There is no shortage of wonder right now if you enjoy space and exploring the cosmos.
Inspiring discoveries are being made on Mars as the Perseverance rover studies an intriguing
region.
And the rover has finally taken samples from an ancient river delta, which is rich in rock
layers that serve as a geological record of Mars' past.
According to NASA scientists, some of the rocks have the highest concentration of organic
matter detected by the rover to date.
Minerals that correlate with sulphates are among the organic matter, which could preserve
evidence of once possibly habitable locations on Mars and the microbial life that may have
been there.
New images reveal the potential rocks among the alien scenery of the delta.
These crucial samples could provide an answer to the ultimate cosmic question: Are we alone
in the universe?
In today's video, we'll figure out what the heck is going on on Mars.
NASA published a photograph of Sidonia, a region in Mars' northern hemisphere, in 1976.
The shot immediately drew attention to a massive face with a mouth, eyes, and even nostrils,
prompting science fiction buffs to label it an analogue of the Egyptian sphinx made by
a Martian society.
This mythology persisted for more than 20 years until, in 1998, images taken from a
different position revealed that the face was nothing more than a dance of light and
shadows on the uneven terrain.
Although, a little later, photos of additional unexplainable findings were acquired by Mars
rovers.
Is there anything unusual in these photographs taken by Curiosity?
The news of "a floating spoon on mars" quickly spread throughout the tabloids.
Only a year later, curiosity discovered another spoon; could it be that the jumbo-sized Martians
were having a picnic there?
Geologists quickly disproved it, claiming that both spoons are simply rocks honed by
the wind.
Curiosity, on the other hand, keeps looking, and in 2022 it provided us with even another
reason to be perplexed: a precisely carved entryway on a cliff.
Perhaps that's where the picnickers who scattered their cutlery across the desert are hiding.
Even so, they should be small because the so-called doorway is barely 30 centimeters
tall and, according to geologists, it doesn't even lead anywhere because it's one of the
many natural fractures that cover the cliffs.
But, if there are no faces, spoons, portals, or other bizarre things on Mars, why do we
keep seeing them?
The answer is found in the human mind!
Before we show you some additional strange things discovered on Mars, let's face it:
we encounter surprises like that all the time.
Take a good look around you; the world is covered with faces.
They may be found on buildings, sinks, and even plugs.
This game can reach ludicrous proportions at times.
A grilled sandwich sold for $28,000 in 2004 because it was supposed to carry the picture
of the Virgin Mary.
We're sure you can see it as well, don't you?
Does this imply that we're all insane?
not at all!
We're just susceptible to pareidolia.
This is the ability to spot recognizable shapes in seemingly random items around us.
It once assisted our forefathers in detecting the heads of deadly beasts in the forests.
Now that we're protected from wild animals, pareidolia ensures that every second image
of Martian cliffs will spark passionate internet debate, with hundreds of pages dedicated to
a new conspiracy theory.
But what if those truth seekers aren't entirely mistaken?
After all, we can't blame all the strange things that happen on Mars on pareidolia.
These discoveries give rise to the most outlandish notions.
In 2001, Arthur C. Clarke, a science fiction writer best known for his work A Space Odyssey,
declared that he spotted genuine trees, a whole alien forest, in new images of Mars.
Moreover, unlike spoons or faces on the rocks, those trees are always moving.
The woods grew denser year after year, but gradually thin out.
Could these plants be eaten by undiscovered Martian creatures?
Clarke clearly intended something along those lines.
David Martines, a blogger, discovered a full settlement on Mars, or rather Bio Station
Alpha, 10 years later.
Martines deduced that this is the upper level of one of the underground bunkers where Martians
could be sheltering, similar to hidden facilities on Earth.
So, why do we keep discovering oddities like that on Mars?
According to scientists, all of this is just a sequence of coincidences, and the Martian
Forest is nothing more than a cluster of beautiful patterns formed by carbon dioxide, and their
mobility can be explained by the fact that the dry ice thaws and then freezes again,
filling the cracks on the surface in a new way each time.
But why haven't we seen glaciers like that before?
Scholars are almost certain that Bio Station Alpha is really a visual artefact created
by a cosmic ray.
To say the least, the number and regularity of these coincidences is mind-boggling.
However, the situation appears to be ten times more chaotic when the insane theories of mars
watchers are abruptly confirmed.
A number of unusual features have been discovered on the surface of Mars in recent years!
The "glass tubes" discovered by the "Enterprise Mission," team, a group of non-NASA researchers
that evaluated over 20,000 MGS photographs made accessible to the public, are without
a doubt one of the most amazing and eye-catching photos from the Mars Global Surveyor.
