The "Message of Cydonia":

First Communication from an Extraterrestrial Civilization?

By Richard C. Hoagland*

and Erol O. Torun @

[Copyright (C) 1989

All Rights Reserved]

Abstract

In 1976 an unmanned NASA Viking spacecraft successfully photographed the

surface of the planet Mars. In the subsequent 13 years, a mystery has loomed .

. . a mile-long, 1500-ft high humanoid "face" discovered in a northern Martian

desert called "Cydonia." Initially dismissed by NASA as "a trick of light and

shadow," new analysis presented here reveals a far more complex situation, and a

far more significant conclusion:

The "face" and its surrounding "enigmatic landforms" appear to be a

carefully layed out, highly-sophisticated, redundantly encoded "mathematical and

geometric CETI message" on the Martian landscape -- in the tradition of century-

old proposals by Gauss, Lockyer, et al..

This paper presents the evidence whereby the authors have reached this

"radical conclusion." We -- one of us a former NASA consultant, the other a

geomorphologist -- detail the extensive geodedic and mathematical analysis of

"the Face" we have conducted over the past several years: specifically, its

geometric relationship to other, equally enigmatic objects in the immediate

vicinity. This evidence includes multiple appearances of two specific

mathematical constants: "e" and "pi," derived by angular measurement of the

placement of key morphological objects around the "face" and the discovery of

redundant angles and derived constants from that placement. We have also

discovered the two constants -- "e" and "pi" -- "coded" in the geodedic siting

latitude of the "complex" on the planet.

It is this multiple, diversified, but converging geodedic, geometric and

mathematical evidence that, in the authors' opinion, now robustly supports the

"radical conclusion" presented above.

The geometry and mathematical constants we have discovered at Cydonia

appear to be a highly-specific communication of "embedded tetrahedral geometry."

It's apparent purpose: the geometric

____________________________________________________________________

* The Mars Mission: Box 981, Wytheville, VA 24382

@ The Defense Mapping Agency: McLean, VA 22102

-2-

Prediction of a specific geodedic latitude -- 19.5 degrees N. and S. --

resulting from the location of the vertices of a "circumscribed tetrahedran"

rotated inside a planetary or stellar sphere. This conclusion is reinforced by

the geomorphological observation of a major "tetrahedral pyramid" at Cydonia --

connected geometrically (by a 19.5-degree angle offset to the local geodedic

meridian) to equally obvious morphological representations of "spheres" at

Cydonia itself.

The purpose of all this appears to be to direct attention towards

"something occurring at these two specific planetary latitudes." When examined

by the authors, using published geodedic planetary maps from NASA and U.S

Geological Survey sources, these latitudes are observed to be associated with a

hitherto unknown planetary and stellar energy phenomenon -- blatantly emerging

at these specific latitudes -- on astronomical objects all across the solar

system, including the Sun. Further, the appearance of these "energy

outpourings" seems to be modulated by the polarity of the planetary (or stellar)

magnetic dipole moment -- raising, in the author's minds, the possibility

that the "message" is attempting to direct us to a verifiable astrophysical

manifestation of a basic, "unified field," connecting planetary angular

momentum, gravity, and electromagnetism with surface energy release.

The possibility that "the message" is directing us to, not merely energy

transfer but energy generation, is also considered in this paper. Several

convergent observations of the outer planets, most recently from Voyager 2, are

presented to buttress our contention that we may be looking at a new

astrophysically-significant form of energy. Evidence is also presented that

some manifestations of this energy may be altering the local "gravitational

space-time metric" -- consistant with current theoretical interpretations of

tetrahedral mathematics by specialists, as "representative of higher-dimensional

n-spaces."

The implications of these "real world" geophysical manifestations of

"unified field tetrahedral mathematics" -- specific, localized energy release on

planetary surfaces, apparently unrecognized until the "Cydonia tetrahedral

mathematics" were decoded by the authors -- are profound: ranging from a

possible breakthrough in the centuries-long search for a Unified Field Theory

connecting the four elemental forces of Nature; to possible technological

applications of this knowledge -- including a new energy source, and possibly,

ultimate control of gravity itself.

We conclude by urging immediate verification of the "Cydonia Message," via

the 1992 unmanned Mars Observer spacecraft, as well as detailed follow-up to our

preliminary work presented here.