Scientists from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., confirmed that the bright spots that appeared on one of Curiosity's images of Mars are not aliens.
The bright spots can be seen on two images taken on April 2 and 3 by the rover's Navigation Camera. Scott C. Waring, who curates for the website called UFO Sightings Daily had access to the images and posted them in his site. In his blog, he explained that the light depicted on the images appeared to be shining upwards but when you look closer, the light seems to be flat on the ground.
"This could indicate there is intelligent life below the ground and uses light as we do," Waring wrote in his blog, as reported by San Francisco Chronicle. "This is not a glare from the sun, nor is it an artifact of the photo process."
However, according to an email sent to The Chronicle by Guy Webster, spokesperson for the Curiosity mission, the rover usually takes pictures featuring bright spots, and this is a normal occurrence.
"One possibility," Webster explained, as quoted by the San Francisco Chronicle, "is that the light is the glint from a rock surface reflecting the sun. When these images were taken each day, the sun was in the same direction as the bright spot, west-northwest from the rover, and relatively low in the sky.
He also stated that he and his team are studying the possibility that the bright spots are produced by cosmic rays detected by the camera.
This is not the first time that Waring made a controversy out of a Mars Curiosity photo. In June 2013, he also posted in his website an image taken by the rover seemed to have captured a "rat on Mars". The story went viral and several readers made their own hypothesis on how the rats got to the planet.
