Alien toilet? Mars rover captures mysterious ‘doughnut’ on surface of the red planet
The image of a mysterious doughnut-shaped rock was captured on the surface of the red planet by the Mars rover Perseverance. The Perseverance rover, which was launched in July 2020, has been exploring the 28-mile-wide (45-kilometre-wide) Jezero Crater of the planet and looking for ancient microbial life's signs, as per NASA.
Samples of broken rock and soil (called regolith) and rock are being collected by the rover which are likely to be sent back to Earth to be used in future missions to Mars.
The “doughnut” present on the surface of Mars is one of the latest objects which was captured about 100 metres (roughly 328 feet) away in the Jezero Crater's delta by the SuperCam Remote Micro-Imager, which is one of the cameras of the rover and is helping scientists understand the surface of the planet.
However, the image has left the netizens baffled, with some making bizarre guesses of it being an 'alien toilet' or 'some kind of egg'. However, experts have been trying to give a more reasonable explanation for the “doughnut”, stating that it is most probably a meteorite that fell on Mars from the sky.
The photo of the rock was snapped by Perseverance rover on June 23, and the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute) shared it on Twitter.
“@NASAPersevere took a picture using the SuperCam Remote Micro-Imager on 23 June 2023 of a donut-shaped rock off in the distance,” wrote SETI. While SETI suggested that the rock can be “large meteorite alongside smaller pieces”, several Twitter users gave other ideas.
“Just say it!!! there is life on Mars,” wrote one user, while another stated, “Alien toilet!” Meanwhile, another user stated, “It's the ruins of a well from a technologically advanced pre-ice age civilisation. They were on Mars too.”
Meteorites falling on Mars
The explanation of SETI appears fairly plausible to experts as rovers regularly spot meteorites on Mars. Jim Rice, an assistant research scientist in the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University, said, “I can’t say with absolute, 100% certainty it’s not a meteorite, but I think it’s highly unlikely. The reason I say that is because, this region we’re in, we see a lot of rocks that have these kind of hollowed-out interiors.”
SETI Institute's senior planetary scientist Pascal Lee said that he believes the rock could be a meteorite. Smaller rocks or fragments surrounded the rock, “so maybe (it’s) a meteorite that broke up upon landing,” Lee stated. “In this case, the doughnut shape could have been created by weaker materials in the rock eroding upon entering Mars’ atmosphere,” he said.
It is also likely that the rock was “thrown away from another part of Mars by the impact of a large asteroid. It’s called an ejecta block. … I would recommend that Perseverance divert from its current course to check it out,” Lee stated.
