I'm not suggesting that this is an alien humanoid for real, Saffron! I just thought it was funny. The thing is, the craze about "life on Mars" has been going on for more than a century. In the late 1800s, American astronomer Percival Lowell claimed that he had seen canals on Mars, and he also insisted that these canals could only have been made by an advanced civilisation. In 1906, he published the book
Mars and its Canals, and in 1908 - exactly a hundred years ago! - he published
Mars As the Abode of Life. See
Wikipedia article.
Like I said, this created a craze that has never really died down. I read someplace that during the first decade of the twentieth century, a rich heiress promised to give a fortune to anyone who could prove that life existed on another planet. However, no one would get anything for proving the existence of life on Mars, because that was just too easy!!!
About twenty or thirty years ago, a blurry, seemingly humanoid shape was spotted on Mars by an orbiting craft from the Earth:
However, a better picture by another spacecraft showed that this was just a mountainous formation, and it was a trick of the angle of the illumination from the Sun and the poor resolution of the image that created the impression that this was a face:
So believe me, I'm not suggesting that the "humanoid shape" discovered on Mars this time is for real. I just think it is funny how the idea of life on Mars keeps coming back at any opportunity. But really, I did think that this newest little shape was sort of cute - at least at this resolution and illumination! - and I did think it superficially resembled the little mermaid, too. Oh, well.
Ann