Boomer on the Ground:
Is It Time To Return To the Home World?
-first of a series of dispatches from the colonies-
By
Thomas B. Wallace, Editor and Publisher
First I would like the reader to consider the following images very carefully...
Copyright January 9, 2004 Human Imagineering All Rights Reserved
...and
Now I would like the reader to consider that the above images were extracted, using simple digital photo enhancement techniques, from the single panoramic view sent to earth by the current Mars Probe Spirit located at http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/tiff/PIA04995.tif . These images are startling in their implications, but as startling are images presented at http://www.enterprisemission.com/spirit.htm. Now, what does all of this have to do with the subject of this editorial? First, a bit of history...
"NASA's twin robot geologists, the Mars Exploration Rovers, launched toward Mars on June 10 and July 7, 2003, in search of answers about the history of water on Mars. They are scheduled to land on Mars January 3 and January 24 PST (January 4 and January 25 UTC).
The Mars Exploration Rover mission is part of NASA's Mars Exploration Program, a long-term effort of robotic exploration of the red planet.
Primary among the mission's scientific goals is to search for and characterize a wide range of rocks and soils that hold clues to past water activity on Mars. The spacecraft are targeted to sites on opposite sides of Mars that appear to have been affected by liquid water in the past. The landing sites are at Gusev Crater, a possible former lake in a giant impact crater, and Meridiani Planum, where mineral deposits (hematite) suggest Mars had a wet past. " NASA http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/overview/
Well, Spirit, the first of the rovers scheduled, landed in or near the Gusev Crater on 4 January 2004 and sent this photo - http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/tiff/PIA04995.tif - back to earth. The other two images were those I extracted from the above after being alerted to examine this photo for "anomolous" shapes in the panorama by the editors of the Enterprise Mission website who had made their own examination - http://www.enterprisemission.com/spirit.htm - on their website pointing out what appeared to be objects that looked as if they might be "metal cased" or "manufactured". Once I had examined their analysis I downloaded the original panorama - which is 40 MB and much too large to upload to this site - and began to search "odd" shapes in the panorama that they had not. One of the first was a "tent shaped" object located about 1/5th of the way towards the bottom between the top/bottom centerline of the panorama, bottom side, and about 1/4th the way from the right side going left. Imagine my surprise when I magnified this area and panned from right to left on the image and suddenly saw... this...
Now, just to be sure I was looking at what I thought I might be looking at I copied this area of the photo to a bitmap image, loaded it into my photo editor, enhanced the brightness and contrast slightly, then rotated it 90 degrees to the right and saw... this...
For those who are still having a little difficulty seeing what I am talking about I have again loaded this image into another bitmap file and have artificially outlined those areas I think are of greatest interest... I would urge the viewer not to let my inexpert attempt at sketch to prejudice their view, but simply to let the outlining provided allow their eyes and minds to look at the unadorned photos with a new insight into the play of light and shadow contained therein...
Clearly, this appears to be the bust of a recognizebly human head in what appears to be a contemplative pose... resting atop what arguably appears to be a block of stone half buried in the Martian sand.
Trust me, I know that the implications of that statement go way beyond "startling", and even "revolutionary" is understatement. "Cosmic" and "Immense" come instantly to mind. If this object is what it appears to be, then for NASA to ignore this object in its exploration with the rover, or to attempt to hide any findings associated with that exploration would be a crime beyond human comprehension. Why? Because there are two implications of this object that come shouldering to the forefront.
First on the subject of a journey to Mars. This object, if it is what it appears to be simply makes fact the proposition that recognizeably human and intelligent life has already been to Mars, perhaps many thousands of years ago.
The second is this, if this object is what it appears to be then it raises the very real possibility that we ourselves came from this now dead planet, long seeded in this new place by those who could not escape the catastrophe that clearly befell the makers of this image. What if the Gilgamesh Epic, or the Noahic flood were not occurances that happened to us here on earth but were the preservation of the history of what happened to us on Mars, when the atmosphere was inextricably ripped away and cataclysmic floods innundated life there. Gusev crater is said to be a huge lake bed inside an even larger impact crater that was the catch basin for a huge flood system that crashed through that region on Mars. What if our legends and stories are true, but simply not of this world. This haunting image makes our return to what may well be our home world not only a goal for the human spirit, but an imperative journey into our past that may be key to our survival in the future. A journey that will perhaps show our ancestors that this time we can make that trip not because our survival as a species and a world yet depends on it, as it may have for them, but because we have, as they clearly wished we would, preserved the human spirit of knowledge and exploration to that point in our history where we may make that journey in peace, and not necessarily running from our own destruction.
Now, of course, I would be remiss to say that this object may not be at all what it appears to be. After all appearances can be deceiving. It could just be a rock that when struck by the weak Martian sunlight cast itself into an image of far greater significance than it really has. Or it could be the image of a humanoid race that once colonized or inhabited Mars and this is the surviving message to another of its colonies that has not yet fallen into the past. In short, it could be nothing, and it could be everything but there is no doubt that Spirit Rover needs to have a closer look and there is equally no doubt that NASA needs to share that closer look with all of us...
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