{"id":1296,"date":"2025-04-02T05:27:12","date_gmt":"2025-04-02T05:27:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1296\/"},"modified":"2025-04-02T05:27:12","modified_gmt":"2025-04-02T05:27:12","slug":"scientists-are-baffled-after-discovering-a-bizarre-rock-on-mars-thats-like-nothing-theyve-ever-seen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1296\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientists are baffled after discovering a bizarre rock on Mars that’s like NOTHING they’ve ever seen"},"content":{"rendered":"

They look like a dish of lentils, or a mass of spider eggs on a leaf.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But whatever they are, these tiny little brown blobs, newly-found on the surface of Mars, have left scientists baffled.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

New images captured by NASA<\/a>‘s Perseverance rover this month show an alien-like mass comprised of hundreds of the millimeter-sized spheres.\u00a0<\/p>\n

However, scientists are unsure what ‘quirk of geology’ could’ve made the strange shapes, which are unlike anything they’ve seen before.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Whatever they are, they look totally out of place compared with the surrounding rusty red Martian dust.\u00a0<\/p>\n

They could hint at the rich volcanic and geologic history of the Red Planet, which is\u00a0about 4.6 billion years old.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Mars was once dotted with thousands of huge volcanoes which saw ‘super eruptions’<\/a>, according to NASA \u2013\u00a0the most powerful type of volcanic blast there is.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It follows stunning images of ‘araneiforms’<\/a> \u2013 dark cracks in the Martian soil, completely different to anything on Earth.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"This <\/p>\n

This image from NASA\u2019s Mars Perseverance rover reveals hundreds of strange, spherical-shaped objects comprising the rock. Perseverance acquired this image on March 11, 2025, or sol 1442 (Martian day 1,442 of its mission)<\/p>\n

\"A <\/p>\n

A rock that has no earthly business in a Martian crater: Perseverance acquired this image on March 13, 2025 – sol 1444, or Martian day 1,444 of the Mars 2020 mission<\/p>\n

NASA’s new images were found by Perseverance along the rim of the Jezero Crater, a 28-mile-wide region on Mars<\/a> that may have once been flooded with water.<\/p>\n

Alex Jones, a PhD student from Imperial College London’s department of earth science, described the rock as ‘strange’ and ‘shocking’.\u00a0<\/p>\n

‘The Perseverance Science Team were astonished by a strange rock comprised of hundreds of millimeter-sized spheres,’\u00a0he said in a blog post<\/a> on NASA’s website.<\/p>\n

‘Placing these features in geologic context will be critical for understanding their origin,\u00a0and determining their significance for the geological history of the Jezero Crater rim and beyond.’\u00a0<\/p>\n

Technically, the mass is made up of ‘spherules’ \u2013 roughly spherical pebbles, ranging\u00a00.01mm to 4mm in diameter (up to 0.15 inches).\u00a0<\/p>\n

Some of these spherules are more elongate, elliptical shapes, while others have angular edges, perhaps representing broken spherule fragments.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Others even have miniscule holes as if they’d been pricked with a pin \u2013 but how or why they show such variety is a mystery.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On Earth, spherules are formed by rapid cooling of molten rock droplets during a volcanic eruption, or by the condensation of rock vaporized by a meteorite impact.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"The <\/p>\n

The Jezero Crater is a 28-mile-wide region on Mars that may have once been flooded with water<\/p>\n

\"The <\/p>\n

The Red Planet (pictured)\u00a0 is an average of 140 million miles (225 million km) away from Earth<\/p>\n

Did Mars have volcanoes?\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Mars was once dotted with thousands of huge volcanoes which saw ‘super eruptions’, according to NASA.<\/p>\n

The eruptions shot water vapor, carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide into the Martian atmosphere, resulting in a significant change to Mars’ climate.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In 2021, scientists said some volcanoes on Mars may still be active, raising the possibility there were microbes on the planet as recently as 30,000 years ago.\u00a0<\/p>\n

