Circulating around the internet for the week or so was a close up view of an image for NASA’s Spirit probe images. When zoomed, the image showed a figure, perched on a rock, with one arm straight out . Now at first glance, there is a resemblance to big foot, or a woman, or many other creatures. In fact, when zoomed and projected on a wall, one looks at the smooth rocks surrounding the figure and starts to wonder, could this really be an alien?

Well the truth is revealed. This is not Sasquatch, Chewbacca, or a monument to some pagan god; in fact this is a two inch piece of rock. When you see the wide pan images of the Martian landscape, you believe the rocks in the image are great mountains of Grand Canyon scale. In truth, these are the size of regular rocks you would kick around here on Earth. The rover that took the photos, Spirit, is no more than three feet in height, making the rock photos seem so vast. NASA also points out that each image Spirit snaps takes several minutes to actually compose itself, meaning if it was a person (all be it a very tiny one) they would have had to stay still for a very, very long time.

This just goes to show how easy we are to fool, but it does give me some hope that even full grown adults can have a sense of whimsy. So, are you willing to accept NASA’s explanation? Or is Mars populated by a race of slow, sluggish, Smurfs?