I went to Skeptics in the Pub last week at Nottingham to hear a talk by Doug Ellison on the exploration of Mars. One of the subjects that came up was the Gorilla. The Sun recently reported that a Mars rover had found evidence of a Silverback gorilla while rambling across the dusty and arid plains of Mars. ‘Enthusiast Nigel Cooper – who has studied thousands of photos taken by Nasa rovers and posted online – said: “It’s definitely a creature of some sort.”‘

I’m rubbish at debunking this kind of thing. Basically I get as far as a lack of bananas and rain forest before yawning. If someone seriously thinks that the governments of the world are conspiring to hide the existence of a lone, and presumably very hungry, gorilla then they have more urgent problems than a lack of basic biology or geology. What is it that makes a global conspiracy to hide evidence of an advanced civilisation on Mars, with pyramids, faces and anomalous gorillas plausible? Unambiguous evidence of life on Mars would be a key to the vaults of any government with a space programme, so why would scientists hide that? You’re not going to answer that question by confirming that what we have is a rock. Still, that’s what Doug Ellison did with the video below. What makes it worth watching isn’t the conclusion but how he got there.

The tool he used in the video is the Midnight Mars Browser, which you can download on Windows or Mac for free. I didn’t know about this. It’s a tool that takes the photos from Spirit and Opportunity and displays them as virtual panoramas. You can follow in the tracks of your favourite rover. The gorilla might be dull, it’s a rock, but the tool for examining it looks brilliant. This is why the talk was so compelling. There’s masses of information about Mars you can access. You can even follow the (delayed) blog of a Mars rover driver at Mars and Me if you want the backseat driver experience.

It’s an example of debunking done well. I doubt that he’ll have converted any die-hards, because simply examining the evidence isn’t going to address their underlying problems. For everyone else he’s not only shown that it’s a not a gorilla, he’s also shown the way to more interesting places that can take our understanding of Mars further. The rest of the talk showed similar insights into the equipment on Mars and how you can use the data coming from there. As for the rest of the solar system, he runs a forum where you can find out more at unmannedspaceflight.com.