Mars Mystery: Where’d That Rock Come From?

My money is on an extraterrestrial playing head games with the primitive humans, but Earth scientists have a couple of plausible theories:

Scientists are stumped as to how a rock mysteriously appeared in images of the same spot taken two weeks apart by Nasa’s Mars rover Opportunity.

The rover, which landed in an area known as Meridiani Planum a decade ago, is exploring the rim of a crater for signs of past water.

On January 8, while preparing to use its robotic arm for science investigation, Opportunity sent back a picture of its work area.

It showed a bright white rock, about the size of a doughnut, where only barren bedrock had appeared in a picture it had sent back two weeks earlier. Scientists suspect the rock was flipped over by one of the rover’s wheels.

It also may have been deposited after a meteorite landed nearby.

Either way, the rock, dubbed “Pinnacle Island”, is providing an unexpected science bonus.

By: dave-dr-gonzo

David Hirsch, a.k.a. Dave "Doctor" Gonzo*, is a renegade record producer, video producer, writer, reformed corporate shill, and still-registered lobbyist for non-one-percenter performing artists and musicians. He lives in a heavily fortified compound in one of Manhattan's less trendy neighborhoods.

* Hirsch is the third person to use the pseudonym, a not-so-veiled tribute to journalist and author Hunter S. Thompson, with the permission of his predecessors Gene Gaudette of American Politics Journal (currently webmaster and chief bottlewasher at Liberaland) and Stephen Meese at Smashmouth Politics.