After the Martian Apocalypse
Extraterrestrial Artifacts and the Case for Mars Exploration
Introduction: Anatomy of an Inquiry
It all started innocently enough.
In 1976, a space probe orbiting Mars took a picture of a formation on the surface of the planet resembling a humanoid face. That first stoic image of the "Face," gazing back at us from the Viking photographs in oracular monochrome, has burned itself into the twenty-first century's collective retina. It's too late to look away.
Although originally dismissed as a meaningless curiosity, the Face on Mars, located in the Cydonia Mensae region, has come to define all that is unknown about our closest planetary neighbor. Is it the signature of an unknown intelligence or simply the work of natural forces?
Perhaps if the Face were a solitary oddity, it could be attributed to chance. But the Face is one of several components in an apparent complex of anomalies. These include what looks like a mile-wide collapsed enclosure (dubbed the "Fort"), two five-sided "pyramids" of breathtaking size, and the "Cliff," a ruler-straight "ramp" that dominates t ... read full excerpt from After the Martian Apocalypse: Extraterrestrial Artifacts and the Case for Mars Exploration ebook
