TORONTO – Stop the madness.
On Tuesday, an image was released from NASA with a bright spot that seems to be coming from far off in the distance. And of course, the chatter on the interwebs became: “Is this proof of life on Mars?”
No. It’s not. And here’s why.
There are currently three rovers on Mars: Curiosity, Opportunity, and Spirit.
READ MORE: Rodents, Bigfoot and bunnies – the Mars you don’t know
Their mission: to find evidence that life could have once existed on the Martian surface. And they’ve been successful at answering that question. Yes, there is the possibility that life once thrived, as Mars once possessed flowing water and a possibly lush surface.
But so far, none of the rovers — not a one — has found any evidence of microbial life.
READ MORE: The search for life on other planets
Which means that it’s highly unlikely that far off in the distance is a Martian who is flashing us with a mirror or some other highly reflective surface. Do people really think that the whole time these rovers have been trundling along the surface, Martians have been just standing behind the camera, out of view?
It would be lovely to discover we have neighbours, but our immediate neighbourhood — Mercury, Venus and Mars — is a ghost-town, save for Earth. And even if some of the moons of the outer gas planets — Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune — hold promise for life, it’s not some high-functioning type of life with skyscrapers or underground worlds. It’ll likely be prebiotic or microbial.
So what was the explanation for the bright white “light”?
NASA said that the image, taken on April 3 from Curiosity’s Navigation Camera, is light glinting from a rock. They also said that in the thousands of images they’ve gotten back from the rover, they see bright spots every week. Sometimes they’re caused by cosmic rays — high-energy particles that are generated from outside our solar system.
In fact, like our own eyes, Curiosity’s NavCam sight is in stereo and the glint only appears in the right “eye” and not the left when it was taken less than one second later.
So stop the Martian madness. There’s always a logical explanation.
Comments