Tubular structures in the Martian deserts that appear to be "non-natural" appear to
be "translucent," fairly cylindrical, and supported at somewhat regular intervals by
"ribs."
These photographs taken from Mars orbit show miles and miles of ribbed 'tubes' on the red
planet's surface.
These tubes have a diameter of around 600 feet.
Some have attempted to explain these structures by geological processes.
Others feel they are naturally biological.
Nonetheless, some people believe the tubes were built.
The team working on the Curiosity rover has a hunch that the tube structures are themselves
crystals, or that crystals formed a mold in the rock that was later filled in by sedimentary
material.
Curiosity has already discovered abundant evidence of groundwater and an old lake-and-stream
system on the crater floor and in the lower foothills of the mountain.
The mission team thinks that Mount Sharp's rocks provide evidence of Mars' change from
a reasonably warm and wet world to the frigid and dry planet it is today.
Some scholars believe these "non-natural" tubes could be water pipes or an environmentally
friendly subsurface rapid transit system.
Perhaps the Martians are a civilization that lives underground!
Astronomers were already peering into Mars in the nineteenth century and seeing rivers
and even manmade channels.
In short, there were unambiguous indicators of extraterrestrial life, but it was later
discovered that the Martian reservoirs were traces of powerful earthquakes, mountain ranges,
or insignificant results of warped telescope lenses of poor quality.
The Martian canals were later dubbed a shame to astronomy, but in 2017, the Mars Reconnaissance
spacecraft photographed a small tadpole.
In fact, its head is just a regular impact crater, but the tail is far more interesting.
Scientists discovered that this is a riverbed, and that the river coursed through the crater
following the impact.
Because of all the unique features found on the planet's surface, we can be certain that
the 19th century experts were correct; mars did formerly have water.
Rivers may now be seen in other photographs and identified where they previously went
unseen.
The water on Mars is thought to have gone roughly 3 billion years ago.
However, two scientists who have been studying data obtained by MRO on Mars over the last
15 years have discovered evidence that dramatically reduces that timeline: Their findings suggest
that liquid water existed on Mars as recently as 2 billion to 2.5 billion years ago, meaning
that water flowed there for a billion years longer than previously assumed.
The research focuses on the chloride salt deposits that were left behind as freezing
meltwater flowed across the terrain.
While the shape of certain valley networks hinted that water may have recently flowed
on Mars, the salt deposits are the first mineral evidence of the presence of liquid water.
The discovery raises new questions about how long microbial life could have survived on
Mars, assuming it existed at all.
Ellen Leask, the study's principal author, conducted much of the research as part of
her doctoral studies at Caltech in Pasadena.
She and Caltech professor Bethany Ehlmann utilized data from the MRO instrument called
the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) to map chloride salts across
Mars' southern hemisphere's clay-rich highlands, which are dotted with impact craters.
One key to date the salts was the presence of craters: the less craters a terrain has,
the younger it is.
Scientists can estimate the age of a surface area by measuring the number of craters on
it.
MRO has two cameras that are ideal for this task.
The Context Camera's black-and-white wide-angle lens assists scientists in mapping the spread
of the chlorides.
Scientists use the High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) color camera to
zoom in and see features as small as a Mars rover from space.
Leask and Ehlmann discovered several of the salts in depressions on gently sloping volcanic
plains by using both cameras to build digital elevation maps.
The scientists also discovered twisting, dry channels nearby - old streams that formerly
fed surface runoff (from ice or permafrost melting) into these ponds.
Crater counts and indications of salts on top of volcanic topography helped them to
date the deposits.
In 2004, the Mars rover Opportunity discovered something resembling pool balls.
NASA researchers fueled the flames by carelessly referring to them as blueberries, encouraging
enthusiasts to support the concept of life on Mars even more fervently.
Some of them believe that these and other photographs depict local mushroom species.
This notion was once again debunked, but scientists eventually discovered that the bowls mimic
hematite crystals, which can only be formed by running water.
This implies that a river existed, and given the age of mars, it ran in that location not
long ago.
As a result, Martian bacteria spores could be hidden someplace near those blueberries.
Yet that's not all!
In 2012, the Curiosity rover photographed a barely visible metallic object that appeared
to be relics of an old Martian tool composed of refined metal.
Skeptics didn't believe it for a second, and it was eventually revealed that the object
in the picture was actually a fallen piece of the rover itself.
Then, most recently, another NASA rover Perseverance photographed something dazzling and fresh.
It's not machine trash this time, but a bit of rare earth metal.
So, does this suggest we'll soon find iron ore mining equipment and other machines used
by Martians to process minerals nearby?
What are your thoughts?
Tell us in the comments section.