Space and Physics
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Every now and then, the various robots NASA has placed on Mars find an unusual rock or feature. After all, that is (partly) what they're there for.
The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.These finds can be interesting, like a donut-shaped rock that may not be from the planet; or very interesting, like the incredibly unusual striped rock Perseverance recently found while climbing the Jezero Crater.
They can also be a little silly, sending conspiracy theorists and people who haven't heard of pareidolia yet into frenzies. People have "seen" everything from bones and doorways to avocados – as if someone up there is making Martian guacamole.
One of the latest rocks to capture people's attention, earning NASA's "Image of the Week" for Week 189 (September 22-28, 2024) in a public vote, is one that looks sort of like a human head. Kinda. Or maybe some sort of Bigfoot. While fun to look at, the rock is less scientifically interesting than many other rocks found on the planet.
So why do people see these things in photographs of rocks? The phenomenon of seeing familiar patterns in objects where none exists is called pareidolia. In terms of our evolution, it makes sense that we spot patterns that could be a danger to us (like a snake) as quickly as possible.
Carl Sagan explained in his book The Demon-Haunted World – Science as a Candle in the Dark, that the ability to identify threats was imperative to our survival.
Early humans who ran away from what could be a lion hiding in the bushes were more likely to survive. Those who couldn't spot this lion "pattern" might be eaten (by a lion, not the pattern, that is). If they ran away but it turned out that the lion was in fact just a rock, that's fine; those humans survived either way and passed on their genes to the next generation.
“Our brain is constantly trying to make sense of the outside world. One way the brain accomplishes this goal is by detecting and learning patterns, which are essentially statistical regularities in the environment, because these patterns help the brain decide how to react or behave in order to survive,” Dr Jess Taubert, from the University of Queensland, previously told IFLScience.
Sagan said that finding patterns (where patterns exist or not) was a vital precautionary survival skill, but could lead to the misinterpretation of random images or patterns of light as faces and familiar objects. In this case, people are seeing rocks as a quite sad-looking human face.
