Rats, doors and faces in the rocks of Mars
The account
Rover photos supposedly show animals, doors and sculptures, proof of life or of an ancient civilization on Mars.
What investigators found
It is pareidolia, the brain's tendency to see familiar shapes in random patterns of rock, light and shadow.
The story
Ever since the Curiosity rover landed on Mars in 2012, NASA has posted thousands of raw photos online. That created a popular pastime: hunting for strange shapes in the images. In the very first weeks, a rock was singled out as a Martian rat. Then came supposed lizards, bones, spoons, faces and, in 2022, a rectangular crack that went viral as a doorway carved into a rock.
Geologists explain each case with known processes, such as wind erosion, natural fractures in the rocks and the play of light and shadow. The phenomenon behind the excitement has a name: pareidolia, the human brain's tendency to recognize faces and familiar figures in random patterns. The so-called door, for example, was less than half a meter tall and was an ordinary crack. Across thousands of photos, coincidences like these are inevitable.