# What is the real deal with Cydonia?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-real-deal-with-cydonia/381208
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [November 20, 2006, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-real-deal-with-cydonia/381208 "2006-11-20T21:20:18Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Yellow\_Rights](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yellow_Rights)
#### Post date: [November 20, 2006, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-real-deal-with-cydonia/381208/1 "2006-11-20T21:20:18Z")
Yeah… I’m not really sure where this thread goes so I picked this one! So please tell me folks. I know there’s lots of controversy about this and I’ve read a few websites saying it all can’t be chance due to the “Face” and the D&M pyramid being at strategic locations and stuff. I’d love to believe that it’s true 'cause it sounds really cool! The idea of arcologies facinates me and the possibility of aliens having been to mars. I’d like to know what the sceptics explain of it though I mean it must be pretty hard to explain geologically how a 5 sided pyramid can be formed naturally?
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### Author:  [@FatBaldGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FatBaldGuy)
#### Post date: [November 20, 2006, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-real-deal-with-cydonia/381208/2 "2006-11-20T21:25:25Z")
So, could you post a link, so that we can have some kind of idea what you’re talking about?
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### Author:  [@Terminus\_Est](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terminus_Est)
#### Post date: [November 20, 2006, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-real-deal-with-cydonia/381208/3 "2006-11-20T21:28:07Z")
I’m gonna guess this about the [face on Mars](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_on_mars). The OP is a bit incoherent, though.
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### Author:  [@Yellow\_Rights](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yellow_Rights)
#### Post date: [November 20, 2006, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-real-deal-with-cydonia/381208/4 "2006-11-20T21:29:00Z")
[http://www.mactonnies.com/cydonia.html](http://www.mactonnies.com/cydonia.html)
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### Author:  [@SiXSwordS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SiXSwordS)
#### Post date: [November 20, 2006, 9:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-real-deal-with-cydonia/381208/5 "2006-11-20T21:30:02Z")
[Cydonia Martian Pyramids & Sphinx
Cherubim & the Stones of Fire](http://www.mt.net/~watcher/mars.html)
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### Author:  [@Cluricaun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cluricaun)
#### Post date: [November 20, 2006, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-real-deal-with-cydonia/381208/6 "2006-11-20T21:32:39Z")
[QUOTE=Yellow\_Rights]
. I’d like to know what the sceptics explain of it though I mean it must be pretty hard to explain geologically how a 5 sided pyramid can be formed naturally?
[/QUOTE]
How does one have a five sided pyramid anyway? Are we counting the bottom as a side? Am I being wooshed?
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### Author:  [@Yellow\_Rights](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yellow_Rights)
#### Post date: [November 20, 2006, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-real-deal-with-cydonia/381208/7 "2006-11-20T21:33:09Z")
Yes, excuse me for my vague posts I am slightly new here, I normally just write a garbled mess trying to sort out the strands of thought in my head.
Some people are back the idea of Cydonia being a place where aliens built old civilisations there. What remains are these massive rock formations. E.g. some theorise that the “face on mars” is an alien version of something like a sphinx in Egypt
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### Author:  [@Yellow\_Rights](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yellow_Rights)
#### Post date: [November 20, 2006, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-real-deal-with-cydonia/381208/8 "2006-11-20T21:35:20Z")
The pyramid is kinda like a starfish as seen here. [http://www.mactonnies.com/dmphotos.html](http://www.mactonnies.com/dmphotos.html)
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### Author:  [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)
#### Post date: [November 20, 2006, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-real-deal-with-cydonia/381208/9 "2006-11-20T21:41:33Z")
This is the first time I’ve seen claims for a five-sided pyramid. Do you have any links for more information?
As for the rest, it sounds like the garbage Richard Hoagland has been pushing. The best refutation I’ve seen is on the [Bad Astronomy](http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/hoagland/index.html) page. Dr. Plait goes into much more detail, but to sum up, Hoagland looked at enough data on enough features that the surprise isn’t that he found so many patterns, but that he found so _few_. Get enough random data together, and you’ll _always_ find patterns.
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### Author:  [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)
#### Post date: [November 20, 2006, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-real-deal-with-cydonia/381208/10 "2006-11-20T21:49:02Z")
Sorry, I posted that before I saw your most recent post. That does look interesting (certainly more interesting than the “face”), and I’m not sure exactly what the explanation is. At a guess, I’d say it’s probably shaped by wind in some way, but I’m not a geologist (or an areologist).
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### Author:  [@JimOfAllTrades](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JimOfAllTrades)
#### Post date: [November 20, 2006, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-real-deal-with-cydonia/381208/11 "2006-11-20T21:54:21Z")
As other’s have noted, the “Face on Mars” and the other supposed artifacts are nothing more than wishful thinking based on a fluke of the light in a low resolution set of pictures.
More detailed images from recent probes show nothing more than random rock formations.
See this link:
[http://www.csicop.org/articles/face-on-mars/index.html](http://www.csicop.org/articles/face-on-mars/index.html)
as well as others posted above for good updates on the whole story.
The site you reference which claims to “refute” the more recent images is from a guy who has no less than _six_ books for sale talking about the face and the other Cydonia “artifacts”. Not much chance for bias there, eh? No face, no more book sales.
