Posted Sunday, Feb. 24, 2013, at 8:00 AM Years ago, in 1999,
some odd pictures were returned from The Mars Global Surveyor
space probe orbiting the red planet. They showed what looked for
all the world(s) like trees, banyan trees, dotting the Martian
landscape. They made quite a splash on the internet, and you can
see why; here’s a section of one of the pictures: Image credit:
NASA/JPL/Malin Space Science Systems No fooling, they really do
look like trees. The usual pseudoscience website went nuts—well,
more nuts—claiming they were life on Mars. More rational heads
knew they were formed from some sort of natural non-biological
process, but what? Over time, more and better pictures were
taken, and eventually the story became clear. Hints were found
when these features were detected at extreme latitudes, and only
in the spring. That meant they must be related to the change in
seasons, specifically to the weather warming. That, plus some
high-resolution images, made it possible to eventually figure
out what they