Recently, one of the images of the Curiosity rover, which NASA published on its official website, showed a silhouette resembling the figure of a woman. Let's look at other similar cases. 1. Silhouette of a woman
The silhouette of a woman looks very believable, the "ghost" seems to be standing on a stone, demanding attention, - Hey, I'm here! 2 Martian Man
The Curiosity rover photographed the Martian rocks and in this image, a giant crab with ten legs is clearly visible. The discovery excited society and thousands of people turned to NASA with a request to return the apparatus to this rock in order to try to find this alien crustacean there. NASA ignored the request, saying it was the result of peridolia, a feature of the brain that allows people to see familiar shapes in random objects. 10. Flying balls
Ancient Chinese astronomers called Mars the "Fire Star", and curiosity about some things related to the Red Planet will burn scientists for a long time to come. Even after dozens of spacecraft were sent to Mars for research, many questions remained unanswered.
Why does Mars have two "faces"?
Scientists have been puzzled by the difference between the two sides of Mars for decades. The northern hemisphere of the planet - smooth and low - is one of the smoothest and most even places on the planets of the solar system. Potentially, it could be formed due to the water that once splashed on the Martian surface. At the same time, the southern half of Mars is uneven and all cut up by craters. It is about 4-8 kilometers higher than the northern part. Recent studies suggest that such differences between the southern and northern sides of the planet could be associated with a giant cosmic body that could have fallen to the surface of Mars a very long time ago.
What is the source of methane on Mars?
Methane, the simplest organic molecule, was first detected in the Martian atmosphere by the European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft back in 2003. On Earth, most of the methane is produced by living organisms, such as cattle, digesting food. Methane is thought to be stable in the Martian atmosphere for only 300 years, but who or what could have generated the gas so recently remains a mystery.
Still, there are ways to form methane without the participation of living organisms, for example, volcanic activity. The European Space Agency's new ExoMars program, which will be launched in 2016, will study chemical composition atmosphere of Mars so that scientists can learn more about Martian methane.
Is there liquid water on Mars?
Although a large amount of evidence indicates that Mars once had liquid water, whether it exists today remains a mystery. The atmospheric pressure on Mars is very low, about 100 times less than the pressure on Earth, so liquid water is unlikely to survive on the surface of the Red Planet. However, the dark long lines that we can see on the surface of Mars hint that salty streams of water can flow over them every spring.
Were there oceans on Mars?
A large number of Martian missions have shown that Mars has many signs that water once splashed on the surface of the planet. It is very likely that there were oceans, valley networks, river deltas, and minerals that could form water.
However, modern models of the early Martian climate cannot explain how such planets could exist on the planet. high temperatures to form liquid water, since the Sun warms the surface of the planet much weaker. Maybe some characteristics could the surfaces be shaped not by water, but by winds or other mechanisms? However, everything points to the fact that ancient Mars was still warm, and there could be water on its surface, at least on one side of it. However, some scientists claim that ancient Mars was cold but wet, although this theory continues to be disputed.
Is there life on Mars?
The first spacecraft to successfully land on the surface of Mars - NASA's Viking 1 - was the first to try to solve the mystery of whether there is life on the Red Planet, but so far no answer has been received. Today, this question worries Mars researchers around the world. Viking was able to detect organic molecules such as methyl chloride and dichloromethane. However, later it turned out that these were terrestrial impurities that were part of the cleaning fluids during the preparation of the apparatus on Earth.
The surface of Mars is quite suitable for the appearance of life on it, as far as we know, since there are appropriate conditions here: suitable temperature, radiation, increased dryness and other factors. A huge number of examples are known when life appeared on Earth even in more harsh conditions, for example, in the far north, in the dry soils of the Antarctic Dry Valleys and in the very dry Atacama Desert in Chile.
Where there is liquid water on Earth, life is everywhere, so scientists believe that if there is water on Mars, there must certainly be life. When scientists answer the question of whether there is life on Mars, they will be able to shed light on a number of other questions that remain unanswered today, such as whether life may or may not originate in other parts of the universe.
Did life come to Earth from Mars?
Meteorites that were discovered in Antarctica arrived on our planet from Mars. They broke away from the Red Planet during its collisions with other space objects. These meteorites have structures that resemble those created by terrestrial microbes. Although many studies suggest that, most likely, these structures were obtained by chemical means, disputes in the scientific world continue. Some researchers believe that life was brought to Earth from Mars a long time ago, and it was meteorites that could have brought it here.
