The laser altimetry data are perhaps even more convincing than overhead photos that the Face is natural. 3-D elevation maps reveal the formation from any angle, unaltered by lights and shadow. There are no eyes, no nose and no mouth!
The same article also reveals that
MOLA can measure the heights of objects with a vertical precision of 7.9 to 11.8 inches (20 to 30 centimeters). (Its horizontal resolution is 492 feet, or 150 meters.)
while
Each pixel in the 2001 image spans 5.1 feet (1.56 meters), compared to 141 feet (43 meters) per pixel in the best 1976 Viking photo.
In other words, the spatial resolution of the supposedly convincing altimetry data that "proves" that the 'face' is nothing but a hill is only about 1/100th (the precise ratio is 1/96.15) of the resolution of the best available picture, and less than a third of the best historical Viking image.To understand what this means, I took the full-resolution version of the new face picture and applied a Gaussian blur filter to it with a radius of 96 pixel, thereby effectively reducing the resolution of the picture to the resolution of the MGS laser altimeter. As expected, virtually no detail remains, and any remaining impression of eyes, a nose or a mouth can safely be relegated to the flaws of the human perceptual mechanism which tends to see faces even when there are none.
I then took a picture of well-known skeptic Martin Gardner, rotated it by 24 degrees, isolated the face and increased the canvas size so that the face would roughly occupate the same relative amount of image space as the martian 'face' in the MGS picture. I resized the picture to the pixel dimensions of the MGS picture (2400x2400) and applied the same filter. The result has as little resemblance to a human face as the blurred version of the Cydonia face. Which means that the NASA 3D reconstruction, which is based on this kind of data, is meaningless. Given the quality of the input data, it could not recognize a real face, hence it certainly cannot decide whether an object is a natural formation or the highly eroded remnants of a face.
So this is NASA's best evidence? If a scientific layperson, equipped with a PC and Photoshop, can debunk NASA's most convincing argument that the 'face' is natural, than either the scientists who produced this argument are incompetent, or they were not really trying to make a legitimate investigation in the first place. The 3D reconstruction from altimetry looks more like a sham investigation to convince a lazy press and a gullible public that the 'case is closed' than a genuine attempt at understanding the nature of the formation.
The "skeptics" get never tired of explaining with condescending arrogance that the human visual system tends to see faces where there are none, and that examples of hills that look like faces abound in the solar system. But, challenged to produce a single example of a hill that looks like a face and retains the illusion under different viewing angles and lighting conditions, they cannot produce a single example. The skeptical emperor is naked.
The challenge to the skeptics remains: if face-shaped hills are common, please produce just one example of a mesa on any body in the solar system that looks like a hill in two images that were taken from different viewing angles and lighting conditions.
At http://www.msss.com/education/facepage/face.html, Dr. Michael Malin (who is the principal investigator for MGS's camera, and for some reason has been granted the right to keep images produced by the camera that the American taxpayers funded "proprietary" for extended periods of time) attempts to debunk the artificiality hypothesis. His argument is seriously flawed, for the following reasons.
1. The article includes a link to the original photo caption for Viking frame 35A72 that "notes the face-like hill", obviously trying to reassure the reader of JPL's complete objectivity in the matter. What it doesn't say is that the statement in the 1976 caption (that the appearance of a face is "formed by shadows giving the illusion of eyes, nose and mouth") is not based on a scientific investigation, but a mere expression of an a priori belief.
2. The article then states that "subsequent to this release, some people have argued, mostly in the lay literature, that the face-like hill is artificially shaped", which is like trying to discredit Andrew Wile's proof of Fermat's theorem by stating that thousands of amateurs tried to prove it, too, and failed.
A good faith-discussion of the 'face' would have required a reference to the previous and well-known work of DiPietro, Molenaar and Carlotto which reaches very different conclusions than MSSS. How many lay people have argued for or against something is irrelevant to a scientific investigation.
3. The map projections are consistent with either a natural or artificial origin of the face. They do nothing to resolve the question one way or another.
4. The topographic model is admitted to produce 'non unique' results, which is scientific for 'it may or may not be right'. The resulting height field lacks spatial resolution to decide the question of artificiality.
5. The article was written in 1995 and does not reflect new developments since the acquisition of much higher-resolution MGS data.
6. In his discussion of the face at
http://www.msss.com/education/facepage/face_discussion.html
Malin once again makes no mention of the serious work that has been done on the formation, and instead practices the fine art of 'debunkery by association'. If you can't refute the validity of someone's research into an unconvential topic, just point out that the tabloids have been reporting on the subject too, and you have discredited the whole field.
To repeat it once more, the case for artificiality rests on the application of modern imagine enhancing techniques to the Viking and MGS data. It does not depend on obscure mathematical relationships between objects, let alone entirely so (as Malin falsely suggests), and its scientific credibility is independent of whether there is a "cottage industry" profiting from this topic or not. (Would not the same argument completely discredit Dr. Malin himself, or any professional scientist whose lifelihood depends on scientific work?)
Malin then points out the obvious:
"The conventional view is that this is all nonsense!"
which is of course both completely true and scientifically irrelevant. Scientific truth is not established by majority vote. At this point, most readers will have been tricked into an emotional consensus, not noticing that Malin only demolished a 'straw man', and that the real evidence for artificiality has not even been mentioned, let alone discussed or refuted.
7. At least, and finally, Malin gives us a reason why the formation has to be natural: "There are many other attributes used to examine features, especially those suspected of being artificial, and the martian features do not display such attributes". Even though this would seem to be the central argument in his entire discussion, he does not elaborate.
In summary, I observe that Malin reaches the conclusion that the face is natural even though the data gathered from the Viking frames is inconclusive by his own admission. Where the proper conclusion should be "higher resolution data is required to verify or falsify the artificiality hypothesis", Malin already has all the answers: further study of the formation is "a waste of time"! His use of misleading rhetoric, selective omission of research that disagrees with his a priori beliefs and apparent unwillingness to discuss the research that he or other NASA scientists supposedly carried out (which convinced them that the face is natural!) discredit him as a scientist.