00:00There's a weird structure on Mars, a square, a near-perfect square standing alone in the endless red desert.
00:17And it looks too perfect, too precise to be anything but artificial.
00:22Nature is chaotic, and it rarely makes things look so deliberate.
00:26So the Internet took one look at it and lost its mind, as the Internet tends to do.
00:32The image spread like a virus on social media, igniting every conspiracy theory you can think of.
00:38Some were convinced it was proof that intelligent life had once tread upon the Martian sands.
00:44Well, let's dive in and sort it out.
00:47The image is real, and it's really old. The thing, not the picture.
00:52NASA's Mars orbiter camera snapped it in 2001, capturing a tiny slice of Martian terrain.
00:58And there sat the square.
01:01Now, is that evidence for intelligent life?
01:03Well, Mars is an empty world now, a rust-colored desert.
01:07But once, long ago, it may have been something else entirely.
01:16A planet filled with roaring rivers, vast oceans, and thick clouds rolling across the sky.
01:23Now, in a world like that, life, if it ever had a chance, could have taken root.
01:27And there's a possibility it did.
01:30Scientists think that life could have existed on Mars in a short period, from around 4.1 to 3 billion years ago.
01:38It could have started during the early era of Martian history, called the Noachian period,
01:43and lasted all the way to the late Hesperian period.
01:46Meanwhile, here on Earth, the first oceans were just forming.
01:50Life on our planet was just beginning, in the form of tiny bacteria in deep-sea hydrothermal vents.
01:56While Mars was already fully wet, on Earth, there were no plants or animals, just microscopic life trying to survive.
02:06So, Mars took the lead in the life game.
02:09It had a much thicker atmosphere, which could have trapped enough heat to keep water liquid.
02:13Valley networks, huge traces across the red landscape, show us the incredible story of rainfall, rivers, and lakes.
02:20Huge asteroids were still hitting Mars at the time, and they could have brought organic molecules with them.
02:27But, if that's true, what happened, and where did life go?
02:31A recent NASA study suggests that the answer is more complicated than we thought.
02:37Astronomers believe that something drastic happened to Mars, like boom!
02:40And its cozy climate was gone, its atmosphere thin.
02:46Without a strong magnetic field like Earth's to protect it, solar radiation stripped away the air, leaving Mars cold and dry.
02:54The ocean simply evaporated.
02:57Some of the water escaped into space, while the rest froze underground, or became locked in polar ice caps.
03:03Today, all that remains is a ghostly memory.
03:08Dry channels and salty mineral deposits.
03:13But, it looks like the transition wasn't sudden at all.
03:17It was slow and gradual.
03:18The planet was changing from wet and warm to cold and dry over millions of years.
03:24In fact, Mars kept its ocean even after the temperatures dropped to freezing.
03:28Some parts of Mars, especially the northern lowlands, might have remained wet for many, many centuries.
03:35Shouldn't the water freeze when it gets below 32 degrees Fahrenheit?
03:39Well, yeah.
03:40But, there are many reasons why this miracle happened, like Mars' thick atmosphere and warm water traveling through currents.
03:48And, during that time we mentioned before, from Noachian to the late Hesperian, life could have found a way.
03:58Microbes on Earth thrive in some of the harshest places.
04:02Beneath Antarctic ice, in deep sea vents, in toxic volcanic lakes.
04:06Hey, life doesn't care.
04:08So, these times in Martian history would be amazing for it.
04:12But, don't be mistaken, Mars was never a paradise.
04:15Even during its cozy times, it wasn't as lush and green as we might imagine.
04:21In its early days, Mars was something more extreme, something closer to the young Earth.
04:25During the Noachian period, it was warm, yet wet.
04:29Then, the climate shifted into the Hesperian period.
04:33Oceans were stretching across the northern lowlands.
04:36Temperatures dropped, and snow piled high, forming massive glaciers in the south, transforming the planet into an icy world.
04:44Finding microscopic life at that time is possible.
04:47But, an intelligent civilization?
04:49Eh, that's less likely.
04:50The square that went viral isn't evidence for intelligent life yet.
04:57And, here's why.
