The face of a man on Mars. What might the Martians look like? Egg Bearer Beautiful Princess

It is no coincidence that the planet Mars is the object of close attention of the leading states. It is no secret that the projects of manned expeditions have long passed from the category of hypothetical to the plane of practical implementation. It is no coincidence that the Red Planet attracts such close attention. Mars has many common features with our native land. The discovered dry channels indicated that water apparently once flowed along them, and water implies possible life... Subsequently, with the help of the rover, the water itself was found in the form of ice. Mars is undoubtedly a planet of mysteries, and its main mystery: was there life on Mars? The facts, which will be discussed here, have puzzled researchers. It is about amazing photographs showing “ face on mars”. These photographs have sparked lively discussions that have not faded for more than two decades.

This story began in 1975, when NASA launched two robotic vehicles Viking-1 and Viking-2 to Mars. Both ships were equipped with descent modules, and in order to select suitable landing sites, the Vikings took pictures of the surface of Mars. And on July 25, 1976, while studying these images, one of the NASA employees came across frame number 35A72, depicting an area called Sidonia. It was stunning a photograph containing a certain rock formation, clearly reminiscent of a giant human face looking into the sky. The face on Mars was roughly one and a half kilometers wide and three kilometers long. The picture spoke of the clearly artificial origin of this object, in addition, pyramid-like objects were located at some distance from it. Of course, the news of the amazing find spread with lightning speed, but at a press conference held on the same day, NASA officials said that the unusual "face on Mars" is "a bizarre play of light and shadow." They assured that in the photograph taken a few hours later, nothing similar was seen in this area. Independent researchers noted that "in a few hours" there was night and absolute darkness over Sidonia, and it was really impossible to see anything there, and the "Viking" passed over a completely different region. Moreover, despite the undertaken searches in the archives, it was not possible to find other pictures of Sidonia, taken shortly after frame 35A72. And 17 years later, in 1993, NASA admitted that like the snapshot does not exist. That is, the statement about the "play of light and shadow" was a lie, which for many years was referred to as the main argument.

Several years have passed since the discovery, and in 1979 another frame (incorrectly registered and located in a completely different section) of the same area, number 70A13, was discovered. It was not taken “in a few hours”, but 35 days after the first shot at a different angle and under different lighting ... If there was a “play of light and shadow”, the image should have disappeared instantly as soon as the angle of illumination changed. However, like the previous one, the following image showed a face on Mars just as clearly. Nevertheless, they tried not to advertise this fact, and the strange frame was successfully hidden in the archives. However, in 1985, Mark Carlotto, an Analytic Sciences expert on cleaning and restoring images on X-rays, remote sensing frames, and satellite photographs, joined the case. Carlotto developed methods of image analysis that allow to recover from the original images, to obtain a volumetric model. These methods have repeatedly proven their effectiveness in a variety of applications, convincingly confirmed the highest degree of anomaly and "unnaturalness" of the "face on Mars", as well as other objects of Sidonia. But the leaders of NASA did not give up, they stubbornly stood their ground, - all this is a play of light and shadow, and mysterious objects do not deserve the attention of serious scientists. It is interesting that such a solid organization as NASA was not shy about outright forgeries. In 1985, an avid NASA supporter, scientist Carl Sagan, published an article in Parade magazine with a devastating criticism of the researchers of Sidonia. As an evidence base, Sagan included in his article a photograph obtained from the agency, falsified using color filters and retouching, which was supposed to prove that the "face on Mars" is nothing more than an ordinary rock. The forgery was soon revealed, and Sagan could not reveal to anyone the reason for his participation in anti-scientific manipulations - he died ...

In 1996, the Mars Global Surveyor orbital station with high-resolution cameras was launched to Mars. The public was able to insist on new photographs of Sidonia, and in April 1998, this ship took a new, supposedly better image of the anomalous object. On
the next day, a new image of the "face on Mars" was posted on the Internet, but the image that was presented suggested that the "face" was clearly a natural formation. This publication was a victory for NASA's "healthy skepticism", and the supporters of the theory of the "pyramids and the Martian Sphinx" were defeated and ashamed. The disappointment was so great that almost no one asked why, besides the "face on Mars", NASA did not provide any new pictures of Sidonia. The problem, however, was that the elevation of more than 300 meters (which is reliably known) began to look like a cluster of small mounds. The 1998 snapshot made NASA suspect of erasing the Martian face, which was further proved by independent experts. The JPL-NASA Space Center was forced to officially admit this fact. To find out what this photograph might actually look like, professionals who are professionally involved in computer graphics and improving the quality of photos. Boris Starosta, Mark Carlotto and Mark Kelly independently used special reconstruction programs to calculate what the same image looks like at different intensities and angles of illumination. The specialists used different programs, which made it possible to obtain a more convincing result showing the obviously artificial origin of the "face of Mars".

Since 2000, the Malina MSSS company has posted on its website more than 60 thousand photographs of Mars taken by the MGS spacecraft over all the years of operation. In January 2001, a new series of images of Sidonia appeared on the MSSS website, in particular a large-scale fragment of the right side of the face on Mars (photo M1600184). When this fragment was scaled to a previously restored image, an eye was clearly visible in the previously blind eye socket ... However, the leadership of NASA, JPL and MSSS continue to stubbornly adhere to their position that all the research of independent researchers is a figment of their inflamed imaginations. Therefore, the subsequent photograph on April 8, 2001, for some reason being prepared for a month and a half for publication (?), Was also presented as proof of the "naturalness" of the objects of Sidonia. They say, “a face on Mars” is an ordinary hill, and it doesn't matter that it has symmetrical regular outlines, which are not found in natural heights on Earth ...