Can earthlings live on Mars?
To finally answer the question of whether or not there is life on Mars, a person can fly there and find out.
Back in 1969, NASA had plans to launch a mission to send a man to Mars by 1981, and establish a permanent Mars station there by 1988. However, interplanetary travel with the participation of man turned out to be not such an easy task, both from a scientific and technical point of view.
For example, significant difficulties were: providing a supply of food, water, oxygen, eliminating harmful influence microgravity and radiation, reducing to zero the likelihood of fires, and so on. But the most important thing is that you need to psychologically prepare a person for the fact that for many years he will be far from the Earth and from real help. It is also difficult to imagine how it is possible to organize a landing, work, life on an alien planet and return from there back to Earth.
Nevertheless, astronauts have long dreamed of such flights. For example, the volunteers agreed to live for about a year on the spacecraft. It was the longest space flight simulation ever developed, aiming to replicate in Earth conditions what a mission to Mars could be like from start to finish.
Volunteers willing to go to Mars - a great many. Perhaps someday such a flight will become a reality.
In the second half of the 20th century, thanks to the advances in astronomy and unmanned astronautics, it became clear that developed life forms on mars no, and all the talk about the existence there ancient civilization are ordinary fantasies. Nevertheless, the neighboring planet has thrown scientists with many new mysteries that make us turn to its distant past.
Mysterious rivers of Mars
Rivers cannot flow on Mars today. The reason is that at atmospheric pressure, which prevails there, water boils at very low temperatures.
However, no other liquid could form the Martian channels that are visible from space, and the only possible explanation for their presence is the formation of rivers that flowed in the distant past. To do this, we must assume that in earlier epochs the atmospheric pressure on Mars was much higher.
Is such a thing possible? Yes, because Mars is the only planet where the substance of the polar caps coincides in composition with the main gas of the atmosphere - carbon dioxide. This means that if all the matter of the polar caps of Mars is turned into steam, then the pressure of its atmosphere will increase.
In the 1970s, several hypotheses were put forward to explain global climate change on Mars. For example, the famous American astrophysicist Carl Sagan proposed the original theory. Over the past 100,000 years, the Earth has experienced four periods of glaciation, punctuated by warm interglacial periods.
The most likely reason for the alternation of periods is a change in the influx of solar heat. Perhaps Mars is also susceptible to this influence, which, according to Sagan, is currently reduced.
The proof of his theory is the discovery on Mars of characteristic landforms formed by glaciers: "hanging" valleys, sharp ridges, saddles. But the glaciers themselves are not visible, so it was concluded that such glaciations happened in the distant past - in eras of a more diverse climate.
anomalous planet
However, soon to replace the theory of the Martian ice age came the theory of catastrophe, which claims that once a neighboring planet was similar to the Earth in everything, but died as a result of a collision with some large celestial body.
"Catastrophes" argue like this. Mars is an "anomalous" planet. It has an orbit with a large eccentricity. He has almost no magnetic field. The axis of its rotation draws wild "pretzels" in space. Most of the impact craters on the surface of Mars "crowd" south of the so-called dichotomy line that separates zones with characteristic relief.
The line itself is unusual and marked by the escarpment of the mountainous southern hemisphere. There is another unique formation on Mars - a monstrous canyon of the Mariner Valley 4,000 km long and 7 km deep.
The most remarkable thing is that the deep and wide craters of Hellas, Isis and Argir are “compensated” on the other side of the Martian ball by the bulges of Elysius and Tharsis, from the eastern edge of which the Mariner Valley begins.
Mariner Valley Canyon
First of all, the "catastrophists" tried to explain the riddle of the dichotomy of the planet. A number of scientists have spoken out in favor of tectonic processes, but most agree with William Hartmann, who stated in January 1977: “The impact of an asteroid a thousand kilometers across with a planet could produce a significant asymmetry, possibly knocking off the crust on one side of the planet ... This kind the collision could have caused an asymmetry on Mars, where one hemisphere is riddled with many ancient craters, while the other has been almost completely altered by volcanic activity."
According to a popular hypothesis, in ancient times there was a small planetoid whose orbit passed between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter (in the same place where the main asteroid belt is now located) - it is called Astra. During the next approach to Mars, the planetoid was torn apart by gravitational forces, as a result of which several large fragments rushed towards the Sun.