Although I’m no geologist, the “five-sided pyramid” that he goes on about doesn’t look like anything other than the normal results of erosion to me. I will say it looks like it was carved by water run-off, but again I’m no geologist, could easily be wind as far as I can tell.
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### Author:  [@Cabin\_Fever\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cabin_Fever_1)
#### Post date: [November 20, 2006, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-real-deal-with-cydonia/381208/12 "2006-11-20T21:56:44Z")
[QUOTE=Chronos]
…snip (or an **areologist** ).
[/QUOTE]
Bolding mine.
Fighting ignorance every day.
I hadn’t a clue that this term even existed.
([Link](http://www.worldwidewords.org/turnsofphrase/tp-are1.htm))
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### Author:  [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)
#### Post date: [November 20, 2006, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-real-deal-with-cydonia/381208/13 "2006-11-20T21:58:13Z")
[QUOTE=Cluricaun]
How does one have a five sided pyramid anyway? Are we counting the bottom as a side? Am I being wooshed?
[/QUOTE]
Definition of pyramid : [http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=pyramid](http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=pyramid)
"a solid having a polygonal base, and triangular sides that meet in a point. "
It can be any number of sides. It doesn’t even have to be a regular polygon.
As for the OP, see [Pareidolia - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia) for some examples of random images that resemble faces
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### Author:  [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)
#### Post date: [November 20, 2006, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-real-deal-with-cydonia/381208/14 "2006-11-20T21:59:27Z")
There’s a new, very hi-res picture of Cydonia, captured in September of this year, [here](http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap060926.html). Both “significant” features seem a trifle less spectacular at this resolution.
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### Author:  [@Cluricaun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cluricaun)
#### Post date: [November 20, 2006, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-real-deal-with-cydonia/381208/15 "2006-11-20T22:00:42Z")
[QUOTE=Peter Morris]
Definition of pyramid : [http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=pyramid](http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=pyramid)
"a solid having a polygonal base, and triangular sides that meet in a point. "
It can be any number of sides. It doesn’t even have to be a regular polygon.
[/QUOTE]
Ignorance fought, thanks.
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### Author:  [@JimOfAllTrades](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JimOfAllTrades)
#### Post date: [November 20, 2006, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-real-deal-with-cydonia/381208/16 "2006-11-20T22:05:11Z")
[QUOTE=RJKUgly]
The site you reference which claims to “refute” the more recent images is from a guy who has no less than _six_ books for sale talking about the face and the other Cydonia “artifacts”. Not much chance for bias there, eh? No face, no more book sales.
[/QUOTE]
Oops, looking more carefully I see that although he is promoting the sale of the books from his site, they don’t seem to be _his_ books. I apologize for suggesting otherwise.
Still, he gets his cut if they are purchased from Amazon by using his link, so there is still some monetary interest in keeping the myth alive.
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### Author:  [@JimOfAllTrades](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JimOfAllTrades)
#### Post date: [November 20, 2006, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-real-deal-with-cydonia/381208/17 "2006-11-20T22:06:28Z")
[QUOTE=jjimm]
There’s a new, very hi-res picture of Cydonia, captured in September of this year, [here](http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap060926.html). Both “significant” features seem a trifle less spectacular at this resolution.
[/QUOTE]
Great link! Very cool picture.
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### Author:  [@Cabin\_Fever\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cabin_Fever_1)
#### Post date: [November 20, 2006, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-real-deal-with-cydonia/381208/18 "2006-11-20T22:17:49Z")
[QUOTE=Peter Morris]
Definition of pyramid : [http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=pyramid](http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=pyramid)
"a solid having a polygonal base, and triangular sides that meet in a point. "
It can be any number of sides. It doesn’t even have to be a regular polygon.
[/QUOTE]
OK. Now you all have peaked my interest in five-sided pyramids.
[The truncated icosahedron and soccer balls](http://mathforum.org/library/drmath/view/63013.html)
(Not meaning to hijack thread, I just found the above link was interesting.)
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### Author:  [@Noelq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Noelq)
#### Post date: [November 20, 2006, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-real-deal-with-cydonia/381208/19 "2006-11-20T22:35:48Z")
In my humble opinion 🙂 , when you view things like this, you have to take it with a grain of salt. Given the huge amount of surface area on the planet, and the creativity of the human mind, we can see lots of images where there only exists natural phenomena. A very good example of this can be found from all the shots taken by Google Earth, which shows all the existing surface area of the planet. If you go and visit xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, and look at the “weird” category, you can see lots of examples of natural phenomena that looks like identifiable structures.
I view the earth “indian head wearing an i-pod” and the mars “face” pics in exactly the same manner – a nifty random occurance.
Except, of course, if you believe the native americans foresaw the coming of the i-pod, and decided to build a monument to it in Alberta 🆒
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### Author:  [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)
#### Post date: [November 20, 2006, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-real-deal-with-cydonia/381208/20 "2006-11-20T22:43:15Z")
Minor correction: **Noelq** ’s link is one of those bastard aggregator sites that takes advantage of misspellings. The correct URL is actually: [http://www.googlesightseeing.com/](http://www.googlesightseeing.com/)
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