Photo: NASA/JPL / copyright
With a striking rectangular shape, and a smooth cut that contrasts with the rough rock around it, a geological formation on Mars has generated questions for several days.
Some have found it in the form of a “door” and others have ventured theories about whether a extraterrestrial civilization was able to create a “passageway” on the neighboring planet.
But what the photo taken by the robot shows Curiosity, which sends information about Mars from the ground from 2012, has a more logical explanation.
According to NASA, everything is a matter of perspective.
The origin and its explanation
On May 7, the US space agency published a photograph more of the Martian terrain taken by the Curiosity rover’s Mast camera.
NASA identified the image as co as part of the series “Sun 3466” that was published in various stills on Mars Exploration Program website.
As of the publication, some people on the internet began to theorize about its shape and appearance as a “door” or “passage”.
But that particular image is only part of a series that, when seen in its entire composition, makes the perspective of its dimension and shape change.
“It’s a very, very, very enlarged shot of a small crack in a rock ”, NASA explained to BBC Mundo.
In the following image you can see the composition that forms the entire series of images 3466 and how small the fissure is in that rock in the Jezero crater, which the Curiosity rover has explored in recent weeks.
Scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory have underlined how small the crack is, approximately 30 cm wide for 45 cm long.
“There are linear fractures throughout this outcrop, and this is a place where several linear fractures intersect”, NASA explained.
A “curious” fracture
Several experts have weighed in on this in recent days.
Neil Hodgson, a British geologist who has studied Martian terrain formations, says that while it is a “ curious image”, it is not mysterious.
“In short, it seems to me a natural erosion”, he pointed out to the specialized site Live Science.
The strata, that is, the rock layers that can be seen in imá genes like this, are beds of silt and sand.
“They were deposited about 4 years ago.000 millions of years in sedimentary conditions, possibly in a river or on a windblown dune,” Hodgson noted.
Fractures in the ground can form such cracks naturally. In this case, a vertical fracture intersects with the strata or layers until such cuts are formed.
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