A NASA image that is going viral has led many social media users to believe that there is indeed alien life on Mars. The raw image taken by NASA Curiosity in July was widely discussed in the Facebook group "Journey to the Surface of the MARS," according to RT. The group, whose slogan is "They will not tell the truth about MARS," excitedly wrote "Now this one is AWESOME!!!" about the discovery. They even took the liberty of enlarging the image so that the world could get a better look at "the creature."
Now this one is AWESOME !!!.. . . . .."CAVE GUARD" Original photo is here : https://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images/msss/00710/mcam/0710MR0030150070402501E01_DXXX.jpg
Posted by Journey to the Surface of the MARS on Saturday, August 1, 2015
Users have referred to the unidentified object in the photo as a "spider," "alien," "John Carter" and even an "awesome Martian space crab."
However, experts say that what people are seeing isn't a creature at all, but simply a rock formation.
Seth Shostak, Senior Astronomer and Director of the Center for SETI Research, said he gets images showing formations, such as the one in question, about once a week, according to the Huffington Post.
"Those that send them to me are generally quite excited, as they claim that these frequently resemble SOMETHING you wouldn't expect to find on the rusty, dusty surface of the Red Planet," he said. "It's usually some sort of animal, but occasionally even weirder objects such as automobile parts. Maybe they think there are cars on Mars."
Shostak notes this is due to a phenomenon called pareidolia, which is known as the brain's ability to make shapes out of random objects, such as seeing a face on an old tree stump or on the walls of a cave.
"Far from being a vision defect, pareidolia has a lot of survival value if you need to quickly spot predators in the jungle, for instance," he said.
Even though this means that the search for life on Mars has been met with another setback, it doesn't disprove the possibility entirely.