The largest fragment, which left behind the Hellas crater, dealt a vertical direct blow to the crust of Mars. He punched it to the inner magma, causing a huge wave of compression and shear waves. As a result, the Tharsis hill began to swell on the opposite side.
At the same time, two more large fragments of Astra pierced the crust of Mars. The shock waves reached such strength that they not only ran around the planet, but also had to “pierce” it through and through. Internal pressure was looking for a way out, and the dying planet burst at the seam - a monstrous cut was formed, which we now know as the Mariner Valley. At the same time, Mars also lost part of its atmosphere, which was literally "torn off" by a monstrous cataclysm.
When did the disaster happen? No answer. The only method of dating individual objects on the surface of neighboring planets involves counting impact craters on them based on the probability of collisions.
If we accept the assumption that a large number of fragments of the hypothetical Astra fell on the southern hemisphere of Mars at the same time, then the method of dating through meteorite statistics loses its meaning. That is, the catastrophe could have happened both 3 billion years ago and 300 million years ago.
Nuclear war on Mars
"Catastrophists", describing the death of Mars, usually proceed from the consideration that it was a natural process that has nothing to do with the activities of intelligent beings.
However, the authoritative American scientist John Brandenburg, holder of a doctoral degree from the University of California at Davis for his work in the field of space plasma, put forward an extravagant theory according to which Mars died as a result of ... a large-scale wars with the use of thermonuclear weapons.
The fact is that even the Viking spacecraft, which operated on a neighboring planet in the 1970s, established an excess content of the light xenon-129 isotope in comparison with heavy isotopes in the local weak atmosphere, and yet, for example, in terrestrial air their shares are approximately are equal. The findings were confirmed by the Curiosity rover.
The discovered light isotope could only be formed from radioactive iodine-129, which in turn has a relatively short half-life of 15.7 million years. The question is: where did it come from in such significant quantities on modern Mars?
Scientists have not yet been able to find a clear explanation for another Martian "anomaly".
Therefore, speaking on March 1, 2015 at the Lunar-Planet Conference in Houston, John Brandenburg gave his interpretation of the origin of xenon-129. The researcher noted that such an excess of the light isotope occurs during the fission of uranium-238 by fast neutrons and is common for those locations of the earth's atmosphere where it was contaminated with atomic test products.
The scientist also recalled the observations of the Mars Express spacecraft, which recorded from orbit the presence of dark deposits similar to volcanic glass with an area of 10 million km2 on the northern plains of the Red Planet. Moreover, the zones of these rocks coincide with the areas of maximum concentration of radioactive elements.
Brandenburg suggested that Mars Express had found nothing more than trinitite - nuclear glass, which appeared on Earth after testing the first atomic bomb in the Nevada desert.
In an official scientific report, John Brandenburg only stated the discovered facts, without trying to explain them, but in an interview with journalists he did not stint on sensational statements.
Moreover, he published the book “Death on Mars. The discovery of planetary nuclear extermination”, in which he outlined his version ancient history neighboring planet. He believes that the climate on Mars was similar to the earth, there were oceans, rivers and forests, there was a civilization.
But at some point, two Martian races, the Cydonians and the Utopians, were subjected to thermonuclear bombardment by a third force. In this case, it is possible that Astra was not a random stray body, but an "Armageddon machine" that destroyed the planet in response to a devastating thermonuclear strike.
Groups of scientists studying Mars hastened to disown the theory of John Brandenburg, but the secrets of the neighboring planet will still have to be revealed someday, and we should wait for new sensational news.
Anton PERVUSHIN
Since ancient times, Mars has attracted attention with its mystery. But even after dozens of ground-based research vehicles visited the Red Planet, interest in it has not faded, but on the contrary, more and more new mysteries are opening up before astronomers that have yet to be solved.
Secrets of the Martian relief
Until now, scientists do not know what is the reason for such a significant difference between the surfaces of the Northern and southern hemisphere Red planet. The northern hemisphere is one of the flattest and smoothest places in our solar system, but at the same time, the southern part of the planet is strewn with bumps and craters. There is an opinion that in the northern part there was an ancient ocean that smoothed the surface.
Methane mystery
Previously, methane was considered a sign of life on other planets, including Mars, since on Earth this gas enters the atmosphere mainly as a result of the vital activity of certain microorganisms and active volcanic activity. But since active volcanoes were not found on Mars, many scientists began to actively develop the theory of the possible existence of life on the planet. However, recent research has baffled scientists.
