Arthur C. Clarke was right!

[Gorn Captain]

They've discovered a monolith on Mars!
2001 is no longer a SciFi movie....



'Monolith' Object on Mars? You Could Call It That - Yahoo! News

[Mikey]

Just what do you think you're doing Dave ?

[Nostalgiabuff]

my god, it's full of stars!

[Mikey]

my god, it's full of stars!

You have been drinking your whiskey from Kentucky

[Gorn Captain]

my god, it's full of stars!

Yes, Dave, I'm watching the Academy Awards Ceremony. Don't make me shut off the oxygen supply again...

[Brazoo]

Haha - this is pretty funny stuff!

I thought this thread was going to be about this:
In 1974, Arthur C. Clarke Predicted the 2001 Internet

[Random Axe]

I only see two ways to look at this.

1. It's a hoax brought about by photoshop trickery

2. It's the real deal

Having a guy from NASA say it's a pixelated distortion that makes a boulder look rectangular is crap. Not buying it, no way. Now it could be a complete and total fake, but that camera pixelation story is stupid. Of course, it could be a completely natural 500 foot tall rectangular monolith created by thousands of years of volcanic and tectonic shifting.

In any case it's a very interesting picture.

[Brazoo]

But basically this is how computer graphics work - if you zoom into a circle you won't see a straight line - you'll see lots of little squares. At a distance we see an illusion that it's a round line.

Reduce your distance from the screen and squint your eyes at this - eventually you'll see a circle. What you're doing is reducing your resolution to create that image.



Remember, these images are digitally processed pixel by pixel - these are not analog photos. And look at the other photo - how much they're zooming in to find that image. That's adds up to a real reduction in resolution.

Here's another great example of low resolution vs. high resolution:





There are still a small number of people who insist that the newer and higher resolution pictures were fabricated for a cover up for some reason. They don't want to believe that the older digital images weren't as good at capturing the details of the surface. You can still create the face with the one from 2001 by squinting your eyes - or moving further away from your screen.

[Gorn Captain]

I still think that monolith looks like a monolith!
I'm a believer!

[Mikey]

Don't forget the Pyramids of Mars