WASHINGTON, Feb. 9 (UPI) -- Is a faraway alien civilization using emoticons to communicate with us? Or are humans just predisposed to see faces where there aren't?

In a new image captured by the Hubble Space Telescope, a galaxy cluster called SDSS J1038+4849 appears to be smiling. And while it is enjoyable enough at face value, it also illuminates two scientific phenomena -- gravitational lensing and pareidolia.


Gravitational lensing is the optical phenomenon caused by the massive gravity forces exerted by large galaxy clusters. In the new Hubble image, the blurry lines that form the edges of the face and the smile are caused by the bending and warping of light by the gravity of SDSS J1038+4849. Gravitational lensing caused by a large cluster of galaxies that distort light to create a circular effect is called an Einstein Ring.

But pareidolia is the phenomenon that makes this particular image interesting. Pareidolia is the human predilection for projecting meaning onto seemingly random visual or auditory stimuli -- seeing religious faces and symbols on the trunk of a tree or in a cereal bowl, recognizing animal shapes in the passing clouds, or hearing secret messages recorded backwards on rock-n-roll records.

Scientists suggest that evolution has hardwired the human brain to recognize human facial features, and those neural pathways can trick the brain into focusing on facial patterns even when the rest of the brain realizes it's looking at an inanimate object.