Methane was first seen in the atmosphere of the Red Planet in 1969 using the Mariner 7 probe, in 2003 the NASA infrared telescope confirmed these data. Later it was found that the concentration of methane in the atmosphere of the planet in different places and in different time year is different. A more detailed and high-quality collection of air samples from the Red Planet was entrusted to the Curiosity rover.
Location zones and concentrations of methane on the Red Planet
What was the surprise of scientists when the sensors of the rover discovered a very small amount of gas in the atmosphere of the mysterious planet. Astronomers have never been able to figure out the sources of methane formation on Mars and how it escapes so quickly.
Is there liquid water on the Red Planet?
A large number of studies have shown that once a huge ocean splashed on the surface of Mars, there were rivers and lakes. But to the question “Is there liquid water on Mars today?”, Scientists cannot yet give a definite answer.
Perhaps this is what the ancient Martian ocean looked like
In June 2013, the media received information about the discovery on the surface of the planet of traces of recent water salt flows formed on the slopes of ravines and craters with the onset of the Martian summer. It should be noted that today the atmosphere of Mars is quite harsh - due to the very low pressure and extremely low temperature, the water will boil and freeze at the same time.
Traces of water salt streams on the slope
Is there life on the Red Planet?
Until now, one of the main and exciting issues related to Mars is the discovery of life on the planet. The Red Planet is quite suitable for the appearance of life on it - the level of radiation, temperature, atmosphere and other factors quite allow this, on our planet there are organisms that are able to survive in even more extreme conditions.
Meteorite ALH 84001: fossils are very similar to bacteria
A lot of controversy and questions are centered around the famous meteorite from Mars, which was discovered in 1984 in the ice of Antarctica. On the meteorite, after detailed study and analysis, fossils resembling bacteria were found. Also interesting is the discovery at the end of 2012 by the Curiosity rover in the bed of a dried-up river of the remains of organic matter.
The other day, in one of the images of the Curiosity rover, which NASA published on its official website, ufologists discovered a silhouette resembling the figure of a woman.
Let's take a closer look at this and other similar cases.
ghost woman
The silhouette looks so believable that for some it may be the embodiment of a desire to find extraterrestrial life. The picture is complemented by the fact that the “ghost” seems to be standing on a stone, demanding attention.
Yeti
The legendary find of the Spirit rover. A snapshot from 2008 showing the silhouette of a creature as if wandering through the red desert. Due to the fact that his pose was reminiscent of the famous frame, where Bigfoot is allegedly depicted, the mysterious stranger was nicknamed the "Martian Yeti".
alien temple
A 2008 Opportunity rover image showing layered rock that reminded ufologists of human (or alien) hands. The hoaxers suggested that the frame captured the entrance to the ruined temple with a large monument that welcomes visitors. Nearby, a "Martian ship" immersed in the sand was also discovered. 
Trees
A 2011 image taken by the Reconnassance Orbiter space station, for which there is a fairly simple scientific explanation. First, if they were trees, then, judging by the picture, they would grow parallel to the surface of the planet. Secondly, such footprints in the sand are the result of the evaporation of frozen carbon dioxide. 
temple-face
The legendary photo that excited the minds of people in the late seventies and early eighties. Then many decided that a certain civilization built a temple in the shape of a human face on Mars.
Giant smiley
In 1976, the Viking Orbiter 1 spacecraft discovered a giant smiley face on Mars. In 1999, with clearer frames, scientists managed to take a closer look at it. We are talking about a crater with a radius of 230 kilometers. The find was later used in the famous Guardians comic.
Ball
In September 2014, the Curiosity rover sent back a picture of a flawless-looking orb lying on the surface of the planet. However, NASA quickly cooled the ardor of ufologists: the size of the "artifact" is about one centimeter in diameter, and it turned out, most likely, as a result of a geological process called nodule. During it, something like a snowball is formed around some small solid body.
Little helmet, bone and Martian rat
No, they are just rocks. 
Flash Light
A picture of Curiosity taken in April 2014 gave ufologists reason to believe that aliens accidentally gave themselves away with a flash in the dark. However, NASA scientist Doug Ellison dispelled the myth, suggesting that it could be a cosmic ray impact - a stream of charged particles.
Drawing on the ground
The only real man-made artifact on Mars is the footprints left by the Curiosity rover. 
Just a couple of days ago, in one of the pictures, they again discovered a mysterious find, the “Martian crab”. These photos posted on the official website of NASA, spread all over the media and other sources of information and caused a lot of controversy. We present you a video about this photo.
