The ‘door’ on Mars: Explaining the mysterious formation in a picture of the red planet

With a striking rectangular shape, and a smooth cut that contrasts with the jagged rocks surrounding it, the geological formation on Mars has raised questions for days.

found some door shape Others theorize whether an extraterrestrial civilization could create a “corridor” on the neighboring planet.

But what the photo taken by the robot shows Curiositywhich has been sending Mars data from Earth since 2012, has a more logical explanation.

According to NASA, it’s all about perspective.

Origin and interpretation

On May 7, the US space agency published another image of the terrain of Mars taken by the MAST camera of the robot Curiosity.

NASA identified the image as part of the “Sol 3466” series that was posted in multiple frames on the Mars Exploration Program website.

Since the publication, some people on the Internet have started theorizing about what it looks like and the appearance of its “door” or “corridor”.

But this particular image is just one part of a series, which, when seen in its entirety, changes the perspective of its dimensions and shape.

“It’s a shot Very, very, very bloated from a small slit On a rock,” NASA explained to BBC Mundo.

In the following image you can see the formation that makes up the whole series of 3466 images and how small the fissure is in that rock from Jezero crater, which Curiosity’s robot discovered in recent weeks.

Scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory highlighted how small the crack is 30 cm wide and 45 cm long.

“There are linear fractures throughout this bulge, and this is a place where many linear fractures intersect,” NASA explained.

break ‘curious’

Many experts have seen this in recent days.

Neil Hodgson, a British geologist who has studied Martian terrain, says that while it’s a “strange picture,” it’s not mysterious.

“In short, it looks like normal erosion to me,” he told Live Science.

classes, that is, The layers of rock that we see in images like this are layers of silt and sand.

“It was deposited about 4 billion years ago in sedimentary conditions, perhaps in a river or on windswept sand dunes,” Hodgson said.

Earth fractures can naturally form such fissures. In this case, vertical fracture It intersects with layers or layers to form this type of cut.