Image Looks Like Seated Figure On Red Planet

A tiny, cropped section of a large panoramic image of Mars, taken by the Spirit rover in November and posted on NASA's website earlier this month, has caused a stir among those who want to believe there's life on the red planet.

The shadowy image resembles a humanoid figure... that, with a little imagination, appears to be sitting on a rock outcrop near the edge of the Gusev crater.

Opinions about what the figure is, exactly, range from the faintly serious (martians!), to the ever-hopeful ("It's Usama bin Laden!") to the resolutely tongue-in-cheek (A Star Wars "Tusken Raider!")

Space enthusiasts, bored bloggers... and print publications alike took the image, and ran with it.

"NASA scientists have been puzzled by the peculiarly life-like image," declared the Times of London on Wednesday, according to a report by Fox News -- which added the agency hadn't actually commented on the image at all at that point.

NASA officials did speak up Thursday, however -- crushing hopes of the discovery of a real-life martian, or perhaps an intragalactic Bigfoot.

"It's a two-inch piece of rock eroded by the wind," said NASA spokesman Dwayne Brown. "No one on the Mars Rover team is puzzled or surprised by the rock. I can guarantee you that if [the alien theory] had any validity, we would have a major press conference."

Well, there ya go. If a government agency didn't see fit to call an immediate press conference, that's all the proof we need.

FMI: www.nasa.gov