Editing 2462: NASA Award

{{comic
| number    = 2462
| date      = May 12, 2021
| title     = NASA Award
| image     = nasa_award.png
| titletext = The key to discovering life on Mars is to find someone who built a camera and landed it on Mars. Then you just look through the pictures for plants and dogs and stuff.
}}

==Explanation==
In this comic [[Hairy]] is awarded a "{{w|Nobel Prize}}" by {{w|NASA}}, represented by [[Ponytail]] handing him the award, as well as [[Cueball]] and [[Megan]]. He receives this award because he has found "life on Mars" by looking at NASA's images from their Mars missions. Hairy looks at his prize, and remarks that it is just a rock on a ribbon. To this Ponytail replies that from a certain angle... implying that if he looks hard enough the rock might look like a Nobel Prize. Just like Hairy, by looking at the pictures in the right way, found something that looked like life on Mars.

This comic jabs at poorly-supported claims of discovering alien life, particularly when instances of pareidolia are used as "evidence" of such life. {{w|Pareidolia}} is the tendency for perception to spuriously impose a meaningful interpretation on a nebulous visual stimulus, for example a rock that is interpreted as a face. A famous example is the {{w|Cydonia_(Mars)#%22Face_on_Mars%22|Face on Mars}}, a 2km long hill that can be said to resemble the face of a human when viewed on low resolution images, at a specific angle and lighting conditions. At the time some people claimed this was proof of an ancient Martian civilization. Later higher resolution images showed that the face was an optical illusion. 
Rocks make for poor prizes as they make for poor evidence,{{Citation needed}} and looking from different angles is of no use for either.

If you're actively looking for patterns in large amounts of data (especially if it's any pattern, largely undefined until it is 'found') then you are likely to dismiss all the data that does not support your preconceived ideas and seize upon the small randomnesses that you have managed to trawl though and classify as 'interesting'.  This is an example of {{w|Confirmation_bias|Confirmation Bias}}. It's possible that the featured NASA personnel specifically sifted rocks looking for one that looked like an award.

The title text explains how you find life on Mars. Just access other peoples' images that have been taken on Mars, and look for plants and animals. This is lampooning the simplistic notion that life on Mars would be detected by looking at photos at all.  In reality, all extraterrestrial life (in this solar system at least) is almost certainly microscopic.  The notion of detecting it by studying photos of the Martian surface is just as absurd as the idea of looking at the photos and expecting to see dogs and trees and other familiar macroscopic lifeforms.

Building a camera and landing it on Mars is what NASA does with their Mars rovers and other Mars missions. The camera is a small part of the entire mission, though an important part. But this is why the title text talks about landing the camera on Mars. The space probes are the cameras.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball, Ponytail, Hairy, and Megan stand on a two tiered platform. Ponytail and Hairy are are on the top step, with Cueball and Megan standing on the lower step looking up at the other two. Ponytail holds a necklace with a rock attached to the end up in both hands offering it to Hairy.]
:Ponytail: We're honored to present you with this Nobel Prize!
:Hairy: That's just a rock.
:Ponytail: Yeah, but from a certain angle...

:[Caption beneath the panel]:
:NASA has a new award for people on the internet who claim to find life in their Mars photos.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairy]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Space]]
[[Category:Space probes]]
[[Category:Biology]]
[[Category:Nobel Prize]]