After the Martian Apocalypse

by Mac Tonnies

  Presumably, the telltale elevated platform surrounding the central mass reflects functional utility or aesthetic significance, if not both. While the Face’s platform mesa is essential for the feature’s anthropomorphic appearance, it’s unclear what purpose it serves for an un-face-like structure. Some online commentators tried to graphically reconstruct the Cerberus Platform into a face on the off chance that the Platform was originally a mirror of the Cydonia Face with no success.

  The various knob-like protrusions on the top of the Cerberus Platform may be the dust-smothered ruins of habitable structures. It’s tempting to interpret the encompassing platform as a seawall built to withstand extinct Martian seas. This argument has also been used to account for the Fort and other Cydonia features. The “splash” crater near the Cliff (and the nearby Fort-like platform) would certainly suggest that Cydonia was once subaquatic.

  If Martian architects happened across an advantageous design, it is logical that they would apply this same design to a multitude of structures, regardless of their ultimate function. And keep in mind that the collapse evident on the Face’s eastern side infers an arcology model for the Face itself.

  With the Mars Odyssey returning information on water distribution, and the data from the Surveyor’s Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter at hand, it should be possible to determine, if roughly, if and when the Face-like platform was surrounded by water, thereby confirming or refuting the seawall interpretation. Richard Hoagland’s Mars Tidal Model should also prove useful in determining the past distribution of water on Mars—and its implications for an extinct planet-wide civilization.

  The Platform isn’t the only anomaly in the Cerberus region. Two other formations, which I’ve dubbed Cerberus Ellipses “1” and “2” (hereafter CE1 and CE2), appear inconspicuous on first take but may provide vital clues to the nature of the neighboring Platform. Both formations are similar in size and shape, with an elongated perimeter and central spine or ridge. CE1 is situated to the southwest of the Platform and appears to have faint signs of angular buttressing similar to that of the Platform. The impression is of a naturally occurring feature having been subjected to alteration, or of a ruin on the brink of receding into the terrain. Flanking its top is an apron of accumulated sand that bears a vague similarity to the headdress formation visible on both the Cerberus Platform and the Cydonia Face. I interpret this to be a build up of wind-blown material from the Ellipse’s southern side, which, lacking a similar apron, appears the more eroded of the two. Also in the vicinity is a heavily eroded and partially buried impact crater. The origin of the sand filling the crater is evidently the same as that which covers the top of the Platform, effectively burying any structural debris that might be there (assuming artificiality).

  The second ellipse is more tantalizing. Bearing a general resemblance to the enigmatic Cliff feature in Cydonia, CE2 is topped by an elevated ridge suggestive of the mile-long angled lamp that runs the length of the Cliff. As a work of potential architecture, CE2 seems to be somewhat more preserved than its companion, possibly due to its distance from the impact that produced the eroded crater rim noted above. But while CE2 appears in generally sharper relief, it shows distinct signs of damage, attributable to meteor bombardment, conventional wasting, or possibly structural decay.

  The unusual dark areas are of specific interest because they appear to be a very local phenomenon. The Malin Space Science Systems image strip shows no sign of similar holes except for a scattering of unusually dark craters, some with attendant radial streaking. Whatever their cause, the dark crevasses evident on CE2’s western edge appear to be quite deep; there doesn’t seem to be anything blocking the sun’s rays, suggesting that these are unusually deep punctures in the terrain, perhaps leading to underground compartments. Yet another dark area is observed on the formation’s southern side, but this appears consistent with a meteor strike.

  While there is nothing blatantly artificial about these two formations, they are strange enough to warrant inspection, especially given their proximity to the Cerberus Platform. It seems logical that if the Platform is artificial, then other local features may exhibit signs of artificiality. It would certainly be foolish not to look. If NASA scientist Tobias Owen had never looked closely at Cydonia and found the Face, Vincent DiPietro and Richard Hoagland would never have discovered the features we now know as the D&M Pyramid and City. The Face on Mars would have remained just that—a curious lone face, in itself evidence of nothing in particular.

