What IS this mysterious white light on Mars? Curiosity rover snaps photo of unusual bright spot floating above the ground
- A mysterious light has appeared in a photo captured NASA’s Curiosity rover
- The image is the second of such phenomenon captured since 2014
- NASA says it could be a reflection from the sun or even a sign of cosmic rays
- Skeptics, however, have taken the opportunity to say the bright speck is a UFO
A white light captured emanating from Mars’ surface is back and is as mysterious as ever.
In a photo snapped by NASA’s Curiosity rover, which has been traversing Mars’ surface since 2012, the robotic explorer caught an anomaly mingled among the planet’s rolling landscape.
Floating just above a dune on the right side of the black-and-white image, Curiosity spotted a hard-to-miss white light.
Images taken directly before and after the anomaly which are timestamped about a minute apart show up show no signs of any lights.
White lights are back on Mars in an image captured by NASA’s Mars Curiosity rover. It’s not the first time the rover has imaged the phenomenon. A similar bright spot was observed in 2015
In a photo snapped by NASA’s Curiosity rover, which has been traversing Mars’ surface since 2012, the robotic explorer caught an anomaly among the planet’s rolling landscape
Though NASA hasn’t yet addressed what the light is, it has acknowledged similar phenomena in the past, when the Curiosity rover happened upon an equally mysterious illumination on Mars’ surface in 2014.
In a statement to DailyMail.com, a NASA spokesperson offered up a simple, if unsatisfying suggestion.
‘One possibility is that the light is the glint from a rock surface reflecting the sun,’ a spokesperson said in a previous report.
‘When these images were taken each day, the sun was in the same direction as the bright spot, west-northwest from the rover, and relatively low in the sky.
Alternatively, the NASA spokesperson said the light may have resulted from sunlight reflecting off of the rover’s sensors.
Similar reflections from the sun have cropped up in photos in the past when the sun is aligned at various positions in the sky.
‘The rover science team is also looking at the possibility that the bright spots could be caused by cosmic rays striking the camera’s detector.’
When it comes to the Curiosity rover, NASA has keyed in on other shiny phenomenon in the past, including what the believed to be fragments of a meteorite glinting in the sun.
Curiosity has roved Mars’ surface since 2012 making unprecedented discoveries about the Red Planet
Though NASA has offered up several seemingly plausible explanations for the sightings, they haven’t been enough to convince skeptics who say the anomalies offer proof of extraterrestrials.
In a post on the UFO forum, UFOsightingsdaily.com, the author says the light is a UFO inadvertently captured by the rover’s amateur photography.
‘This object has a hump on its upper center and a smaller hump or dome on its lower center…[much] like a classic UFO. Life…finds you,’ reads the post.
WHAT EVIDENCE DO SCIENTISTS HAVE FOR LIFE ON MARS?
The search for life on other planets has captivated mankind for decades.
But the reality could be a little less like the Hollywood blockbusters, scientists have revealed.
They say if there was life on the red planet, it probably will present itself as fossilized bacteria – and have proposed a new way to look for it.
Here are the most promising signs of life so far –
Water
When looking for life on Mars, experts agree that water is key.
Although the planet is now rocky and barren with water locked up in polar ice caps there could have been water in the past.
In 2000, scientists first spotted evidence for the existence of water on Mars.
The Nasa Mars Global Surveyor found gullies that could have been created by flowing water.
The debate is ongoing as to whether these recurring slope lineae (RSL) could have been formed from water flow.
Meteorites
Earth has been hit by 34 meteorites from Mars, three of which are believed to have the potential to carry evidence of past life on the planet, writes Space.com.
In 1996, experts found a meteorite in Antarctica known as ALH 84001 that contained fossilised bacteria-like formations.
However, in 2012, experts concluded that this organic material had been formed by volcanic activity without the involvement of life.
Signs of Life
The first close-ups of the planet were taken by the 1964 Mariner 4 mission.
These initial images showed that Mars has landforms that could have been formed when the climate was much wetter and therefore home to life.
In 1975, the first Viking orbiter was launched and although inconclusive it paved the way for other landers.
Many rovers, orbiters and landers have now revealed evidence of water beneath the crust and even occasional precipitation.
Earlier this year, Nasa’s Curiosity rover found potential building blocks of life in an ancient Martian lakebed.
The organic molecules preserved in 3.5 billion-year-old bedrock in Gale Crater — believed to have once contained a shallow lake the size of Florida’s Lake Okeechobee — suggest conditions back then may have been conducive to life.
Future missions to Mars plan on bringing samples back to Earth to test them more thoroughly.
Methane
In 2018, Curiosity also confirmed sharp seasonal increases of methane in the Martian atmosphere.
Experts said the methane observations provide ‘one of the most compelling’ cases for present-day life.
Curiosity’s methane measurements occurred over four-and-a-half Earth years, covering parts of three Martian years.
Seasonal peaks were detected in late summer in the northern hemisphere and late winter in the southern hemisphere.
The magnitude of these seasonal peaks – by a factor of three – was far more than scientists expected.
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