Try to stay calm as I tell you this news: something weird is happening on the surface of Mars, and it’s there for all the world to see. NASA isn’t saying it’s aliens…but it’s gotta be aliens, right?
Mars is our next door neighbor.
If our planet has a BFF in the solar system, it’s Mars. It’s nearby (just a few dozen million miles away), similarly sized, and probably once had water. Since the dawn of space exploration, humanity has been obsessed with Mars.
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We’re already there, kinda.
Yeah, we still haven’t sent any actual humans over there, but we have deployed a couple of rovers. The Curiosity rover, which is about the size of a car, arrived on the red planet back in 2012.
It’s a pretty cool rover.
It’s jam-packed with instruments and equipment, and it’s been sending us stunning pics of Mars (including a few selfies) for the past seven years. Its mission was extended indefinitely in late 2012.
The pics are amazing.
You can check out the full Curiosity image gallery on NASA’s site. From stunning vistas to ancient mysteries (check out this big meteorite it found awhile back), Curiosity certainly lives up to its name.
There’s an elephant in the room…
Sure, we’re told that the population of Mars is zero. But this is a relatively Earth-like planet we’re talking about here. At a certain point, Curiosity’s gotta capture something weird, right?
This brings us to today…
Earlier this week, Curiosity was roaming through the hills and valleys of the Martian landscape when it captured this vista. While this pic doesn’t show anything weird, just wait for the next one…
There it is.
In this image , which shares the same angle as the pic above, you can clearly see a strange light in the distance. This pic was snapped just seconds after the earlier one.
ENHANCE.
It…looks like someone added some white pixels in Paint. While the blown-up image doesn’t really give us anything, it’s still undeniable: the Curiosity rover captured an unexplained light on the surface of Mars.
Not the first time.
Strange spots of white light have been spotted before, like with this image from all the way back in April 2014.
ENHANCE (again)!
Like with this latest bright spot, people were quick to come up with theories about alien huts or vehicles.
I want to believe.
I’ve heard of Occam’s Razor, but I also really, really want this to be evidence of aliens. So while there may be a more rational explanation, I’m sticking to the extraterrestrial one.
The plot thickens.
A third photo, taken seconds after the one with the light, shows no light whatsoever. So if that light was an alien, it was a particularly speedy alien.
What is it, really?
Curiosity has picked up similar light sources before, and we can’t say for sure what they are (remember, we’re millions of miles away).
They’re actually really common.
Justin Maki, who leads the team that operates Curiosity’s navicams, told The Independent that they see at least one every week.
“These can be caused by cosmic-ray hits or sunlight glinting from rock surfaces, as the most likely explanations.”
We’ll get to the bottom of this.
Curiosity is going to be on the surface of Mars forever. Maybe someday it’ll get close to one of those beams of light to figure out once and for all what’s really happening on the Martian surface.
