Thursday 7 December 2017

Cannonball on Mars

A new image has emerged from NASA's Curiosity rover showing another mysterious object on Mars; see the background links for other examples. This was spotted by the YouTuber "What'sUpInTheSky37" and reported in some mainstream media outlets. The worst coverage can be found, unsurprisingly, in The Daily Mail, see: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-5147049/Conspiracy-theorists-claim-spot-cannonball-Mars.html. In this article they make a point of criticizing "conspiracy theorists" on a personal level, an ad hominem. They cite the recent study by the University of Kent matching conspiracy theory with narcissism; here's what I think of that: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.co.uk/2016/11/are-conspiracy-theorists-narcissists.html. Eventually they get round to addressing the actual evidence. The object in question is spherical and about four inches in diameter. It is silvery-grey in colour and has a shiny surface; you can see a spot of sunlight being reflected off it. This might mean it is metallic. It certainly looks very different to the surrounding rocks which are all typical Martian orange. This has been described as a cannonball, but that is merely what it resembles. It's too soon to speculate about it being the debris from an interplanetary war etc. However it is a close to perfect sphere and it is rare for nature to produce such a shape. As I explain in the background links below, there are many mysteries involving Mars. It's been known since the first probes went to Mars that the planet was not always as like as it is today; long ago water flowed on its surface. There were rivers, lakes and even oceans. This means that in the distant past Mars must have had a denser atmosphere and it must have been an awful lot warmer; very similar to what Earth like today. Could life have evolved on Mars that was as complex as that on Earth? Maybe an intelligent animal species emerged that was capable of building artificial objects like this metal ball. At some point a terrible cataclysm befell the planet, about four billion years ago scientists reckon; maybe the emergence of Olympus Mons and the enormous Tharsis volcanoes. This killed off almost all the life and turned Mars into what it is today: dry, airless and freezing cold. If intelligent life evolved on Mars then, for whatever reason, the authorities don't want us to know about it.

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