Why are the officials behaving so strangely? Why are they going for a blatant forgery? The story is the same as with the unidentified objects, and with the Philadelphia experiment, and the motives, apparently, are the same. The truth remains beyond the border of the visible ...

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"In 1976 g. spacecraft Viking 1 took a clear picture of the planet Mars near Kydonia... On it we managed to see a mysterious object resembling a human face - Martian face... Conspiracy theorists were in seventh heaven. Many of them stated that Martian face is nothing more than the work of the inhabitants of the Red Planet - martians and the best proof of their existence is precisely Martian face... The government and NASA know this, but they are hiding the truth from ordinary mortals. "

Martian face

In 2006, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter probe with high-resolution cameras took new photos faces on Mars... The picture was taken in the same part of the planet as in 1976, but in the photo from high resolution The "face" is no longer visible. This disappointed many enthusiasts. NASA believes that after this, speculation in this regard should stop.

However, not all ufologists have calmed down, and people who are interested in all kinds of information about extraterrestrial intelligence.

When we look at Martian face, we see a monumental work - the Martian version of the Sphinx or the Great Wall of China.

A gloomy face looks into the sky, it seems that this is one of several wonders of the world, but not on Earth, but on Mars. Where are the other seven wonders of the Red Planet? They, of course, are waiting in the wings. So, at least, those who photographed the "face" in 1976 thought.

People believed they had found footprints civilizations once thriving very close, but today under a layer of reddish dust.

Kydonia

Kydonia is located in the Martian region of Arabia Terra, and forms a transition zone between the southern highlands and the plains located in the north. In the immediate vicinity of the "face", other structures can also be discerned, which may well be the remains of monumental buildings, including pyramids, temples and even fortifications.

All of this is reminiscent of the earth complex at Giza, or "drawings" and pyramids in the Nazca Valley. But who created these buildings? Perhaps an intelligent civilization, since only it was able to leave a mark, which in itself is not something practical, but has an effect on the observer. Kydonia looks up to the sky - meets potential pilots and observers coming from behind the clouds.

The face that appeared in the pictures taken on July 25, 1976, one of the scientists responsible for the project, Jerry Soffen, called at first a play of light and shadow, but after a while the same image appeared again.

On the last day of July 1976 NASA released a statement announcing the discovery of a formation "resembling a human head."

Even though the agency's scholars said it was nothing more than optical illusion arising from the characteristic lighting of a certain area, the legend began to take on a life of its own.

At the root of it lies the same desire of people to find one hundred percent proof of the existence of a secret, especially since in in this case the evidence is so enormous. Many believe that on Mars once there was a civilization similar to ours, and the term "Martian" is widely used for it.

Among the ardent supporters of the artificial origin of the "Kidonian face" there is a certain Richard Hoagland whose profession is difficult to define, the most appropriate: "Conspiracy theory creator."

He argued that NASA is hiding the fact that the "face" is actually part of a large structure that was erected by an unknown powerful civilization on the Red Planet.

There were also all kinds of correlations with the theories of ancient astronauts, extraterrestrial origin of man, gods of space and the like, but scientists have found evidence that the "face" is actually an ordinary rock. No matter how sincere these claims were, many people took them as an attempt to falsify the truth about the history of Mars.

Martians

Martians who once inhabited the planet Mars, died as a result of a powerful apocalyptic event that changed the appearance of the Red Planet forever.

Possible versions of death martians as a civilization: Eruption According to one version, it may have happened giant volcanic eruption Olympus. Fall of a celestial body One of the hypotheses suggests that a huge heavenly body , a scar from which is still visible on the surface of the Red Planet. Technological disaster Perhaps the planet Mars was destroyed by some technological disaster of a global nature, resulting in an ecological disaster. War It is believed that as a result of some large-scale war, the planet Mars was destroyed and all life on it, also underwent a mass extinction.

New data refutes the assumptions of ufologists

Decades went by and the "Martian face" was photographed by cameras best quality than those used in 1976

In 2001, an ultra-high resolution image (about six feet per pixel) was captured by the Mars Global Surveyor. The "face" turned out to be an unremarkable hill, with a lot of natural patterns on its surface, and the shapes were no longer so clear.

But you could still see the general outlines in the picture, which made up the features of the "face" in the original image. The new image showed that the "face" is nowhere near as symmetrical and looks blurry.

The widespread belief that this artificial formation probably never appeared if not for the writings of conspiracy theorist Richard Hoagland.

Having seen the original image, he immediately launched the hypothesis that this is an artificial construction, and wrote the book “ Monuments of Mars"Claiming that Kidonian face is just one of many man-made structures on the Red Planet, among which there are also pyramids and entire cities.

He claims that NASA has overwhelming photographic evidence of all of these structures, but the agency is hiding them to avoid the massive panic that would inevitably arise if Richard Hoagland's theory were proven.

Terrestrial counterparts, pareidolia

Geological reliefs that resemble a human face and other objects are not uncommon. In Canada, there is a figure in Alberta called the Badland Guardian ( Wasteland Guard), if you look at it from a height, an amazing view opens up - as if it were an Indian in a headdress and listening to an iPod. It looks more like a human than even the first pictures of Kydonia's "face".

