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That doesn’t look like a rock.
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The Mars rovers have sent back countless amazing images of the surface of the red planet, and occasionally some of these pictures make the news because they look so strange. But whether the rovers appear to have uncovered doorways, mice, or humanoids on the red planet, it’s always ended up being a case of our minds trying to recreate the familiar in these pictures of an alien world. This tendency is called “pareidolia” and is the human brain’s ability to see patterns or lifelike figures in random shapes in nature. If you’ve ever looked for pictures in clouds, or agreed that constellations do indeed look like belts or water dippers, you can thank your sense of pareidolia.
But is that what is going on in this viral video claiming to have been taken on Mars? Let’s investigate.
Click here to watch the video.
This video says the picture was taken in August of this year, and purports to show a strange, four legged “beast” in a photo taken by an unnamed Mars rover. Looking around the web, though it’s easy to spot dozens of news articles about the other strange photos sent back by mars rovers, I could only find one mention of this particular photograph. In a YouTube video, posted three months ago (i.e., in August), the picture is marked as having been taken by the rover known as Opportunity.
One problem though: Opportunity lost contact with NASA back in 2018. It’s not sending back pictures anymore.
Is this picture real? Is it even of Mars? One would think that if so, there would have been news stories about it, like there were of every other strange photo. But even if so, this most likely just shows shadows cast by yet another red rock.
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