NASA's Curiosity rover has just posted its latest photo of Mars. One part of the photo shows a door-like appearance among the rocks.
The shocking part of the photo is the hole in the side of the hill that looks like a cave door. The photo was taken by Curiosity using the Mast Camera (Mastcam) in an area called Greenheugh Pediment on May 7, 2022.
This photo of the alleged door on Mars immediately caused a stir on the internet. One popular post on Reddit claimed that Curiosity snapped a photo of a 'portal' and an 'artificial looking wall'.
Netizens with wild imaginations immediately thought that this was a door to an alien hideout on Mars, a tunnel to the center of the planet, and even a portal to other universes.
But other, wiser netizens have a more plausible explanation. Some more savvy Reddit users say the door is likely a sliding fracture created by the pressure on the rock causing it to break.
This fault can also be created thanks to the help of the Mars earthquake. It so happened that scientists just recorded the biggest earthquake on Mars on May 4 yesterday, and they are still figuring out where it happened and what caused it.
It turned out that after being investigated, the object that looked like a door was actually very small in size. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory says the photo is actually a super close zoom of a panoramic photo and shows small gaps between the rocks.
"The team of scientists confirmed how small the gap was: approximately 30 cm wide and 45 cm long," a JPL spokesperson said in an email to Snopes, as quoted by us, Friday (13/5/2022).
"They say there are linear faults all over this section, and this is the location where some of the linear faults intersect."
NASA's answer can be proven by looking at the original color panoramic photo and has a higher resolution here. The location of the appearance of the door is at the top center slightly to the left, and it takes several zooms to see it.
This is not the first time that photos from outer space have caused a stir on the internet because they are thought to show alien objects. Like the box-shaped sightings that China's Yutu-2 rover found on the Moon last year.
Had thought it was an alien hut, it turned out to be just an ordinary stone, which due to perspective and lighting looks like a cuboid like a hut.
