Today we’ll talk about another Martian legend, which appeared 10 years after the famous “face”, but did not gain such fame. The “Glass Metro” was examined in images of the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft. At that time, this satellite had the most powerful camera and its research significantly enriched science with knowledge about the fourth planet.
His own pictures gave rise to several new myths that did not allow Martian fans to sleep peacefully. Some frames revealed unusual landforms that seemed to some to be half-open (or buried) glass tunnels with transverse edges of the frame.
The logic of such assumptions is understandable: if life and civilization were not found on the surface, then it is necessary to look in the depths – there they hid. Until now, there have been periodic comments “We must drill deeper”, and even the “glass tunnels” were considered when the American Mars rovers were just starting their work.
Fortunately, we now know about Mars much more than 20 years ago. Now there are two rovers operating on the planet’s surface, which in total have traveled more than 50 kilometers, and the MRO satellite flies in orbit, which takes off the surface in a resolution inaccessible even for most near-Earth devices – up to 26 cm per pixel. Thanks to their research, one can already say with a considerable degree of certainty that on Mars there has never been a civilization, or even a complex organization of living organisms. Only microbes are still in doubt: whether they were, or were not.
Thanks to MRO, we can see the glass tunnels much better and closer than before.
And even closer
And very close.
Once again:
As you can see, before us are not tunnels, but cracks, probably of volcanic origin, and the “frame” is just transverse sand dunes.
Thus, the “glass tunnels on Mars” is another wonderful demonstration of how the human imagination and desire for a miracle can cloud the brain, generating new myths of the 20th and 21st centuries.