The rover Perseverance recently took an image from the crater Jezeroup Marswhich aroused great curiosity. On the left side of the photo appears a strange rock formation, which to some appears as a simple stone, while others glimpse an incomplete human face, similar to a head resting on its side. The details are truly remarkable: deep eyes, wide nose and a mouth with a melancholic expression.
This rock, sculpted by weathering and erosion, is actually a block of sedimentary sandstone. Despite its disturbing appearance, the “face” blends in with other similar rock formations immersed in the crater landscape, an area about 45 kilometers in diameter that may once have been covered in water.
Why do we see faces in rocks?
The phenomenon that makes us recognize a face in a simple rock is called pareidolia. It is a psychological mechanism that leads the human brain to identify familiar images, such as faces or objects, in ambiguous figures or patterns. A phenomenon known to many: who has never seen a smile in the coffee or an animal in the clouds?
Pareidolia is a common phenomenon when viewing images from Mars. In the past, in fact, there have been reports of rocks that resemble a human face, a bear, mushrooms, a sculpted warrior, or even a Martian version of Bigfoot. One of the best-known cases dates back to 1976, when the Viking 1 probe immortalized the famous “Face on Mars” in the Cydonia region. The image showed a structure that, thanks to shadows and low resolution, resembled a human face. However, subsequent higher resolution shots confirmed that it was a simple rock formation, similar to a plateau.
These illusions arise from an interaction between the arrangement of shadows and our tendency to make sense of what we see. The brain, examining the images, jumps to conclusions familiar to us, such as that of a face. It is a phenomenon that is also reflected in spatial nomenclature, as in the case of the “Horsehead” nebula, so called because of its resemblance to the head of a horse.
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