Why didn't Richard Hoagland claim that someone had cut this image? That would be much more believable. He probably doesn't, because it is easy to check.

Wasteland Guard isn't the only example. " Old man Mountains in New Hampshire looked like the profile of a man sticking out of a cliff until the mountain collapsed in 2003.

In North Carolina, a giant head is found on the Cliffside ledge and is called the Devil's Head. Sundance, Wyoming has “ Old Man Park", And in Absaroka in Montana near Livingston there is an amazing formation called" Sleeping giant».

While some of these faces are surprisingly realistic, it is still an illusion. The human brain continues to paint the "face" even if the image is as fuzzy as the "face of Kydonia." This phenomenon is called perceptual pareidolia, that is, the desire of the brain to see order in chaos.

The famous Rorschach inkblot test is based on pareidolia. She makes cryptozoologists see Bigfoot crouching in a photo taken in the forest.

The same pareidolia makes us see the face formed by the headlights and grille on the front of a train or truck, or the face of the Virgin Mary on a piece of toast. Pareidolia means that any two points and lines, like on the "face" of Kydonia, will be associated in our brain with the eyes and mouth.

Carl Sagan suggested that the brain is predisposed to distinguish between faces. Without the phenomenon of pareidolia, a drawing smaller than Rembrandt's masterpiece will not be recognizable as a face.

But let's even leave pareidolia aside and just take a look at the original blurry photos of Kydonia's "face".

The image area is approximately one square kilometer, and the entire surface of Mars is about 150 million square kilometers. Thus, if we assume that the "face" of Kydonia is a bizarre pattern, perhaps one per 1 million km², then there should be about 150 such faces on Mars.

Are the conspiracy theorists correct that fake sculpture is the best explanation for Kydonia's "face"? But the evidence for this is pretty weak. It is more believed that this is a natural formation, which, with appropriate lighting, resembles a human face.

except Viking 1 and Mars Global Surveyor"Face" of Kydonia tried to photograph devices Recconaissance Mars Orbiter and Mars express.

From the images obtained by these aircraft, it was possible to create a three-dimensional model of the "Martian face". Despite significant progress in this area, the verdict of scientists has remained unchanged - the "face" is just a product of the human imagination, which sees what it wants in the geological formations on Mars.

Kydonia is of great interest to planetary geologists because it is located in a curious part of Mars, in the transition zone between mountainous terrain, dotted with craters in the south and smooth plains in the north. Some scientists believe that the northern plains are all that remains of the ancient Martian ocean.

If so, Kydonia may have once been a great beach.

The Martian Sphinx "is by no means the center of the region called Cydonia. It is located about 15 km. North of the mathematical center of Cydonia and is tilted approximately 30 degrees in relation to the Martian meridian.

The optimism of the proponents of the existence of life on Mars was inspired back ... by the same Viking photographs that so recently seemed to have buried their dreams. Only one of them became widely known - a "photographic portrait" of a strange Martian formation, very reminiscent of a woman's face.

In 1979, the operators at the Mission Control Center were so disillusioned and discouraged by the lifeless landscapes that they almost indifferently issued this photo 35A72, received from the Viking, too. From the surface of distant Mars, a huge female face looked at the operators. So what? In memory there was still an example with "channels", I saw straight lines on the red planet, now I saw a woman, apparently due to fatigue.

Very little time passed, the "optical illusion snapshot" was bought by a certain West German programmer, who, without hesitation, entered its parameters into a computer in order to zoom in on the image, to look at it not from an orbit of hundreds of kilometers, but only from one and a half kilometers. When the computer printed out the result, he ... was stunned - the optical illusion completely disappeared, a woman was really looking at him! For the non-blinking, staring at the sky, gaze and for the characteristic "ancient Egyptian hairstyle", this statue received the nickname " martian sphinx"The sensation simply could not help but get on the pages of the press, after which, as always, refutations immediately appeared.

A Viking snapshot of the Sidonia region. The face is visible, the pyramids of the "city", the sheer wall (cliff).

The head of the Viking program K. Snyder, the one who leaked the valuable photograph, did not hide his irritation, said that "the discovered image is just rock formations that have taken on bizarre outlines as a result of the play of light and shadows." The Soviet academician Sagdeev warmly supported this idea, saying that there would be no new self-deception, such as was the case with the canals. They did not refrain from studying photography at the Institute of Geochemistry and analytical chemistry named after Vernadsky. According to the candidate geographical sciences R. Kuzmina, “it's all about oblique illumination, the light of the low-lying Sun casts shadows from ordinary bumps, and as for the nostrils and necklaces on the face, these are ordinary interference that arose when the image was transmitted to the Earth! Indeed, according to the laws of probability theory, an insidious play of light and shadows may well suddenly make up any image, one on the whole planet, right up to the inscription “Hello, earthlings.” But if this is not a real image, then just change the direction of lighting, and the whole effect will disappear immediately. And NASA workers rummaged through thousands of photographs and they found yet another, previously rejected, snapshot (70A13), taken on a different loop and, therefore, at a different time.The Sphinx, although it was barely visible, nevertheless did not disappear! to the computer construction of the stereo image. ” seen the pupils of the eyes and even the teeth in the open mouth! In those days, it was still very difficult for us to compete with America in the field of computer graphics, but the solution found by the Samara scientist Vladimir TYURIN-AVINSKY was liked by its simplicity and clarity even overseas. Thanks to working with a plasticine copy of the Sphinx, he achieved just such a shape in which, in any light, the effect of resembling a human face did not disappear. Now it has become possible to estimate the approximate size of the giant. Length from chin to hair - 1.5 km, width -

1.3 km, the height from the surface of the desert to the tip of the nose is 0.5 km!

