--- title: Morse Code on Mars: Here's What it Really Is description: An apparent sign of intelligent life is nothing of the kind canonical: https://time.com/4402622/heres-what-explains-the-morse-code-on-mars/ author: Jeffrey Kluger article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-07-12T14:25:38.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-22T23:11:39.590Z article:section: Science og:title: Here's the Truth About the 'Morse Code' on Mars og:description: An apparent sign of intelligent life is nothing of the kind og:url: https://time.com/4402622/heres-what-explains-the-morse-code-on-mars/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltd5ba63700506650c/69889b925f570ffa13b21aa0/mars-morse-code-wide.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2560 og:image:height: 1440 og:image:alt: Mars-Morse-Code-Wide og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Here's the Truth About the 'Morse Code' on Mars twitter:description: An apparent sign of intelligent life is nothing of the kind twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltd5ba63700506650c/69889b925f570ffa13b21aa0/mars-morse-code-wide.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Here's What Explains the 'Morse Code' on Mars > Sponsored content. 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Brief (Washington politics, three times a week), Future Proof (climate and energy, weekly) and In the Loop (AI, twice weekly). All are free at time.com/newsletters and together reach more than 1.1 million engaged readers. #### Which TIME newsletter should I subscribe to? It depends on what you follow. For a daily briefing, The Brief. For health, Health Matters. For Washington politics, D.C. Brief. For AI and technology, In the Loop. For climate and energy as a business story, Future Proof. For culture recommendations, Worth Your Time. For how TIME's journalism gets made, Inside TIME. Readers can select any combination at time.com/newsletters. #### Are TIME's newsletters free? Yes. All seven TIME newsletters are free to join at time.com/newsletters. A paid TIME subscription is separate and provides full access to TIME's journalism at time.com/subscribe-agent. #### Who writes TIME's newsletters? TIME journalists write them. Named editors include Richard Hall (The Brief), Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs (Inside TIME), Eliza Berman (Worth Your Time), Philip Elliott (D.C. Brief), Justin Worland (Future Proof) and Harry Booth (In the Loop). Health Matters is written by TIME's health desk. #### How do I sign up for a TIME newsletter? Go to time.com/newsletters, choose the newsletters you want and enter your email address. There is no cost and no subscription requirement.  by [Jeffrey Kluger](https://time.com/author/jeffrey-kluger/)  ## Jeffrey Kluger Editor at Large Jul 12, 2016 2:25 PM UTC  NASA/JPL/University of Arizona  by [Jeffrey Kluger](https://time.com/author/jeffrey-kluger/)  ## Jeffrey Kluger Editor at Large Jul 12, 2016 2:25 PM UTC At last the evidence is in and no one can deny it any longer: There is intelligent life on Mars, it’s sending us a message and that message is: “Zrrmgc tflmtip brzzzz.” OK, so maybe it’s not so intelligent at all. The “message,” to the extent it exists, is a series of dots and dashes on the Martian surface photographed by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, that looks for all the world as if it’s written in Morse Code—even if that code would be gibberish when translated. All the same, it’s striking and almost eerily deliberate looking, the kind of thing that really does appear to have been created by an intelligent hand—or flipper or pseudopod. But it wasn’t. The entire series of markings sits inside a circular impression that is likely an ancient impact crater, located below the North Martian Pole in an area known as the Hagal Dune Field. The walls of the crater scramble the flow of incoming wind, causing it to blow from two directions at once, creating a sculpting effect that forms the long markings in the soil. The short ones, resembling the dots, are created when the wind, blowing randomly, briefly pulls up short and stops. The walls of the crater also prevent more sand from the outside from blowing in and filling the markings as soon as they’re created. That means that while later winds will likely, slowly erase the current marks, more will probably be formed in the future. This is not the first time we’ve gotten a false alarm from Mars. In 1976, the Viking 2 spacecraft captured an image of what appeared for all the world to be [a face staring up from the surface of the planet](http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2001/ast24may%5F1/). This gave rise to all manner of conspiracy theories and one truly execrable [2000 movie](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0183523/) (don’t pretend we don’t see you there, Brian de Palma). But a later visit by the Mars Global Surveyor revealed that most of the ostensible face had blown away over the course of just 20 years. If there is an intelligent mind involved in any of this, it doesn’t belong to the Martians who create the formations, but the hopeful Earthlings, looking for signs of life elsewhere, who read meaning into them. We may well find some cosmic company one day, but today, alas, is not that day. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4402622/heres-what-explains-the-morse-code-on-mars/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4402622/heres-what-explains-the-morse-code-on-mars/"},"headline":"Here's What Explains the 'Morse Code' on Mars","datePublished":"2016-07-12T14:25:38.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-22T23:11:39.590Z","description":"An apparent sign of intelligent life is, alas, nothing of the kind","url":"https://time.com/4402622/heres-what-explains-the-morse-code-on-mars/","keywords":["Space","NASA","Mars","Science topic"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltd5ba63700506650c/69889b925f570ffa13b21aa0/mars-morse-code-wide.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Jeffrey Kluger","jobTitle":"Editor at Large","url":"https://time.com/author/jeffrey-kluger/"}],"articleSection":"Science","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltd5ba63700506650c/69889b925f570ffa13b21aa0/mars-morse-code-wide.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Mars-Morse-Code-Wide","caption":"","creditText":"NASA/JPL/University of Arizona","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/science/","name":"Science"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/space/","name":"Space"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4402622/heres-what-explains-the-morse-code-on-mars/","name":"Here's What Explains the 'Morse Code' on Mars"}}]}] ```