Not long ago, astronomers would look at Mars and speculate that
they have seen structures that resemble cities.
Martian life became a major cuisine in pop culture and science fiction.
But then we developed more advanced telescopes and astronomy took giant leaps. We discovered
that the red planet is barren and to the dismaying hopes of many, dead.
Smaller than Earth, Mars lost its internal heat very fast in the past,
and traces of huge volcano eruptions on its surface—like Olympus—Olympus can be seen from
Earth even without a professional telescope. But volcano eruptions on Mars stopped a
long time ago, as the planet's interior cooled and solidified the internal part.
This cooling weakened its magnetic field, and solar wind blew away the atmosphere.
The remaining water froze, life if any, perished,
and the planet became a major ingredient for alien plots, and a probable second home.
But what if there’s more to it than meets the eye?
What if the Martians have successfully hid themselves from us, and from time to time,
they make faux pas that create headlines here on earth?
Welcome to Lab360, its time to explore.
In 1976, NASA's twin Viking landers touched down on Mars in an attempt to
answer a weighty question: Is there life on the Red Planet?
Gilbert Levin was the principal investigator of the Vikings' Labeled Release life-detection
experiment. The instrument got positive responses for Life at both landing locales.
Then in 1997, Levin concluded that the experiment had, indeed,
detected life on Mars, and, he has championed that viewpoint ever since.
Now, more than four decades after the Viking landings,
and with a lot more information about Mars in hand, Levin believes
that NASA hasn't properly followed up on the Viking landers' results.
"I am certain that NASA knows there is life on Mars," he said in a talk show recently.”
Geomicrobiologist Barry DiGregorio, a researcher, claimed that the space
agency is covering up aliens on Mars, aliens, that it had found during its earlier missions.
He believes that the discovery may have been willingly ignored,
because of the agency’s plans for a manned mission to Mars.
Meanwhile NASA has described the shapes in images as rock crystals, which are being analyzed.
DiGregorio, who specializes in study of microscopic life in earth’s soil,
says the patterns in images from the Curiosity rover, are similar to Ordovician trace fossils
he photographed on earth, and are proof of soft bodied life forms on the red planet.
Over the years, NASA has recorded vast amounts of footage of Mars,
from photographs to videos to live streams from rovers.
Well, a South African researcher has been combing through some of it and uncovered something very
peculiar in images from 2006 - what looks like a UFO that crashed on the Red Planet.
Jean Ward was going through footage taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter when he
discovered the odd sight at the bottom of the Candor Chasma, a large canyon in Mars'
Valles Marineris system, said to be the planet's equivalent of the Grand Canyon.
In fact, it is considered the largest known canyon in the solar system,
and it, Jean focused on what he called a "strange trench." At the end of the trench there is "a
perfect disc" that is "mostly covered in sand and debris, and behind it, we have random dunes."
Ward goes on to note, "It looks like a disc-shaped craft or object came in at a
very low angle and crashed into the surface of Mars leaving this strange behind it."
He then zooms in more on the disc-shaped object, which he surmises is 40-50 feet in diameter,
pointing out that that is about the same width as the trench behind it.
He adds, "It looks like a disc that's partially
elevated on one side as it plowed into the surface."
While some commenters wrote off the discovery as a sand dune or space junk, others felt it
was something much more significant, calling it a "great find" and writing things like,
"There is really nothing else it could be, other than a crashed saucer shaped object.
I know they are afraid of contamination but still, I wish NASA would investigate."
Back in 2013, the media was set ablaze by reports of what looked like a rodent
lurking among the rocks on Mars. The image was immediately dubbed
as the Mars rat, and was spotted by NASA rover Curiosity’s Mast Camera.
When reached out, this is what NASA said: "Clearly, it results from, you know, a lot of
things, like wind erosion and mechanical abrasion, and breakdown chemical weathering of the rocks,
as to why they get these weird shapes.” And, as you can tell, there wasn’t a lot
of motivation among mission scientists to investigate the Mars rat further.
As such, the Curiosity rover began its drive away from the petrified rodent.
Curiosity scientists tend to be amused when people see rodents,
lizards and other recognizable shapes in the rocks photographed by the rover, Crisp said.
But such claims — the result of a psychological phenomenon called pareidolia,
which refers to the human brain's tendency to spot familiar things in random images — are
not necessarily a bad thing, she added. Another image from NASA's Curiosity rover
of an unusual rock structure on Mars sparked some conjecture about alien passageways on Mars.
The rocks on Mars are known for their unusual appearances.
Ever since this image was released to the general public, there’s been a lot of speculation
asking what might have caused a doorway-like passage to appear on the side of a Mars hill.
Curiosity's mast-mounted camera took the picture in a series of raw photographs.
A UFO fanatic, deciphered the image, which looks like an entrance to a secret underground tunnel,
by providing a broader look at the surrounding landscape.
This led the people to ask questions like, Is this the proof we’ve been looking for our entire lives?
Will we finally be able to see aliens?
But the Doorway turned out to be not a doorway at all.
It’s just a small crevice on a Martian hill that looks like an interdimensional passage.
Since Mars’ surface isn’t anything like the Earth, its images can be very tricky.
A strangely eroded rock can resemble a fish. A cliff with
backlighting can resemble the profile of a face.
Cropped images and zoomed-in views can magnify small details.
If the shadows were falling at a different angle, it would make the doorway very uninteresting.
The scientists at NASA emphasized on how small
the crevice actually is. It’s only about 30 by 45 cm wide.
While we can't be positive if Martians used little doorways,
NASA felt confident that the "door" in this case was simply a small rocky crevice.
This isn't meant to take away from the excitement
of discovering strangely shaped rocks and landscape characteristics on Mars.
The fact that we have wheeled robots roaming around in the Gale Crater,
transmitting back photographs from another planet, is arguably the most magical aspect.
What do you guys have to say? Do you think there is some kind of life on Mars that NASA knows
about? Or are these just conspiracy theories? Drop in your comments to let us know,
and don’t forget to subscribe to Lab360, because together, we will explore.