Martian Rocks That Look Just Like A Teddy Bear?
A fractured slope, an ancient crater, and the human tendency to see faces everywhere may explain the Martian Rocks That Look Just Like A Teddy Bear on Mars.
For almost 17 years, NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has carefully documented the surface and atmosphere of the Red Planet. The information that MRO often provides to Earth-based scientists is rather basic and pertains to things like ozone or temperature fluctuations. However, MRO has now discovered something that will bring a grin to almost anyone’s face: a fragment of Mars’ surface that resembles a teddy bear.
The teddy bear resembling the rock on Mars is truly a nature’s wonder, the teddy bear rocks make us wonder if is it really the rock that looks like a teddy bear or if we are just imagining it.
The picture, which was taken on December 12 by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), has two craters for eyes, a crumbled rock formation for a snout, and even an almost-impossibly-perfect circle encircling the bear’s head. It looks like a giant teddy bear. The MRO traveled around 156 miles above Mars. Around 2,000 meters, or nearly 1.25 miles, is the size of the Bear’s apparent head.
How Is This Formed?
What then caused the cute tattoo-like image to appear on the planet’s surface? The University of Arizona claims that it was created by several structural changes that just so happened to occur at exactly the correct time.
What exactly is happening here? According to a statement on the blog for the University of Arizona’s High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera, it is probably just a broken-up hill in the middle of an old crater.
The statement describes the object as having a hill with a V-shaped collapse structure -the nose, two craters -the eyes, and a circular fracture pattern -the head. The settling of a deposit over a submerged impact crater could be the cause of the circular fracture pattern.
Due to a condition known as pareidolia, we frequently detect patterns and faces in what is obviously a random terrain formation. Our brain is just tricking us. This phenomenon also explains why a pile of garments on our chair could be mistaken for a person sitting there in the dark.
Space provides endless fodder for pareidolia. Consider, the random discharge of gas and dust known as a nebula, which somewhat resembles Godzilla, the monster known for destroying cities, or the Martian rock formation that NASA briefly mistook for the weeping Muppet Beaker.
What Is HiRISE?
HiRISE, one of the MRO’s six research instruments, captured images of both Beaker and the recently found Martian teddy bear. HiRISE is the most potent camera ever sent to another planet, according to UA, and has been taking photos of the Red Planet from orbit since 2006.
It’s not the first time that humans have discovered amusing or just bizarre sights in space. For years, both experts and average internet users have reported seeing faces and other objects on the surfaces of the planets and the moon. In 2018, HiRISE discovered a Muppet on Mars; two years later, the European Space Agency discovered an angel and a heart there. In late 2021, China’s lunar rover discovered what many believed to be a strange moon cube or home, but Chang’e 4 later discovered it was simply a rock.
In the future, hopefully with MRO’s assistance, we’ll identify many recognizable figures on Mars’ surface.
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