Another image of a structure resembling a sculptural image of a human face, only it was photographed in another region of Mars - in Utopia.

As you understand, it is simply impossible to meet anything like this on Earth. No, - again the skeptics stated, - such a giant can only be built by a very powerful civilization, but it does not exist on Mars, and if there was, then why would it need a statue that can only be viewed from Space? And the sphinx again passed into the category of an accidental coincidence, only now not light and shadow, but as a result of the weathering of rocks. With a certain amount of stretch, one could agree with such a statement if it were ... an isolated case.

Computer reconstruction of the Sphinx and the "City"

If the image female face somehow it immediately caught the eye, then the structures located 7 km from the sphinx were noticed a little later. Buildings - that's putting it mildly, Tyurin-Avinsky counted as many as 11 pyramids (4 large, 7 small) in this place, a whole "city"! They don't look like the results of volcanic activity or anything else. If these are just volcanoes, then you cannot see the crater, lava flows on the walls or around them, and these volcanoes have too regular shape: three-, four-, pentagonal, sharp edges and a summit. About 10 years have passed since his research, computer technology has gone far ahead during this time, therefore, what entire institutes once worked on has become within the power of only one programmer. The specialist who had to turn with this request processed the image, and ... now one of the most powerful computers to date shows a three-dimensional image of the Acidalian plain on Mars. Almost all of the most daring predictions have been confirmed.

Moreover, instead of 11 pyramids and buildings, 19 appear on the diagram, lines - "roads" and a strange round area appear. The "roads" are clearly not just laid out at random, two of them approach the pyramids, three at once converge to a circle in the center of the "city". The dimensions here boggle the imagination too: the largest central pyramid is almost ten times (!) Larger than the famous pyramid of Cheops in Egypt. If the pyramids are somehow close and understandable to us, then we can argue endlessly about the purpose of a "circle" with a diameter of a kilometer: a cosmodrome, a testing ground, a laboratory such as an accelerator, a filled crater, the central square of a city? .. Judging by the abundance of suitable "roads", the latter is the preferred option. Again, proceeding from the fact that two “routes” stretch to the “pyramids”, we can say that they were not used (or were not only used) as religious buildings and tombs (the roads to the Egyptian pyramids-tombs have long been overgrown).

This is how we imperceptibly began to use the past tense verbs. Indeed, there is no doubt that the "city" was built a very long time ago and is now uninhabited. How is this known? Judge for yourself: large meteorites do not often fall to the surface of the planet, but in the images of the "cities" you can see at least two direct hits of such meteorites in the left large pyramid and in the intersection of "roads". Neither one nor the other has been restored, probably because there was no one to restore it! .....

Image of the Sphinx by Viking (left) and MOS (1997). The third photo is the negative of the second

In September, the camera flaps opened and the automatics took their first test shots ... 04/05/1998 at 12:39 pm - PST "Mars Orbital Camera" installed on "Mars Global Surveyor" successfully photographed the Cydonia region, and received images of the "Martian face" high permissions. The image was transmitted to Earth on Sunday. It was processed by Malin Space Science Systems (MSSS) at 9:15 am and, along with the raw image, was transferred to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) for release on the Internet. The image was taken during the spacecraft's 220th close approach to Mars. At that moment, the "Face", located at approximately 40.8 ° North latitude, 9.6 ° West longitude, was 444 km from the spacecraft. The "morning" Sun was 25 ° above the horizon. The image has a resolution of 4.3 meters per point, i.e. 10 times higher than that obtained with the "Viking".

Positive and negative portrayal of the "Martian Sphinx". MGS April 1998

Yes ... There were no new details of Martian architecture in the photo. Moreover, on the surface of Mars there was not even something that even skeptics believed in the existence. Of course, the most ardent critics did not recognize the presence of real roads and pyramids in the local sands, but they also agreed that there is "something on Mars that resembles a sphinx, roads and pyramids." But the fact of the matter is that this was not on Mars either. In place of the "city" photographed by the "Vikings", there was an ordinary rugged terrain! Instead of a sphinx - a small mound! At first, the regulars of the Internet accused NASA of misinformation, they say, you are photographing the wrong areas. Then came the conclusions and hypotheses of a different direction, it was assumed that:

a) The Sphinx never existed, its previous photographs are fake ... No, this is too rude, there were few falsifications in this story.
b) There were no falsifications, but there was only an unconscious craving for the mysterious, everyone "wanted" to see "something like that" on Mars. But what about computers that don't care? And what you put in them, they will give out ... Well, this is partly true. But look at the old photos of the Sphinx - did we all "seem"? No, the resemblance to an artificial structure was clearly striking! I am ready to agree that all this is a random play of nature, but the new pictures do not show her, this game either. Where did she disappear to? ..
c) Perhaps the real sphinx and the "roads" over the two decades from the day of the previous photographing were simply filled up with dust? We do not know much about the frequency and intensity of dust storms on other planets ... But in 20 years to fill up huge kilometer-long structures !? Although if you look at big NASA photos it looks like there is something there, but pretty much covered.
d) If the sprouts of a new civilization survived to this day (for example, in the darkness of the dungeons), then they could well not only build pyramids, but also destroy them. For thousands of years, they kept and preserved their buildings, and all this in order to destroy everything in a decade, or even faster. It would be logical to assume that the main reason was the "invasion" of research vehicles from the Earth. The secret must remain secret, no matter who keeps it ...

