I regret not posting this last week when it was still at a couple of thousand hits but only for train spotting ego reasons and because I've been seeing a lot of chatter about Mars' moon Phobos getting increased attention (it's artificial) and thought that was going to break the news first.
But once again the Daily Mail is ahead of the curve and posting news like this. Y'all know I'm not a Daily Mail fan but time and again they are leaking/finding real news and while The Guardian might be a good echo chamber for political hand wringing I've not read it regularly for ages and find that the establishment are giving the Mail bits of news that are proving very gossipy in some areas of the internet. If only they could get their act together on gays and Muslims, it could be a news source I'd enjoy linking to.
Usually NASA airbrush the stuff they don't want us to see out and it's not really clear if they even know the full story on the breakaway civilisation but for the time being they aren't answering the Daily Mail phone calls.
Twat Update: I feel a bit of a twat as this video has an explanation that Richard Hoagland has given and which irrespective of my own opinion I trust his more than mine (he is a space scientist) so I'll add his words I cut and paste from the Facebook Group. My main concern is that if it is debunked you may take the real science from Phobos (which I will do a post about) less seriously and that would be a mistake:
And TOTALLY fake--
If you have been following the conversation on THE SAME SUBJET, below ....
It's just a "digital "scratch" -- which shows up as a series of SINGLE PIXELS -- arranged iin a straight line -- in the original ESA (Mars Express) image ....
The Google software (that makes "Google Mars") seems to have incorporated this original "digital error" into the Map itself ... and (somehow) added MORE "wrong pixels" ....
That's the "benign" interpretation.
The more sinister (my political preference, at this point) is that "someone" in Google (my "mad programmer" scenario) DELIBERATELY expanded on this original "digital anomaly"--
Creating an outright fake (complete with color)!
To get the kind of "attention" from mainstream media this feature seems NOW to be garnering ....
So that it can ULTIMATELEY be--
Debunked!
And the whole idea of "artificial structures on Mars" along with it (again).
At least, that's how it looks now -- given that the foundation "artifact" is (provably) NOT real!