

Strange light on Mars - john_w_t_b
http://m.sfgate.com/news/strange-weird/article/NASA-photo-captures-strange-bright-light-coming-5382677.php

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GavinB
With such a thin atmosphere, why would a light shining upwards be visible from
the side? For a light to be visible laterally like this, you'd need atmosphere
for a scattering effect and a _very_ bright light. A light pointing upwards
from the surface of Mars should only be visible to something looking
downwards.

Concluding that it's intelligent life "using lights as we do" is just a wild
claim with no backing. From the evidence it's pretty obvious that it's a
holographic projection sent backwards in time from humans in the future.

~~~
bap
Classic.

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NathanKP
Seeing as how the other camera on the rover did not capture this "light" (as
seen clearly in this GIF:
[http://i.imgur.com/LQa9PLU.gif](http://i.imgur.com/LQa9PLU.gif)) it seems
pretty safe to assume that this is just an artifact caused by a temporary
glitch on one of the cameras.

Here are the two source images taken at the same time by the rover's two
cameras:

[http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl-raw-
images/proj/msl/redops/ods/...](http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl-raw-
images/proj/msl/redops/ods/surface/sol/00589/opgs/edr/ncam/NLB_449790582EDR_F0310000NCAM00262M_.JPG)

[http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl-raw-
images/proj/msl/redops/ods/...](http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl-raw-
images/proj/msl/redops/ods/surface/sol/00589/opgs/edr/ncam/NRB_449790582EDR_F0310000NCAM00262M_.JPG)

But of course disreputable "news" sites bring in a UFO enthusiast as their
source for a quote about the possibility that there is intelligent life below
the surface.

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Ryel
This is most likely because I know absolutely nothing about space exploration
but I found the line below to be the most interesting piece in the article.
(because as posted already, I'll just chalk this "strange light" up as a
photographic anomaly.)

> "Arrival at this location means Curiosity has driven 3.8 miles since August
> 2012, when it landed inside Mars' Gale Crater."

It's crazy for me to think about this in comparison to Earth. Imagine somebody
dropping a robot on Earth before any known life and trying to make sensible
conclusions about what the entire planet was like by only exploring 3.8
miles...

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incision
The guy the article quotes is quite a character.

From his post:

 _" Sure NASA could go and investigate it, but hey, they are not on Mars to
discovery life, but there to stall its discovery."_

On a related note, I recently discovered that YouTube is a hotbed of dedicated
quackery.

The amount of effort put into some of the "updates" and the odd intersections
of religion, pseudoscience and misinterpretations of actual science are
fascinating.

One of my favorite podcasts "The Skeptics Guide to the Universe" [0] does a
good job of keeping abreast of and debunking some of the popular trends in
wackiness.

0: [https://www.theskepticsguide.org/](https://www.theskepticsguide.org/)

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shmageggy
Why are the 8 photos they show just zooms/crops/edits of the first? Until
there's another photo from a different viewpoint or some sort of official
statement, I'm chalking it up to a photographic artifact. Occam's razor,
people.

~~~
Sharlin
Yes, this is a complete non-event, probably a radiation artifact in the
sensor. The following photos were taken at the same time by the left and right
navigation camera, respectively, and only the latter shows the bright spot.

[http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw/?rawid=NLB_44979...](http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw/?rawid=NLB_449790582EDR_F0310000NCAM00262M_&s=589)

[http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw/?rawid=NRB_44979...](http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw/?rawid=NRB_449790582EDR_F0310000NCAM00262M_&s=589)

Images digged up by redditor CurtisLeow at
[http://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/22g13b/rover_captures...](http://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/22g13b/rover_captures_what_appears_to_be_some_sort_of/cgmxux9)

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kartoffelmos
I misread "This could indicate there there is intelligent life below the
ground and uses light as we do," Waring wrote on his website. "This is not a
glare from the sun, nor is it an artifact of the photo process." as being a
statement from NASA and not from some random UFO web site.

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charlieflowers
Motel 6 really _is_ everywhere.

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meilinara
_clearly_ the tardis.