  With objective evidence that the Face may be artificial now available, it is only reasonable to follow through with an exhaustive search for anomalous formations elsewhere on Mars. The Cerberus Platform seems a good place to start, if and when we are to place the Martian enigmas in appropriate context.

  The D&M Pyramid in a New Light

  Close examination of the new THEMIS image of the D&M Pyramid provides the long-awaited opportunity to assess the images of the formation returned by Viking. Careful comparison reveals both consistencies and new details suggesting artificiality, including an angular outcropping that appears to be a component of a larger, buried platform. It’s a reasonably safe conjecture that there is much more to the D&M Pyramid than meets the eye; close-up images by the Surveyor will allow us to explore this unique formation in better detail. At this point, we can only hope that these images will be taken in the Surveyor’s lifetime.

  Of particular interest is the nature and extent of the D&M’s deformation, which has remained a staple controversy among Cydonia researchers (reconstructed interpretations of the D&M result in a variety of redundant mathematical data often attributed to conscious design). In the new THEMIS image there seems to be a locus of destruction on the D&M that corresponds to findings from Viking imagery. This could be the result of an impacting body from space.

  However, the apparent lack of a crater (discounting the unconventional “bottomless pit” feature to the Pyramid’s east) suggests that the destructive event that deformed the D&M might have been internal. Early speculation by Richard Hoagland and John Brandenburg raised the possibility that the domed uplift seen in the Viking photo (also visible in the significantly higher-resolution THEMIS image) is the result of “explosive penetration.”

  Could the D&M Pyramid have been deliberately destroyed from within by some ancient sabotage or act of war? Brandenburg, a plasma physicist and coauthor, with Monica Rix Paxson, of Dead Mars, Dying Earth, estimates that a one-kiloton nuclear explosion could account for the damage visible seen in the Viking photo, assuming the deforming event was of an artificial nature.

  Unlike other formations in Cydonia, the D&M shows evidence of having been melted. The terrain around the apparent fifth buttress is chaotic and spotted with enigmatic dark areas. This molten-looking aspect is visible in the partial image of the D&M captured by the Surveyor in 1998 during its acquisition of the catbox image of the Face. Additionally, Mark Carlotto has noted that there appears to be a dark material oozing out of the area associated with the domed uplift. This is consistent with an internal explosive event.

  Shallow, ruler-straight, parallel ridges appear to the D&M’s west. Opposite these features, on the eastern side, is an oblate-shaped buildup of what is probably displaced sand sheltered by the D&M. The D&M Pyramid is apparently constructed atop an expansive shallow platform that has long since been covered in sand. The ridges are probably evidence of this platform poking through after long exposure to wind. Incidentally, this wind-based model complements the scenario described by Carlotto, in which the simian western half of the Face is stripped bare, resulting in a pileup on the eastern feline side. Hoagland and Bara present an essentially identical scenario describing Cydonian wind action in an online article/photo-essay on the D&M.

  Subtle details on the D&M Pyramid recall ancient terrestrial architecture. As noted on the Enterprise Mission website, the D&M’s bottom triangular facet is bracketed by two somewhat rectilinear formations that may have served as buttresses.

 
Another seemingly structural detail is also revealed on the buttressed facet—a shallow, meandering crack virtually identical to the ruined brick casing seen on the (relatively small-scale) Pyramids in Egypt. While it is perhaps unlikely that, if artificial, the D&M represents architecture of an ancient Egyptian-level civilization, this superficial detail strongly suggests a protective veneer of some sort. This veneer has apparently begun to crumble away, leaving the scrape-like feature.

  Alternatively, the area revealed by the scrape might be the actual surface of the D&M, and the surrounding veneer an encrustation of Martian soil caught in the act of slumping away. The latter scenario implies that the D&M was partially or even entirely buried at some point in Cydonia’s geological past. The rounded mass of soil to the D&M’s east might be some of this once-protective layer, stripped from the formation’s surface by the same winds that reveal the parallel ridges and evocative extra angle seen clearly in the THEMIS image.

