Possible Life on Mars? - Not in this photo

I don't usually respond to something like this. But looking at it made me really wonder. I bounced around on several sites finally finding one that actually gave the web source for the photo they were using. So I typed in the url and found the actual photo. The sad part in all of this is that most of the postings on the web have taken this picture out of context. It's not exactly photoshopped. I imagine that the author of this "rumor" (though I really want to say hoax) cropped the image for ease of viewing.

However, the cropping removed the edge of the Rover, removing the base of scale. To make this picture small enough to get around the web quickly, only a small portion of the area was shown zoomed in. With the loss of scale, one could easily imagine that what they're looking at is small sandstone outcroppings. They're not. To see what I'm talking about visit the Photojournal at JPL. If you have Photoshop, get the jpg or tif image offered on the right side of the page. Open it and look around the left side of the image towards the bottom. You'll have to zoom in around 400% to come close.

Some of you might say that the rock color doesn't match the rocks near it. It actually does. Take your Magnetic Lasso tool around the human looking image, copy it and paste it to a new layer. Drag the new layer over the rock a ways down and you'll see that the color does indeed match.

I would love it if NASA would just take Spirit back over to that section and get really close to this rock. Might be like finding a needle in a haystack.

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Google it if you really want to

My contract at LegalZoom has been terminated. They've decided to switch to .NET with the bulk of the web site already being completed and moving out of Sharepoint. They've got a talented HTML person (*waves at Beth*) already so I became superfluous. My only quibble is that they did exactly as I thought they would. "Don't come in. The contract is over." Oh well.

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