physics and principles of geomorphology as we understand them apply, with minor variations due to gravity and atmospheric density and content. It is illogical to assume that there is one small place on the surface of Mars where these same principles are being violated.7

  ALIEN ARCHITECTURE

  Not content to let the matter rest there, Torun tested the supposed artificiality of the D&M Pyramid even further with a series of revealing questions:

  Is the object’s geometry inconsistent with known landforms and geomorphological processes?

  Is the object aligned with the cardinal directions and/or with significant astronomical events?

  Is the object co-located with other objects that are also inconsistent with the surrounding geology? And if so, are they geometrically aligned with one another?

  Does the object’s geometry express mathem
atically significant numbers, and/or the symmetries associated with architecture?

  The first question is easily answered. As we have seen, no known geomorphological processes account for the pentagonal form of the D&M Pyramid. In answer to the second question, the Pyramid is indeed aligned to the Martian cardinal directions. As for question three, Torun states:

  The front of the D&M Pyramid has three edges, spaced 60 degrees apart. The center axis points to the Face. The edge on the left of this axis points toward the center of a feature that has been nicknamed the “City” by the Cydonia investigators. The edge on the right of the center axis points toward the apex of a dome-like structure known as the “Tholus.”8

  In Torun’s view these three alignments are remarkable evidence of artificiality. After all, how many random geological features could fit together and point at one another so snugly? Surely it would be rare to find an anomalous structure, inexplicably unique geologically, meaningfully aligned to the cardinal directions and to other unique structures in the vicinity, that nevertheless turned out to be 100 percent natural?

  Rare, one might say, but not impossible.

  But what if this structure also meets the criteria in question 4?

  RECONSTRUCTIONS

  To answer this last point, Torun had to model the original shape of the damaged and eroded pyramid—arguing, correctly, that this is now standard practice in reconstructive archaeology, especially in sites connected to astronomical alignments or specific geology. Once the model was created he measured it to establish whether or not it possessed any significant mathematical features. He was wary of delving into complicated “numerology” and confined himself to the following basic measurements only: