Life on Mars?
Images have emerged showing a mystery figure perched on a rock on
Mars.
The photo of what looks remarkably like a female figure with her
arm outstretched was among several taken on the red planet and sent
back to Earth by NASA's Mars explorer Spirit, Britain's Daily
Mail reported yesterday.
Though no official confirmation has come from NASA on whether
the figure is an alien or an optical illusion caused by landscape
on Mars, it has set the Internet abuzz that there really is life on
Mars.
As one enthusiast put it on the newspaper's website: "These
pictures are amazing. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw what
appears to be a naked alien running around on Mars."
Another wrote: "If you show me another rock in another photo
from Mars, or Earth, that naturally looks like that, I will
reconsider."
A third contributor, who might have come closer to the majority
view, said: "Ah, the human eye can be tricked so easily."
The news of the mystery woman on Mars came just days after a
team of French scientists claimed to have discovered proof that
Mars has high dense clouds of dry ice, which scud across its orange
sky, Indian newspaper Hindustan Times reported.
Using data obtained by the OMEGA spectrometer on board European
Space Agency's Mars Express, the team found the existence of ice
clouds which sometimes become so dense that they throw quite dark
shadows on the dusty surface of the planet.
"This is the first time that carbon dioxide ice clouds on Mars
have been imaged and identified from above. This is important
because the images tell us not only about their shape, but also
their size and density," lead scientist Franck Montmessin of the
Service d'Aeronomie at University of Versailles was quoted as
saying.
(China Daily January 24, 2008)
