I had a long conversation with a high school science teacher about teaching science in a world where his students are continually exposed to pseudo-science, the stuff they learn from watching television and reading the tabloids. What do they believe is real? The face on Mars, alien autopsies, Area 51 in the Nevada desert as alien storage quarters, the "non-landings" on the Moon, UFOs, alien kidnappings--these are all the grist of great story telling and speculation in the media. It is easy for uncritical kids (and adults) to believe the "evidence" of alien beings and encounters when it is carefully gift-wrapped by creative television producers who crank out dramatic programs depicting these events with well-trained actors and elaborate sets. Of course, these are the same folks who bring us fantastic science fiction films which we ALL know are entertainment, not science education. Or at least I function under that illusion.able -->

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	The alleged Face on Mars. What did NASA say about the photograph? credit: NASA
	The Mars Global Surveyor's 1998 image of the "face on Mars." credit: NASA
	Left to right: Viking 1 from 1976, Mars Global Surveyor on (MGS) from 1998, and MGS from April 2001 (black and white reversed).
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Take the face on Mars. The first photograph of this bumpy mesa was snapped by the Viking Orbiter, and released by NASA to the public on July 31, 1976.

It is an intriguing image, and certainly does look like a face. In fact, since then, this "face" on Mars has inspired a whole library of books and groups of true believers that now find "evidence" of a "Pyramid" and an "Inca City" as well. All, of course, photographed by Viking but "covered up" by NASA officials. Note that all of the publications help to put bread on the table and pay the rent for the creative folks churning out such books, articles, and tabloid stories about "the face."

Now, imagine being a science teacher with a classroom full of 15-year old students who believe the television accounts of the face on Mars, cities on the Moon, alien autopsies, etc., and you are teaching your unit on space and astronomy. A careful excursion through the characteristics of the planets and their moons interests your students; the red spot on Jupiter would hold at least 3 Earths, a cool factoid, but it doesn't grab them. The face on Mars does. And this was what I discussed with the science teacher at NSTA.

The face on Mars is a teachable moment. Turn your students into scientists. Present the evidence for students to consider. There is the Viking photograph, taken in 1976 and the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) photographs taken about 25 years later. Ask the students what they see in the 1976 photograph. Like everyone else, they will see a face. I see a face in that photograph too. Humans interact with the natural world by organizing perception into recognizable form. Who has not watched clouds on a summer day and seen patterns that look like horses, dragons, beautiful men/women, ships, and such? In the early part of the century astronomer Percival Lowell was convinced that he saw canals on Mars through his telescope in Arizona. Subsequently, other observers and photography of Mars proved that his mind was connecting broken features into lines, which he perceived as canals. It was all in his mind, not on Mars. Humans are pattern seekers, and seeing familiar forms in strange places helps us to organize our perceptions of the natural world. There was a rock formation near my childhood home in the Sierra Nevada Mountains that looked like a bear, but I never assumed that it was carved by unknown beings to make me believe in them or to ponder bears. I understood that it was jagged granite, and the fact that it looked like a bear was a coincidence. I also had to stand in the right place to see the "bear"; otherwise, it just looked like a mountain peak. Like the bear, to see the face on Mars, you have to "stand" in the right place, and at the right time of day.

Move forward a couple of decades. We've returned to Mars. We have new, higher resolution photographs of the same mesa taken by MGS and posted to the web by Malin Space Science Systems, the designers and builders of the camera onboard MGS. These are detailed, new views, including views from different places at different times of the day. The raw data from MGS is image-processed to bring out the details on the mesa, and a clear explanation for how scientists accomplish this work helps students to understand that there is not a cover up. Send your students there for the evidence. What does the mesa look like when seen more clearly, more closely?

The shadows cast by the low Sun angle in 1976 created a lovely illusion, a giant face-like mesa on Mars. The new images, taken by MGS reveal the "face" as a rocky mesa, one of many in the Cydonia region of Mars. It looks a lot like mesas in the western region of the United States. In fact, it looks a lot like other mesas in that same region on Mars--similar in size, dimension, and height. It's an ordinary feature on Mars, not a gargantuan piece of artwork left to make us ponder whether Mars had been visited by alien artists who sculpted on a grand scale. But, don't ask students to "believe" in science, provide the evidence, and allow them to critically consider what we now know about the "face" on Mars. Give them the same opportunity granted the space scientists that took the images with Viking and with MGS.

Finally, ask yourself and your students how much money people made and continue to make from selling pseudoscientific accounts and films to the gullible public. That discussion might reveal why the "face on Mars" is so persistent.