Eyes on Mr. Mars; Speculating About a Strange Formation
07/08/88
THE WASHINGTON POST

As the world watched the Soviets launch their ambitious
exploratory mission to the Martian moon Phobos yesterday, another
(smaller) group of reporters watched pictures projected on a screen
of a less well received mission: investigating the man in Mars.
"We are not going to announce that we have found life on Mars,"
Richard Hoagland, author and founder of the Mars Project, said
yesterday at a press conference at the National Press Club. "But we
are going to announce that we have found something so interesting
that it demands we go back and find out about it."
What they have found is a face-"a humanoid figure" that appears
to be a three-dimensional formation on the Martian surface.
Actually, they didn't exactly find it either. The face was
discovered 12 years ago when NASA scientists noticed it in pictures
taken about 1,000 miles above the surface of Mars by the Viking
orbiter. It's a rather squarish, masklike countenance with vague
features-male in appearance-one side of it in shadow, staring up. It
is located in the Cydonia region in the northern hemisphere of Mars
and measures a mile long.
After some scrutiny, scientists concluded that it was a trick of
light and shadow at least, an interesting natural phenomenon at most.
They attributed the human interpretation to man's tendency to
anthropomorphize, to see human characteristics where they don't
exist.
But Hoagland and three colleagues-an anthropologist, an
electrical engineer and a former NASA astronaut-believe it could mean
more. In 1983, when Hoagland saw more extensive photos of the
feature, he became intrigued.
"I thought, suppose this is real? Who did this, and why?" said
Hoagland, who upon examining the photos more closely found a
collection of objects he now calls "the city." They include a
pyramid shape and another object he believes resembles a fortress.
"The close proximity of unusual objects such as these to the
face increases the likelihood that this collection of objects is not
natural," Mark Carlotto, the electrical engineer, wrote in a paper
that was published in Applied Optics in May. Carlotto first
submitted the paper to the science journal Icarus, which turned it
down, saying in Carlotto's words that it was "OF NO SCIENTIFIC
INTEREST."
Carlotto, who works on this in his spare time, did the
sophisticated computer modeling that has led the Mars Project group
to believe that the humanoid figure is a bisymmetrical,
three-dimensional object; that, says Hoagland, "adds another level
of improbability" to the notion that this was naturally created.
"If this pans out, if it's real," Hoagland said a touch
breathlessly, "we're in a whole new ball game. Human history turns a
page."

Who's buying this? Not many scientists.

"It's probably something perfectly natural which by accident
looks like a face," says Carl Sagan, author and Cornell University
professor of astronomy. Sagan was a principal investigator of the
Viking data and has seen thousands of pictures of Mars.
"We're talking about a very small feature with lateral
dimensions on the order of a kilometer or two. We have to ask how
many such features on Mars are like that? Nobody's claiming that all
faces represent some intelligence. How did all the others get made?
... Isn't it more likely that through geological processes you get
these features?"
Sagan himself has seen faces in the Martian surface. "There's a
wonderful HAPPY FACE in the middle of a crater-from which I do not
deduce that there are people who live on Mars who make happy-face
buttons."
Both Sagan and NASA officials point out that the patterns of the
features could have been caused by wind erosion.
"Our opinion is that they were formed by windstorms during the
long Martian summers," says NASA public relations official Charles
Redmond. "You could have sharp angular chiseling of the existing
Martian landscape." Hoagland, he adds, is being "persistent over
something he no longer needs to be persistent over."
But Redmond is GENEROUS in his characterization of Hoagland.
"He's certainly a legitimate individual," Redmond says.
In fact, Hoagland, 43, has VIRTUALLY NO ACADEMIC CREDENTIALS. He
finished two years at the University of Connecticut before leaving to
work as a curator at the age of 19 at a space museum in Springfield,
Mass. "I dropped out to be part of the space program," Hoagland says.
He later worked as a science adviser to CBS News and did consulting
for the Goddard Space Flight Center.  He wrote the 1987 book "The
Monuments of Mars" and founded the Mars Project, which offers
membership and a newsletter for $25 a year. Today he spends much of
his time talking about his project and Mars exploration to general
audiences and schools.
"I had to be pushed kicking and screaming to take this
seriously," Hoagland insists. "I tried every which way to shoot it
down. There are still times I ask myself, `Are we deluding
ourselves?' "
Now, he and his colleagues are pros at defusing the fantastical
component. At every question put to them-Isn't this just
anthropomorphism? What are you defining as life? Whose face is
it?-they smile and nod. They've been asked it all before.
Anthropologist Randolfo Pozos, executive director of the Mars
Project, admits that it is "a REBEL ALLIANCE of people outside the
planetary community" but adds, "We've tried to avoid the fringe
movements-the UFO contingent and the New Age movement; the people
who say they're channeling messages; the people who say they've led
previous lives on Mars."
They avoid saying what (in the way of artificial intelligence)
created the features-or, closer to the fringe, speculating on why.
"People suspect a variety of things," Pozos says. "You start
speculating and then you have a field day. And THERE'S NO SCIENTIFIC
DATA."
However, scientist and former astronaut  Brian O'Leary-who made
his comments at the press conference from Arizona via telephone
hookup-TOTTERED A LITTLE CLOSER TO THE EDGE when he enthusiastically
proclaimed, "I have a strong feeling that in the next 10 years we are
going to discover extraterrestrial intelligence. I can't go into
details ..." From the back of the room of assembled reporters came
an `Oooo-wooo-oo' and some chuckles.
But eventually Hoagland revealed: "My own personal point of view
is: If this is real, it was intrusive. They were visitors and the
face was INTENDED TO FLAG OUR ATTENTION and then they did what many
cultures have done on our earth. They disappeared."
They stress that their biggest conclusion is: The existing data
and research are compelling enough to warrant collecting more data.
Specifically, they want more pictures of the Martian features either
from the Soviet expedition to Phobos (which seems unlikely) or the
U.S. Mars Observer mission scheduled for 1992.
"I'm sure that if it's possible we will," Redmond says. "NASA
has no objection to taking a further look."