04:59First things first.
05:00People freak out because nature doesn't make straight lines.
05:04But, that's not really true.
05:05Actually, nature does it all the time.
05:08For example, here on Earth, we have the Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland.
05:13A beautiful field of hexagonal basalt columns.
05:16These are completely natural.
05:18They're formed by volcanic activity.
05:20There's also the Devil's Tower in Wyoming.
05:23Hey, remember it from the Close Encounters movie in the 80s?
05:26That's a symmetrical rock formation, and it was created by erosion.
05:30However, if we looked at these things from space, they'd look artificial.
05:35So, what is the square?
05:37How about a fracture pattern in the rock or some terrain that's broken apart along straight lines due to stress?
05:44This happens on Earth all the time, when rock expands and contracts over time.
05:49And on Mars, the surface is just constantly battered by meteors, winds, and extreme temperature shifts.
05:56No wonder rock would get stressed.
05:59What happens here is another case of pareidolia.
06:02It's our brain's favorite thing.
06:04To spot patterns in something random.
06:06Hey, we evolved like this.
06:08So, sometimes, we might look at natural objects and see insane stuff.
06:13Faces on trees, animals in clouds, shapes, and so on.
06:17Besides, NASA has been photographing Mars for decades.
06:21We have high-resolution images of craters, mountains, valleys, riverbeds, hey, everything.
06:26Wouldn't an ancient civilization leave us, well, something better than some square-like rock?
06:33Even though things erode over time, we'd find more signs.
06:37Roads, foundations, artifacts, ruins, or at least something.
06:42Though, to be fair, we do see something.
06:44The square wouldn't be the first time Mars has played tricks on us.
06:48Over the years, we've spotted everything, from tunnels to carved faces.
06:52Even Bigfoot.
06:53Or this doorway, for example.
06:56A perfectly cut rectangular opening.
06:59That's what people saw when NASA's Curiosity rover sent back an image of the East Cliffs on Mount Sharp.
07:05It's almost like an ancient passage leading deep into the surface.
07:09You just need to go in and find some fantastic underground base.
07:15Well, NASA decided to take a closer look at it.
07:18It turns out, it's just 12 inches tall and 16 inches wide.
07:22The size of a dog door.
07:24That's because what we're looking at isn't a doorway, but an open fracture, a break in the rock that happens naturally over time.
07:32These kinds of cracks are extremely common, both on Earth and on Mars.
07:36They form when bedrock is stressed, expands, contracts, or gets eroded by wind and time.
07:42If you walk through a desert here on Earth, you'd see plenty of similar shapes.
07:47Canyons, cliffs, and even boulders have fractures that, from the right angle, might look like doorways.
07:54They're just not getting photographed by NASA.
07:56Also, the straightness of lines turns out to be just a trick of perspective.
08:02If you zoom out, you'll see that it's just one small break in a much bigger rock formation.
08:08Or the infamous Cydonia face.
08:10The photo was taken back in 1976 by NASA's Viking 1 orbiter when it was scanning Mars.
08:17In the region known as Cydonia, it captured what looked like a massive humanoid face, a rocky formation about 1.2 miles long.
08:26And this one face inspired books, documentaries, movies, and podcasts.
08:31But when NASA's Viking orbiters first took pictures of Cydonia, the cameras weren't super advanced.
08:40The image of the face had a low resolution and made the details fuzzy.
08:45NASA's later missions had far better cameras.
08:48And when Mars Global Surveyor revisited Cydonia in 2001, the truth was undeniable.
08:53The face was just a hill, a lumpy rock formation with ridges and depressions carved by wind and erosion.
09:00And in 2006, during another mission, a colored image with insanely high detail was made.
09:07No traces of face left there whatsoever.
09:10That's another pareidolia trick for you.
09:13Now, Mars has plenty of secrets left to uncover.
09:16But they will be related to its fascinating history, not some secret ancient civilization.
09:21The conclusion is, don't trust everything you see online.
09:25Sometimes, a mysterious rock is just a rock.
09:30As many
09:35as a movie
09:36the phenomenon
09:37as a comedy
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09:45uh
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