The latest photo of the "Sphinx" 04/08/2001

Due to the great excitement around the "Face", it was decided to re-photograph the area of ​​Tsidonia. On April 8, 2001, Mars Global Surveyor, at 20:54 (UTC), flew in such a way that it could capture the Face, located at a distance of 165 km to the side and at a distance of 450 km. The resulting photo has a resolution of 2 meters per point. (If there were objects the size of a regular passenger jet on Mars, they would be distinguishable at that scale.)
The new photograph "Faces" covers an area of ​​3.6 km. The sun illuminates it from the lower left.

The Martian Sphinx can also be viewed in stereo

The habitability of planets in ancient and medieval times was considered almost obvious, and great Isaac Newton assumed that even the Sun was inhabited. In 1897, the French popularizer of science K. Flammarion in the book "Picturesque Astronomy" in the chapter on the Red Planet, he wrote: "The human world of Mars, probably, has significantly outstripped us in everything and has reached great perfection ... These brothers unknown to us are not incorporeal souls, but not soulless bodies; they are not supernatural, but they are not gross, either; they act, think and reason, as we do on Earth. They live in society, they are made up of families and form peoples; they built cities and learned all kinds of arts. "

For a long time it was believed that the Martians are no different from humans. The Christian Church claimed that God created people in his own image and likeness. Therefore, a person is a standard, and any other intelligent creatures in the Universe should be like him.

It was believed that they are arranged more gracefully than earthlings: they are more beautiful, smarter, more graceful. They do not build houses, but palaces, surrounding them with flowering gardens. They are also telepathic, because mind reading was considered an inevitable acquisition that evolution will one day give us all. Such "graceful" Martians can be found in a variety of novels. For example, in the novel "Through the Zodiac" (1880), written Percy Greg.

We meet the Martians in the classic "Aelita" Alexei Nikolaevich Tolstoy(1922), and in free continuation on the theme of this work - in the story Anatoly Andreeva"The stars are the last ray ..." (1987) and in the novel Vasily Golovacheva"Magatsites" (2003).

Fragile humanoid Martians with telepathic abilities are described in the "Martian Chronicles" by the American writer Ray Bradbury... Heirs ancient civilization canal builders live in an unspeakably beautiful but withering world. The history of Mars ends with the arrival of earthlings. Common terrestrial chickenpox kills Martians more reliably than any war.

There were also "flying" Martians. Flammarion wrote that if the force of gravity on Mars is lower than that of the Earth, and the atmosphere is denser, then, most likely, evolution will lead to the emergence of a diverse flying fauna, and the intelligent beings of the red planet will be winged.

Classic of French prose Guy de Maupassant in his story "The Martian" (1887), he describes creatures that hover like "the angels in the pictures." Winged Martians can also be found in the four-volume saga Georges Le Fora and Henri de Graffigny"The Unusual Adventures of a Russian Scientist" (1889), which describes a scientific expedition to the planets Solar system... Arriving on Mars, scientists find there a highly developed civilization, "to which we, the inhabitants of the Earth, are far away."

In 1897 H.G. Wells published the story "The Crystal Egg", which described the winged Martians, very little like humans. Despite the rather repulsive appearance (huge butterflies with grasping organs in the form of long tentacles), the inhabitants of the red planet managed to build beautiful palaces and planted blooming gardens, in no way yielding to the Martians from utopian novels.

In the same year, his novel "The War of the Worlds" was released, which became a classic of science fiction. The novel describes the invasion of Earth by giant mechanical tripods, armed with "heat rays". Tripods quickly occupy Britain, breaking the resistance of the strongest army in the world, but the Martians sitting in these terrible war machines are suddenly killed by an epidemic caused by terrestrial microorganisms.

Wells took a responsible approach to the reconstruction of the appearance of the inhabitants of the red planet. Mars is older than Earth, and therefore its inhabitants have advanced greatly along the path of evolution: their torso and limbs have atrophied, and their brains have grown significantly. Due to the loss of basic organs, the Martians cannot eat normally, and therefore drink living blood. The attraction on Mars is less than that of the Earth, which means that alien aggressors, devoid of limbs, cannot freely move on the surface of our planet and they need powerful machines. Blood-sucking Martians on battle tripods quickly became part of world culture.

H.G. Wells offered the public another version of the Martians. In the popular science article "Creatures that Live on Mars" (1908), he pointed out that the conditions of life on the red planet must have shaped the anatomy of intelligent beings in a certain way. Thanks to the discoveries of astronomers, Wells already knew that the atmosphere on Mars was less dense and drier - so he no longer described winged Martians. But he provided them with high growth, thin limbs, large ears and a huge chest.

In a cycle of novels about the Martian adventures of the dashing cavalryman John Carter, written by an American Edgar Rice Burroughs Between 1912 and 1943, Barsum, as its inhabitants call Mars, was inhabited by the most bizarre creatures. However, among the intelligent, humanoid races prevail, differing from each other in height and skin color: there are "white", "black", "red", "green" and "yellow" races.

