Astronomers at NASA immediately wrote it off saying it was an illusion created by lighting, however upon further examination it was found that the actual 3 dimensional structure itself resembles a human face; i.e its not merely an illusion.
This "face" created a lot of excitement during that time and theories that include extra terrestrial intelligence or lost alien civilizations were put forward to explain it.
Although a slight air of mystery still surrounds this face of mars, It is now widely accepted that the "face" is a natural formation. It seems very rare and highly improbable but, such natural formations have occurred on earth too. The old man of the mountain, the Badlands Guardian are two such examples.
In my opinion the face of Mars has something to do with our perception too. We see a face because we expect to see a face, and because our brains are very good at identifying faces. Many ancient cultures have seen a face, a rabbit, or something else on the moon. Our ancestors saw so many images and patterns among the stars. Our minds always look for patterns in things and succeed in finding them. It has been proven mathematically that any large collection of objects has patterns concealed in it, therefore it follows that we can identify patterns in practically anything. It is because of this that we associate a face or something else with natural formations and heavenly objects.
"It is likely that our very existence as a species owes much to this ability to delineate patterns. Evolution may have made us a little too adept at spotting them. Our propensity to see patterns where none exists at all is witnessed by ancient Man's enthusiastic identification of ploughs and hunters, crabs and scales tracing out patterns of stars we call the constellations, or by modern Man's enthusiasm for Martian Canals."
- The World Within the World-John D. Barrow (Oxford,1990)
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