What’s This?

3dfaceonmars

It’s something you’ve probably seen before.

Don’t recognize it?

Try whipping on a pair of red-and-blue 3-D glasses, since this is a 3-D photo of it.

Don’t have any handy?

Me, either.

Try letting your vision fuzz over and see if it’s familiar.

Still need help?

ANSWER HERE.

It’s the face on Mars, and was NASA’s Astronomy Photo of the Day recently (CHT to the reader who e-mailed!)

And it does look like a face to me.

But not a human one. To tell you the truth, it looks like the face of a pet turtle I used to have when I was a boy.

See? It eyes are under the kind of protuberances that turtles have, and it’s got its beak-like mouth open, and he’s just coming out of his shell.

Like in this picture . . .

Boxturtle

You don’t suppose that means . . . ?

And then the flying saucers would be . . . ?

GAMERA! Friend of All Children!

Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."

21 thoughts on “What’s This?”

  1. As long as they’re not teenage mutant ninjas.
    If they’re just big alien turtles, they should be easy to defeat… just flip ’em over on their backs.

  3. I just happen to have a set of clip-on red-green 3D glasses as I frequent the APOD site. Would you like to borrow them?

  4. Actually,it sort of reminds me of Patrick McGoohan’s face whenever he was run down by a Rover while trying to escape on the old BBC series “The Prisoner.”

  6. It’s a face? To me, it looked like an overhead shot of a sort of plateau with three, maybe four small mountains on it.
    A face, huh. I have no imagination.

  10. First Tim blogs about his SPEEDO
    Then Jimmy about KRYPTONITE, MARS, and a TURTLE
    Let’s see . . . .
    SPEEDO . . . .
    KRYPTONITE . . . .
    MARS . . . .
    TURTLE . . . .
    We’ve got the makings of:
    “Martian SuperTurtle in Tights”

  14. And it does look like a face to me.
    But not a human one. To tell you the truth, it looks like the face of a pet turtle I used to have when I was a boy.

    Anyone remember a show called “Land of the Lost”?
    Given the speculations above, would this pass off for the face of a ‘sleestak’ (sp?)?

  18. +J.M.J+
    Looks a bit like Kermit the Frog to me.
    (Yes, I have been watching way too much Sesame Street lately!)
    In Jesu et Maria,

  21. Maureen–
    Stephen is right, the Ninja Turtles notwithstanding. Turtles are reptiles, not amphibians. They have scaly skin, claws, and do not pass through an aquatic larval stage. Amphibians have smooth skin, no claws, a larval stage, and some breathe through their skins.
    Ever since the Ninja Turtles writers screwed things up, it’s been a common mistake.

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