  Conversely, perhaps this buildup is the sand-covered remains of a quarry used during construction of the D&M. While the prevailing notion among Cydonia investigators is that the Martian monuments were created by modifying existing landforms, Richard Hoagland is convinced that the explicitly nonfractal signature of the Face can only be attributed to the presence of artificial materials (in which case localized spectral surveys, if conducted, would add an additional level of anomaly to the Face and perhaps other formations in the Cydonia region).

  Finally, George J. Haas of The Cydonia Institute notes that the proposed platform below the D&M shares alignments with the Fort. (I would add that since the Fort’s orientation is identical to that of the Face and at least one other object in the City area, this alignment might prove more meaningful than suspected.) While this could be evidence of unknown geological mechanisms acting in concert, myriad details certainly give an objective observer pause. Regardless of whether the D&M Pyramid proves to be the mathematical Rosetta Stone of Cydonia, as suggested by cartographer Erol Torun, its morphology and placement on the Martian surface are strange indeed.

  Rather than damaging the argument for artificial origin, the new extension revealed by THEMIS adds further evidence of bilateral symmetry to the D&M, changing its shape from a Chrysler-like emblem to a massive faceted arrowhead.

  The new extension is apparently a shallow inclined plane, mostly covered by sand so that only the edge is obvious. Even Viking captured an image of the missing edge, but the feature was at the threshold of the camera’s resolution and didn’t seem to promise any insights into the D&M’s alignment.

  When the Odyssey again passed overhead—this time taking an infrared photograph of the Face, Fort, and D&M Pyramid while Cydonia was cloaked in darkness—researchers pored over the new satellite imagery searching for thermal anomalies that might indicate artificial construction. Interestingly, while the Face was barely visible in the infrared spectrum, the D&M is plainly visible as a bright “starfish,” its edges radiating heat into the thin atmosphere.

  The visible-wavelength THEMIS image had already shown that the D&M’s flanks were cloaked in insulating dust. The bottom facet even featured a crack superficially similar to the deteriorating casing on the Great Pyramid in Egypt; it’s likely this is the scar from an ancient dustslide. But the infrared evidence suggests the formation’s edges and corners are relatively dust-free, accounting for their high visibility.

  Researcher Donovan Colbert, long intrigued by the D&M’s uniquely faceted shape, quickly identified a faint infrared marking across the new facet’s centerline. It’s unclear if this marking is an exposed edge invisible in the daylight image or else a subsurface feature with heat-retaining properties. In any case, its placement—if purely natural—is highly fortuitous, as it aligns with a reconstructive overlay of the D&M drawn by Colbert before the infrared image was acquired. As such, it serves as a secondary confirming detail similar to the structured eye and nostril on the Face, visible only after the Surveyor’s Cydonia overflight.

  Ubiquitous Bright Lines

  When the first high-resolution Cydonia images arrived three years ago, one of the first secondary features to attract attention was the Coathanger, less conservatively known as the Dolphin due to a crude resemblance to a cetacean seen in profile. Located just south of the Face, this formation is probably most notable for its attendant bright lines, suggestive of a trailer park to some due to their uniform size and regularity in spacing.

  The nature of these lines has yet to be ascertained. While their high albedo suggests they are made of ice, there doesn’t seem to be a way to explain their alignment unless they were deliberately placed there. The tantalizingly dolphin-like shape of the skinny, shallow mesa directly above has been of equal or greater interest to the online Cydonia community, as it suggests an additional terrestrial likeness gracing the now-frozen Cydonian desert. Similar, but less regular, bright lines were quickly noted on the south side of an adjacent mesa, adding to the mystery.

  As more Surveyor images of Cydonia became available, the presence of similar anomalous bright lines became increasingly noticeable and inexplicable. After Richard Hoagland identified the much-discussed glass tunnel, the Enterprise Mission website unveiled images of bright, closely packed cylinders Hoagland interpreted as possible “pipes”—built by an ancient Martian civilization for transporting large amounts of water á la Lowell’s intricate canals.

