An alien spaceship crash landing cannot be ruled out as the cause of the strange pointy protrusions found on Mars, scientists have said.
In April, Nasa’s Curiosity Rover photographed what appear to be rows of spikes, plates and wedges protruding from rocks on the floor of the 96-mile (154 km) Gale Crater.
At the time, astrobiologist Dr Nathalie Cabrol, of the Nasa Ames Research Centre and Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (Seti) Institute, said it was “the most bizarre rock” she had ever seen in 20 years of studying Mars.
Now, a new paper published in the Journal of Astrobiology concludes that the formations might be “sand spikes”, similar to those known to form on Earth in water-logged sands during strong earthquakes of magnitude seven and greater.
Similar rock formations have been found at the north Alpine basin of south Germany, associated with the 15 million year old Nordlinger Reis asteroid impact basin, and at Mount Signal in the Imperial valley of southern California, close to the San Andreas fault.
But researchers caution that “a fragment from an extraterrestrial or terrestrial spacecraft cannot be discounted with absolute certainty” – pointing out that what appear to be wheels, an axle and a debris field have been photographed in another part of the Gale Crater.
A similar debris field connected to the spikes may have been eroded over time, said the authors.
Source: The Telegraph
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