Still, what might the Martians look like in terms of the available scientific evidence? NASA scientists discovered interesting fact... After flying into space, astronauts grow up. Height increases by approximately 2 inches. After a little over a week, everything returns to normal. After the research, it turned out that this phenomenon is explained by the absence of gravity. In zero gravity, the human spine is stretched, and the volume of fluid between the vertebrae increases. Spacesuits for space flights are now designed with this fact in mind.

It has long been proven that we grow in sleep. Having taken a horizontal position, the pressure on the vertebrae from top to bottom is relieved. The effect is approximately the same. The intervertebral and joint fluid expands. Many had to watch how their child could grow up significantly overnight, which is called "by leaps and bounds."

It can be assumed how tall people will be who will grow up on a planet that has less attraction than the Earth. If we consider Mars, then its attraction is three times less than that of the Earth. The load on the legs and spine of the Martians would be much less. This would save them from many diseases inherent in earthly inhabitants. How do you feel about a two-meter (and maybe even taller) relative who decides to visit you?

However, the desire of the inhabitants of Mars to finally move to our planet would greatly affect their weight. One NASA Scientist Al Globus believes that a human born on Mars, whose weight is 160 pounds, would have weighed 500 pounds after moving to Earth after a while. He would start having problems with the musculoskeletal system due to the unusually strong attraction. A Martian would spend a lot of time lying down and moving little, which would significantly affect his slimness. Therefore, people born on other planets with lower gravity will only be able to visit us for a short time.

In 2010, the world famous British physicist, theorist and astronomer Stephen Hawking in collaboration with local animation artists presented an unusual project Into the Universe, in which the scientist tried to predict what the aliens might look like from a scientific point of view. "Even from a mathematical point of view, the likelihood of the existence of life somewhere outside the Earth is very high. The real question is when this life will be discovered and on that it will look like, "- explained Hawking. Here's who ended up:

And also from the area of ​​completely unscientific speculation. The picture, which in February 2014 transmitted to Earth robot "Curiosity" (Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity), you can see half of the head carved out of stone. She - the head - is facing the robot. Enthusiasts from among Waring's colleagues "rebuilt" the head, mirroring the remaining half. And thus we got the whole face. The most logical assumption is that this is what the Martians looked like, and not anyone else.

The Martian from the sculpture is not handsome by our standards. It looks like he is elderly. Facial features are strong-willed. The skull is pulled up. It is crowned with some kind of tall structure. But what it means or symbolizes, no one can guess. The mouth is strange: as if a Martian has four lips.

The sculpture of an elderly Martian is not the first photographed on the Red Planet. As early as 8 years ago, the predecessor of Curiosity, the Martian robot Spirit, which was then in the Gusev crater, took an amazing panoramic picture. Soon, this photo, posted on the official NASA website, found a detail that made it sensational. Namely, a female figurine was discovered - a Martian, as it was quite logical to be dubbed right there and then.

For some reason, NASA released the image with the Martian a few months after it received it. He entered the public domain in January 2008. And since then, people have been arguing: is it a man-made figurine, or is it such a bizarre stone.

Another photograph taken by Spirit in the same Gusev crater demonstrates more monumental creativity. Again, the head is visible. You don't even need fancy to notice it. Here it is lying on Mars, as if it had fallen off from some architectural structure... And it has a distant portrait resemblance to the sculptural images of the Maya Indians. The Martian, filmed by "Curiosity", has clearly different facial features. Could it be that there were different kinds of humanoids living on Mars?

Martian Maya statue discovered Markus Johansen from Hamburg (Germany). And nearby I saw also a half of a Martian dinner plate. The plate is for the second courses. The bottom is flat, along the edge there is a rim. And what did they eat there? And when..?

It just so happened that Mars has long been something of a nursery for all kinds of evil spirits generated by the imagination of writers, directors and game developers. The very word "Martians", applied to most of the aliens on our planet, hints that Mars is a difficult and very aggressive planet. And in the film "Living", which is released on the big screens on March 23, 2017, an unknown, but extremely dangerous creature was brought to the ISS from Mars. How many new vacancies on the ISS will have to open "Roscosmos" and NASA, we will find out very soon. In the meantime, let's remember the most famous Martians and find out who can actually live there.

Mars is the birthplace of the tripods

It was with H.G. Wells that aggressive populations of the Red Planet began. In a novel written 120 years ago, a flash is detected on Mars, and a few days later, a delegation authorized to conduct military negotiations is flying from there at full speed. By the way, this is the first novel to raise a fertile topic. enmity between humans and aliens, and the Martians were the first to start!

A large grayish round carcass, perhaps the size of a bear, slowly, with difficulty, crawled out of the cylinder. Leaning out into the light, she shone like a wet belt. Two large dark eyes gazed at me intently. The monster had round head and, so to speak, the face. Under the eyes was a mouth, the edges of which moved and trembled, releasing saliva. The monster was breathing heavily, and its entire body throbbed convulsively. One of its thin tentacles rested against the edge of the cylinder, with the other it swung in the air

HG Wells "War of the Worlds"

The Martians move on tripods; they use a heat ray and "black smoke" to destroy people. Fortunately, they will soon die, not immune to any of the terrestrial viruses. It is worth noting that Wells wrote science fiction, surprisingly well thought out at the time. He has little that happens in the novel just like that. The reasons why the aliens headed towards the Earth are clearly indicated. The difficult living conditions on Mars are to blame for everything: a decrease in the average temperature on the planet, the onset of ice, and a rarefaction of the atmosphere.

