Space-alien theorists have gotten a thrill from a bone-like object found on Mars, but NASA has a more plausible explanation.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSSIf you were to view a particular photo of Mars taken by NASA's Curiosity rover without any context, you might think a call to the local CSI crew was in order.
An image caught by the rover's MastCam and published Thursday shows a collection of rocks, half buried in dust. One in particular stands out. It looks quite a bit like a femur bone from a thigh.
This is all it takes to get alien fanatics excited and theorizing about the possibility of fossilized alien remains on Mars. However, an alien femur on Mars is no more real than the uneaten jelly doughnut on the Red Planet or the infamous monument to Elvis.
NASA says its science team members expect the rock found its shape through erosion caused by wind or water. NASA knows how images of odd objects can stir up the public imagination, so the space agency gives this preemptive statement: 'If life ever existed on Mars, scientists expect that it would be small simple life forms called microbes. Mars likely never had enough oxygen in its atmosphere and elsewhere to support more complex organisms. Thus, large fossils are not likely.'
The thigh-bone-looking rock is actually pretty far from a regular human femur. It's crooked, rather than straight, which only feeds the imagination when it comes to alien anatomy. Chalk this up to the human tendency to try to make sense out of random shapes.
Entities 0 Name: NASA Count: 4 1 Name: MastCam Count: 1 2 Name: CSI Count: 1 Related 0 Url: http://ift.tt/1oY19qy Title: Wait, is that... human bones on Mars? Not quite, conspiracy theorists: in fact it's just a rock that Description: Wait, is that... human bones on Mars? Not quite, conspiracy theorists: in fact it's just a rock that happens to look a little bit like a femur thigh bone. It was snapped by the Mars rover Curiosity using its MastCam. [ NASA]
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