Just a Rock

Perhaps you saw the story in the news where NASA debunked the conspiracy theorists:

NASA: Mystery Creature On Mars Is Wind-Carved Rock

An image of a mysterious human-like creature on Mars that sparked a flurry of Internet activity is not an alien but a feature of the atmosphere, according to NASA.

The image, which was captured by NASA's spacecraft Spirit last November, circulated the Internet this week.

After seeing the photo, some called the image the equivalent of Big Foot pictures and evidence of an alien presence on Mars.

A version of the image was even magnified to show the apparent creature walking with his head tilted to the side.

However, NASA said the creature is a feature of the atmosphere -- a rock 2 inches high and carved by the Martian winds, according to a CBS News report Thursday.

Darn! That would have been pretty cool, wouldn't it? It just goes to show that the human eye sees what it expects to see. We see images in the clouds, we connect stars together into constellations, and we see a humanoid shape in a picture of a rock, because our eyes are very good at seeing humanoid shapes. Our minds try to make order out of chaos and sense out of nonsense, because we don't like chaos or nonsense.