In 1938, this novel was broadcast on the radio by one of the most distinguished American directors, Orson Welles. Yes, not just staged, but turned the radio show into a semblance live broadcast... Serious panic broke out, frightened people began to call the editorial office, in some places it turned into real hysteria. Eleven years later, the same effect was achieved from the gullible inhabitants of Ecuador. There she is - great power art.

Egg Bearer Beautiful Princess

Let's make a reservation right away, we will not see such a variety and flight of fantasy as in the novels of Edgar Burroughs, one of the giants of the era of novels in magazines, anywhere else. He wrote as many as eleven novels about the world of dying Mars (the locals call him Barsum), and this cycle was surpassed in popularity only by the adventures of Tarzan.

The main character John Carter, captain of the US Army, sniffing the herbs in an Indian cave, is transported to Mars. Gravity is lower there, so the main character deftly chops down huge green and four-armed Martians, takes care of the survival of the whole tribe and, on occasion, rescues the princesses in order to subsequently marry one of them.

The Martians here are green and red, fanged and four-armed. In general, they are most reminiscent of the orcs, who, by some miracle, reached the development of the 18th century. The princesses of a pleasant reddish color practically do not wear clothes and lay eggs. However, this does not bother the main character: he gives the princess Deya Toris his hand and heart, and she gives him the crown of the ruler of Mars and an egg with an heir.

Her face was oval and extraordinarily beautiful, every feature of it was, as it were, chiseled and struck with its sophistication; her eyes were huge and shiny, and her head, from which waves of jet-black hair (curling), were adorned with a strange but beautiful hairstyle. Her skin was a shade of reddish copper, against the background of which the hot blush of her cheeks and the ruby ​​of her wonderfully carved lips stood out with enchanting charm ... She was as naked as the accompanying green Martians. Except for the jewelry of very delicate work, she was completely naked, but no outfit could exalt the beauty of her perfect and harmonious figure.

Edgar Burroughs

The further into the forest, the more pianos in the novel, carefully placed in all the nooks and crannies of Mars. New races are constantly being added, white and bald, and then black, are added to the green and red Martians. Where can we go without them? In general, absolutely crazy fantasy, which is pleasant to read when you are 14 (um ... no, now 10) and the thirst to conquer and enchant princesses is much more than the cynicism that manifests itself at the sight of plot clichés and super-unexpected twists.

Elk on Mars

After reading the leaked and in Soviet Union Burroughs' novels, Alexei Tolstoy decided that he would describe his Mars "with communism and revolutionaries." No sooner said than done, and to the Red Planet with the most best goals Two are flying: the Petrograd engineer and inventor Mstislav Los and the former Makhnovist, the Red Army soldier Alexei Gusev, recruited for the expedition by an ad (not an ounce of irony, Los was really looking for a second cosmonaut, posting ads in the gloomy St. Petersburg back streets).

On Mars, a society of humanoids awaits them, persistently demanding a revolution, the spark of which the earthlings begin to fan with all their might. Even the daughter of the local ruler Aelita - a beautiful thin girl with "huge pupils of ashen eyes" cannot resist the desire to build communism on the fragments of Martian Atlantis. However, the local authorities turn out to be stronger than their earthly counterparts and crush the fifth column and the roots of the revolution in the bud.

The elk is in love with Aelita, and she has reciprocal feelings for the earthling, but the cosmonauts have to flee so as not to be responsible for "calls to overthrow the existing system." However, the ending of the story leaves a chance for a happy ending, interspecies marriages and a cosmic extravaganza because the second Martian engine is almost ready (that would be such a performance for modern engineers of Roscosmos!).

Martians with a human face

After the 30s, when the novel by the Chinese author Lao She "Notes on the City of a Cat" was published, in which Mars was inhabited by a civilization of creatures resembling cats, there was a lull. No, they wrote a lot about Mars, but, alas, the science fiction of the 50s dictated its own rules. The Red Planet has become only one of the outposts of the Earth, just another world inhabited by humanity. "I'm sure they have the same thing - and everything is going according to plan."

Alas, Mars is becoming interesting exclusively from a social point of view. No four-armed Martians and egg-laying princesses. Yearning. Even in the novel by the great Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles, this is just a way to provide a mirror for humanity to show how we look. Just scenery, a background to warn of a possible nuclear threat.

Differs from this time, perhaps, only Arthur Clarke, who wrote a very strict science fiction "Sands of Mars". This is the era of colonists, the first earthly settlements, and Mars as another frontier, which should be taken in as soon as possible... Clark has vegetation on the Red Planet, as well as kangaroo-like creatures. However, for the novel it is not so important, the author is much more interested in the industrial relations of the colonists, and only the sudden end of the novel can prevent them from building a colony.

It is also worth mentioning " Double star"Robert Heinlein. It's more of a political thriller, but the Martians play a very important role there too. According to the plot in High-profile actor Lawrence Smith is temporarily hired to play the double of the famous politician John Joseph Bonfort, who was secretly kidnapped by a rival party ... So he will have to do all the political work, including negotiations with the Martians.

