Mars is no stranger to being the subject of speculation about strange structures on its surface. From the infamous ‘Face on Mars‘ discovered in the 1970s by the Viking probes (along with Jack Kirby’s weird precognition of it), through to thigh bones, doorways and floating spoons, there’s been all manner of bizarre sights that have intrigued and kicked off conspiracy theories.
The latest Mars anomaly to go viral on the socials is the ‘Mars square’ – a ‘structure’ about 3km across that seems to be distinctly square in shape. Posts about it on X/Twitter have tens of millions of views (whatever that’s worth, given Elon Musks’ penchant for creative accounting), and gained even more attention when Joe Rogan reposted one of them, and Elon Musk replied enthusiastically that we should send astronauts to investigate.
Now, the first thing to note about this is that it is not a new discovery – this particular anomaly was originally photographed back in 2001 by the Mars Orbiter Camera, and has been discussed on forums like Above Top Secret since not long after that (e.g. a quick search found this thread from back in 2007). It’s just that in the social media era these things tend to go through new periods of ‘discovery’ when certain posts go viral.
The second thing to note about the images being circulated are that most have actually been edited to enhance the squareness. For instance, with the two images shared by Joe Rogan, the one on the right has a square photoshopped over the top of it to show (or enhance) the inherent geometry. Most people I think understand this, but then assume the one on the left is unprocessed – but that is not the case. The left image also has been photoshopped to add features that aren’t there, at the top left and the middle right, which make it look like it is nearly entirely a square outline.
Here’s the actual raw image (link to the original source on the MRO website – this specific region can be found right at the top of the long, vertical strip image):
That’s not to say that it’s all in the edits – the square shape is definitely implied even in the raw image by the two ‘right-angled’ corners at top and bottom, and it’s certainly an attention grabber. But on the flipside, there have been plenty of posts of the ‘Martian square’ accompanied by statements like “straight lines/right angles don’t appear in nature!”, but this is patently not the case – straight lines and angled geometry appear throughout nature, from pyrite crystals right up to the hexagon at Saturn’s pole.
We might say at this point that “it’s cool, and we should do a bit of further investigation of it”, and that’s the attitude I love to take with anomalies.* One thing to point out though is that we can already do some further investigation of this anomaly, as there is another MRO image – taken 7 years later, in 2008 – from the opposite angle (this time, it’s at the bottom of the vertical strip photo, just above/inside the crater wall, but beneath the smaller impact crater that sits further into the crater).
And while you can still see the features of the first photo, with a different angle and shadows, it doesn’t look quite as impressive:
Rotating it to match the perspective of the 2001 image, we can see how it changes our perception of the ‘obvious’ geometry that many saw in the (photoshopped) images circulated on social media:
So in all, I have to say that it’s very likely this is just a natural landform, albeit with some angles that definitely make it stand out when viewed from a certain perspective. But I remain open to new evidence that provides additional detail (though I won’t be holding my breath for Elon Musk to send astronauts to check it out).
(* Lest anyone think I’m too quick to write off Mars anomalies, I’ll note that I previously queried – and ended up being right about – a weird light ‘artifact’ on the Martian horizon.)