  As with the bright lines in Cydonia, the surprisingly high albedo of the hypothetical pipes indeed suggests an unusual origin. And while the hypothesis that they are pieces of a megascale engineering project has yet to be confirmed, it also cannot be dismissed out of hand.

  When Mound P was revealed in 2001, similar bright, regularly spaced lines suddenly became visible on the Mound’s adjacent faceted formation. Both Mound P and the strange, faceted feature boast intrinsic geometric properties wholly consistent with artificiality, including bisymmetry and apparent structure.

  The lines ascending the faceted structure’s platform are near-duplicates of those seen on the perimeter of the City Pyramid. Tom Van Flandern has suggested that these may constitute some kind of Martian “rebar” or structural matrix. If the lines under investigation in Cydonia are a geological phenomenon (such as mineral deposits or abnormally bright dunes), it’s unusual that they seem to cluster around landforms suspected of being artificial, or at least partly artificial, structures. Their mute presence may help tell us something about the civilization that once inhabited Cydonia, assuming, of course, there ever was one.

  Further evidence for a non-natural explanation for the anomalous bright lines can be seen lining the elevated feature on top of the enigmatic Cliff, also reimaged in 2001. The Cliff’s unprecedented morphology, alignment, and proximity to the Face argue powerfully for an artificial origin.

  Perhaps it should come as no surprise to find masses of bright lines bunched against the elevated feature’s western side. The feature’s structural appearance would tend to confirm Van Flandern’s suggestion that we are viewing an intelligently emplaced structural framework. Quite possibly, the lines’ unusually high albedo can be explained if they are composed of glass—a material found in abundance in Mars’s soil in the form of silicates.

  Harvesting Martian silicates for architectural purposes is far from being a fringe concept. First proposed by Robert Zubrin in his eloquent book The Case for Mars, the building-with-glass scenario was recently enacted by characters in award-winning science fiction writer and space advocate Ben Bova’s novel Return to Mars, in which an igloo-like greenhouse in constructed from indigenous Martian glass.

  Continuing discoveries such as the presence of surprisingly abundant liquid water and a plethora of enigmatic surface features bolster the possibility of a former civilization on the Red Planet. In this context, the glassy bright lines offer us a puzzle of truly exo-archeological magnitude.

  Geology or Architecture?

  If the Face and associated features are artificial, it’s likely that they were sc
ulpted from preexisting land formations—a strategy that makes sense from the perspective of a civilization seeking to insulate itself from an inhospitable environment. The Cliff seems to be the lone exception to this hypothesis, as there doesn’t seem to be any way a feature of this sort could form after the meteor impact to its immediate right. (The Cliff, as previously noted, lies well within the perimeter of the crater’s ejecta blanket.)

  If the Cliff is artificial, then it’s possible that it was assembled out of ejecta material. And indeed, the terrain leading from the Cliff to the crater is riddled with a network of furrows that may represent an ancient quarry. The crater’s splash-style ejecta suggests that this area of Cydonia was wet (or even underwater) at the time of the meteor strike; the tons of Martian dirt needed to assemble the Cliff could have been conveniently available in the form of mud. As such, the Cliff might be most accurately appraised as an earthworks similar to the enormous, subtle structures built by Native American Mound Builders and early European tribes.

  On close inspection, it’s unclear if the mesa, as opposed to the strange elevated ramp, was a preexisting formation. The new image shows a scattering of debris on the Cliff’s right half that might be evidence of meteoric “blast shadow,” in which case the Cliff’s foundation mesa was firm enough to survive the impact relatively unscathed. But the ramp appears somehow newer and certainly much harder to explain in geological terms. Also of interest is the upper portion of the Cliff as revealed by the Surveyor: it has a striking similarity to the headdress of the better-known Face.

  The Cliff—whatever it is—is aimed precisely at the enigmatically grooved Tholus several miles away. The Society for Planetary SETI Research’s Lan Fleming has noted that the small grooves located to the immediate east of the Cliff defy JPL’s sand-dune explanation, as the wind forces necessary to deposit the dune trains posited by JPL could simply not form in the space afforded.