I don't like Martians. It would never have occurred to me that something more like a log topped with a tropical helmet might claim human privilege. I just can't see how they grow their pseudo-extremities: in my opinion, it looks more like snakes crawling out of holes. I also don't like the fact that they can simultaneously look in all directions without turning their heads, if they have a head at all. But of course she is not. And I can't stand their smell at all!

Robert E. Heinlein "Double Star"

Again, we have in front of us only the scenery for the gorgeous political battles. The author does not care what they look like and how they are related to Mars. And therefore it is interesting to read, but instead of Mars, you can substitute any other planet.

The most important of the arts

History has a tendency to repeat itself, and yes, it usually happens in the form of a farce. So through the efforts of Tim Burton in 1996, the Martians again attacked our planet. This time, it didn't work out to scare anyone, but a comedy with a very black and densely mixed with the killed earthlings humor came out not devoid of charm.

The writers also added heat. They didn’t know how the Martians would talk, and they scripted ack, ack, ack, ack as a replacement for dialogue. As a result, the working version became official language Martians, so they acted throughout the film. And yes, if you missed it, then it is worth watching at least for the sake of the scene of dressing up as a blonde, which has already become a cult.

The film ends like the story of a hundred years ago, however, the unfortunate invaders died this time from earthly music. I'm afraid if the Martians had heard the "Mushrooms" or "Bloodstock" group, they would have thought of attacking the old Earth in a moment.

I already see comments under the article: "What about Total Recall and the woman with three breasts?" Yes, this moment made an impression on almost everyone. And on the nowadays thirty-year-old inhabitants of Russia it is generally indelible. But alas, the inhabitants of Mars in this film are practically no different from the earthlings. They only mutated, living in difficult inhuman conditions created by the transplanetary capitalists. Alas, nothing interesting from the point of view of studying possible Martians.

But in the little-known film by Brian De Palma "Mission to Mars" the narrative is much more serious. As a result, it turns out that the Martians are also humanoids, but they left the planet long ago due to a collision with an asteroid. Why they rushed to distant stars, and were not satisfied with the Earth - is unclear. But what they were before the flight is completely unknown, and therefore this film should not be used as a visual aid for identifying the Martians.

And what is it really?

What does science say about all these fantasies? Do astronauts have the likelihood of meeting life upon arrival on the Red Planet? And if not with banners and bread and salt, then at least running and galloping. Alas, there are not many chances of finding something interesting. It may very well be that Mars is uninhabited in principle. Despite the fact that it has been in the habitable zone for at least hundreds of millions of years, today the atmosphere there is too thin (up to 150 times more rarefied than Earth's). It does not retain heat well, which is why it is very cold there, on average -63 degrees Celsius, which is 78 degrees colder than on Earth.

However, this does not mean that there cannot be life. A lichen was placed on Earth back in 2012 Pleopsidium chlorophanum into the temperature regime of equatorial Mars and an artificial analogue of its atmosphere. The lichen not only survived, but also successfully engaged in photosynthesis when temperatures reached daytime, above zero. Of course, this sometimes requires at least a little water. But at some points on the Martian surface, liquid water is.

More simple organisms for example, unicellular archaea are even more suitable for Mars. In 2017 that Methanothermobacter wolfeii, Methanosarcina barkeri, Methanobacterium formicicum and Methanococcus maripaludis - almost ready-made Martians. They can easily tolerate the temperature and pressure of the surface of the Red Planet. True, they were fed with a small amount of hydrogen. But from a chemical point of view, liquid water, when interacting with the components of the Martian soil, should give hydrogen. By the way, another work is that the same archaea survive at pressures up to 1200 atmospheres, that is, in the deep bowels of Mars.

It is with archaea (their counterparts, of course) that the most realistic expectations for the discovery of Martian life are associated. In laboratory experiments, these unicellular organisms produced methane. When it was warmer, they produced more; colder, less. On real Mars, the picture is similar. In the warm season, the concentration of methane in the atmosphere there increases, and in the cold season it almost disappears. Of course, inorganic processes can also generate methane. However, on Earth, its main source is bacteria, and so far this option is difficult to reject for Mars as well.

Alas, so far earthlings have only rovers there that can drill. It is not a fact that methanogens live there so close to a cold and dry surface. So until the astronauts with the entrenching instrument arrived on the fourth planet, it is hardly possible to say exactly who or what is behind the local methane.

However, the Russian-European project "ExoMars" promises to soon teach rovers to drill up to two meters. But here, too, you should not expect a miracle. Any automated search for life is less eye-catching than a human biologist with equipment. The equipment of the American "Vikings", as it turned out recently, generally searched for Martian life by methods that are guaranteed, without allowing to find any traces of living in the samples.

Whether multicellular organisms can live on the now cold and desolate Mars, albeit without three weighty breasts, is a much more controversial and speculative question. In theory, yes. There are caves on Earth where springtails successfully feed on mushrooms, surviving at depths of more than two kilometers ( Plutomurus ortobalaganensis in the Krubera cave, Abkhazia).

One "but" - such a difficult life on our planet first arose on the surface of the planet, and only then descended into the depths. On Mars, liquid oceans have existed for hundreds of millions of years in a row, but based on terrestrial experience, multicellular life is unlikely to have time to form in such a time. The first traces of multicellular organisms in the geological record were only 1.8 billion years ago - about a couple of billion years after the appearance of the first ancestor of all living things. So red underground oviparous Martians on the fourth planet are unlikely to be found.