At the beginning of February 2025, news spread on the Internet: in photographs of the surface of Mars, scientists allegedly discovered certain elevations that form a perfect square outline. Internet users immediately began to build conspiracy theories about their man-made origin. We decided to check whether their suspicions were justified.

They wrote about the sensational discovery informational, educational And entertaining portals, as well as some Russian media, for example “Snob" And "Evening Moscow" "Constantinople” and even claimed that scientists had discovered an entire building on a neighboring planet, and journalists EADaily compared the object with the Egyptian pyramids. Photos of the mysterious structure were discussed by social network users (“VKontakte", X, Instagram*) and blog platforms (“Peekaboo", "Zen"). Popular Telegram channels also wrote about this: “Ax – Hot news"(264,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), "KB"(238,000), "Rhymes and punches"(197,000), "Ivan Utenkov | Kursk" (161,000), "Leprosy"(131,000), etc. The authors of most publications illustrate the news with two photographs of square structures, and the photographs differ in the degree of clarity. Many reports on this topic note that the images have not been edited.

Although the images went viral online in February 2025, the original shot was taken long before that. One of the images shows the output data: MOC Image e1000462. MOC, or Mars Orbiter Camera, is a camera aboard the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft, which operated in Martian orbit from 1997 to 2006. Myself snapshot was taken on November 4, 2001, and on the Arizona State University website you can see this and other photos taken during the mission in high resolution.

With comments about an extraterrestrial civilization on Mars, two pictures went viral after they were posted on January 31, 2025 posted social media user X @chrisramsay52. His profile is almost entirely devoted to aliens, so it is not surprising that the blogger saw in the photo evidence of the existence of alien life. At the time of writing, his tweet had received 23 million views, most of them thanks to the popular American podcaster Joe Rogan, who made repost with the comment: “This is damn GAME.” The owner of X and the space company SpaceX, Elon Musk, in response to Rogan’s repost stated: “We should send astronauts to Mars for research.” After this, the pictures spread across social networks and the media. However, the image of the proposed foundation becomes This is not the first time that it has become the object of close attention of people who are keen on searching for UFOs.

Source: photo left and center - social networks, photo on the right - screenshot “Verified” from the site Arizona State University

It's clear to the naked eye that one of the viral images does indeed look like one taken by MOC, but the second has clearly been manipulated to make the supposedly clear square shape more obvious. This edited image shows its source as UFO-Blogger.com. At the time of writing this analysis, the resource is no longer available, however, judging by the archived copies (and URL), he specialized in the subject of UFOs and various conspiracy theories associated with them. Therefore, to claim that both photographs were allegedly taken during a space mission and were not processed in photo editors is a bit of an exaggeration. Tabloid The Daily Mail, however, insists that the image was “cleaned up” and not photoshopped, but if this is the case, it is unclear by whom and why only this area of the photo was “cleaned up.” Even if the original goal was to make this section clearer, visually highlighting only this square area is still misleading to the viewer.

In addition, there are other photographs of the same object from other angles, and in them it is also not a perfectly square shape. For example, on picture 2018, taken during the mission HiRISE, it looks even less like the foundation of a building (and, in general, like a regular square) than in the original photographs of 2001.

Source: “Verified” screenshot from the site Arizona State University

In the photo, the protrusions look quite compactly located, and this suggests that this is a single object, but in reality the captured relief stretches over hundreds of meters. In fact, the photographs show two ridges forming corners (in the picture - upper right and lower left), although not straight. At the same time, there is not a hint of the other two angles necessary to form a square in the photo - they can only be imagined by completing the picture in your head to the desired image.

This case is not the first time that enthusiasts have found objects resembling terrestrial buildings in photographs of the Red Planet. So, in 2022 it became viral photo from the surface of Mars, which allegedly showed a doorway in the rock. Then conspiracy theorists also saw in the image evidence that intelligent life exists on the planet. However, scientists did not agree with them, saying that it was just a natural crevice.

Such recognition of familiar objects where they actually do not exist is called pareidolia. It is because of this phenomenon that people see animals in the shapes of clouds, faces on apparently inanimate objects, or even the face of the Virgin Mary on cheese sandwich. The Rorschach test is based on pareidolia, during which subjects are shown ink blots and asked to see any images in them. Experts thinkthat pareidolia is one of the evolutionary mechanisms that have helped humanity survive. Anyone who saw the outlines of predators in the bushes hid and survived, regardless of whether the animal was actually there or not. Those who could not recognize the danger were eaten. Pareidolia is often mentioned in the context of the study of Mars, because in photographs from this planet the most incredible objects are often discovered - from the already mentioned doorway to persons And donuts.

Thus, photographs from the surface of Mars actually show a certain structure, which, if desired, can be mistaken for a square. At the same time, at least one of the viral frames was seriously edited in order to better correspond to the statement about an ideal geometric figure, which supposedly cannot exist in nature. Pictures from other angles show that in fact there are no even right angles at all, and what some users mistake for the corners of a solid square are actually scattered objects located at a significant distance from each other. The original photo was taken more than 20 years ago, and in 2025 modifications of it went viral when they were first published by bloggers interested in UFOs, and then reposted or commented on by celebrities.

Cover photo: social networks

*Russian authorities consider the company Meta Platforms Inc., which owns the social networks Facebook and Instagram, to be an extremist organization; its activities in Russia are prohibited.