‘Each of these formation mechanisms would have vastly different implications for the evolution of these rocks, so the team is working hard to determine their context and origin,’\u00a0Jones said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Dr Matthew Chojnacki, a planetary geologist at the Planetary Science Institute, said they could be ‘frothy lava’ that rapidly cooled might lead to such a deposit.\u00a0<\/p>\n

‘But it’s hard to tell without chemistry or mineralogy, especially given it’s a float rock (a piece of rock that is not part of the bedrock),’ he told MailOnline.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Dr Joel Davis, planetary geologist at Imperial College London, said they may have been formed by water circulating through the Martian ground billions of years ago.<\/p>\n

‘[This was] potentially when conditions were too cold for liquid water to exist on the surface,’ Dr Davis told MailOnline.\u00a0<\/p>\n

‘Findings like this help geologists build a picture of how and when Mars might have changed, from a warm, wet planet 3-4 billion of years ago, to the cold, very dry environment we see today.’\u00a0<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t the first time strange spheres have been spotted on Mars, which is an average of 140 million miles (225 million km) away from Earth.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In 2004, the Opportunity rover \u2013 active on Mars from 2004-2018 \u2013 spotted ‘Martian Blueberries’ at Meridiani Planum, a large plain straddling the equator of Mars. These marble-sized objects, named for their similar appearance to the fruit, are remnants of small meteorites that broke up in the Martian atmosphere.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"A <\/p>\n

A full scale test model of the Perseverance rover currently on Mars is displayed during a press conference for the Mars Sample Return mission in the Mars Yard at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California on April 11, 2023<\/p>\n

\"In <\/p>\n

In June last year, Perseverance spied popcorn-like textures in sedimentary rocks exposed in the Jezero crater inlet channel, Neretva Vallis<\/p>\n

Then in 2012, the Curiosity rover, which is still exploring Mars after more than a decade, observed spherules in the rocks of Yellowknife Bay at Gale crater.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Perseverance spied ‘popcorn-like textures’ in sedimentary rocks exposed in the Jezero crater inlet channel, Neretva Vallis, last year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Perseverance acquired the two new images on March 11 and March 13 \u2013 on\u00a0sol (Martian day) 1442 and 1444 of its mission.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A Martian day (a ‘sol’) is 24 hours, 39 minutes and 35 seconds long \u2013 so about 40 minutes longer than a day on Earth.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Perseverance touched down on Mars’ Jezero Crater \u2013 believed to be the home of a lush lakebed and river delta billions of years ago \u2013 in February 2021 after a nearly seven-month journey through space.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It is tasked with seeking traces of fossilised microbial life from Mars’ ancient past and to collect rock specimens for return to Earth through future missions to the Red Planet.\u00a0<\/p>\n

MARS: THE BASICS<\/a><\/p>\n

Mars is the fourth planet from the sun, with a ‘near-dead’ dusty, cold, desert world with a very thin atmosphere.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Mars is also a dynamic planet with seasons, polar ice caps, canyons, extinct volcanoes, and evidence that it was even more active in the past.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It is one of the most explored planets in the solar system and the only planet humans have sent rovers to explore.<\/p>\n

One day on Mars takes a little over 24 hours and a year is 687 Earth days.<\/p>\n

Facts and Figures\u00a0<\/p>\n

Orbital period: 687 days<\/p>\n

Surface area: 55.91 million mi\u00b2<\/p>\n

Distance from Sun: 145 million miles<\/p>\n

Gravity: 3.721 m\/s\u00b2<\/p>\n

Radius: 2,106 miles<\/p>\n

Moons: Phobos, Deimos<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"They look like a dish of lentils, or a mass of spider eggs on a leaf.\u00a0 But whatever…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1297,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[92,875,790,874,70,261,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-1296","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-dailymail","9":"tag-earth","10":"tag-mars","11":"tag-nasa","12":"tag-science","13":"tag-sciencetech","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114266717828919520","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1296"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1296\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}