MORE “PAREIDOLIA” ON MARS, OR JUST A PSYOP?

Before we kick off this week's blogs, please do not forget that this coming Friday we have another vidchat at 2PM US Central time, weather permitting. (And actually, it does not look likely as of this moment that any storm-related rescheduling will occur, because the middle part of the country has been baking in +100 degree heat for so long I feel like a lobster). As always, please remember to have your questions and comments submitted by email to me no later than 10PM US Central time this Thursday night. We've been having some interesting vidchats all over the map lately, so I look forward to what all you Gizars are going to cook up this week!

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Down to business. You may have noticed that lately there has been another spate of pictures of "strange stuff" on Mars and the Moon, and that is part of my high octane speculation today, which is based on this Uk Daily Mail article spotted and shared (with our gratitude) by T.M.:

NASA photo of Mars sparks theories of alien life as eagle-eyed viewers spot TRACKS in the dust

Now whenever I am confronted by pictures like this, my usual thought is that NASA has taken a picture of its own tracks in the Martian dust, did not comment about it, and let others discover said tracks, and proceed to make a Martian mountain out of a NASA molehill. But as regular readers of this website also know, I am fascinated by pictures of anomalous shapes and "things" (like the Martian "tripod" from my blog a few days ago: "More 'Pareidolia' on Mars, or, Another Martian Anomaly). Things like that are just too difficult to ignore, and I'm not buying that it was simply misidentified NASA equipment. In such cases,  I prefer for the sake of argued "high octane speculation" to assume the picture is true, and then to extrapolate implications from it.

That is what I want to do today: these look definitely like tracks left in the Martian dust. But they look inconveniently like the tracks left by the kinds of caterpillar tracked vehicles NASA likes to send to our nearest planetary neighbors' surfaces... except, that they don't. More about that in a moment. So I'm assuming the much more intriguing case that is being implied in the article: that NASA did not comment on these tracks because it did not make them, and that someone named Kari Sivertzen posted them after she discovered them while combing through NASA's online archive of photos. (Sivertzen is also the one who supposedly posted the picture of the Martian "tripod" that I blogged about in that previous blog.)   And there's a couple more inconvenient things about these tracks, for according to the article

One person asked: 'Are those Curiosity’s tracks we’re seeing?'

However, others who viewed the NASA image shared on social media that the tracks from the human-made rover are completely different from the pattern seen last year.

Fueling speculation that NASA’s rover had captured proof of some mechanical device driving on Mars, another image taken just two minutes later caught the same pattern in the ground from a different angle - suggesting this was not a camera glitch or trick of the light.

And then there's this a little further on in the article:

However, the photo had some lining up Curiosity's wheel marks to the uniform pattern seen on Mars, which appeared to show a straight line down the center of the track, with evenly spaced prints closely distributed in a straight line - just like a tire in motion.

One person replied to the X post: 'It's not the rover, at least what I think, since that would have left two tracks and the "pattern" doesn't match other rover tracks.'

The X user pointed out that Curiosity has no center line in its tire tracks, and the treads also feature a jagged pattern with large square blocks between them.

This was not the first strange pattern or formation astronomy enthusiasts have spotted on the Red Planet.

Not the first strange pattern or formation spotted on Mars!?!?  You don't say!

All kidding aside, for the sake of our daily dose of high octane speculation, we assume (1) the tracks are real, and that (2) NASA did not make them.  And that leaves an intriguing question, for notice that the "track" appears to make a sharp, almost 90 degree turn toward the left center of the picture, moving down towards the lower center. What are we looking at? One possibility worth mentioning, though I do not intend on discussing it today, is that it might be a fossil of some sort, like large, elongated trilobite.  But let's go with the "track" interpretation, because that raises the most intriguing possibilities: namely, that it is a track, made by something either alive, or artificial, and more probably the latter. Another question: why does it just appear out of nowhere, move about, make that almost 90 degree turn, and then just as suddenly stop? Did it fly to the location? Did that "tripod" thing make this track? But back to the main theme of the speculation...

If any of this be the case, then someone's mechanism had to have made it. The question is: Whose? Is someone else on Mars? Is someone else sending covert probes to that planet? If so, who? and from where? There are few nations that are capable of sending probes to Mars, and we all know who the usual suspects are. But we are now in the age of private space corporations able to launch heavy lift boosters and cargos into space. Are we looking at a very private corporate or some other non-state actor here? Possibly. But all this assumes that Whatever It Is that made that "track", that it originates from Earth. But that may not necessarily be so.  If it is the result of a mechanism, it might have originated elsewhere... perhaps even on Mars itself. Who knows?

In either case, all this high octane speculation leads to a final disturbing question: if someone else is on Mars, whether they originate from Earth or "elsewhere", then the question is "Why are they there? What are they looking for?"  And my tentative answer to that question is that it seems improbable to me that "they" - if they are up there - are just there for the sake of "pure science", especially if we are looking at the evidence of Earth-born corporate involvement in making those tracks...

Then there's a final question: why is all this being released now, and by the UK Daily Mail, a tabloid with long-rumored connections to British intelligence.  Is this just part of some intricate psyop and international "narrative preparation" going on? Or is the tabloid playing its role in "disclosing" things without NASA's official involvement?  Any way one slices these stories, we're left with a mystery, but for my two cents' worth, I think we're looking at careful, well-thought-out narrative preparation...

See you on the flip side...

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