Whilst Mars might not be the most lively planet around, with any tectonic activity ceased since its core cooled and its atmosphere stripped by our sun, it’s by no means a dead planet. We’ve bore witness to many things that we didn’t initially expect to see like dust devils flitting across Mars’ vast plains to massive avalanches that sent plumes of dust billowing up into the martian atmosphere. Still these events aren’t particularly common and the rovers we’ve sent to explore our red sister don’t usually see drastic changes in their surrounding landscape. That was until very recently when a strange looking rock seemingly appeared out of no where, causing rampant speculation and excitement about its origins.
The rock itself is fairly interesting, being around 4cm wide and having what many have called a “jelly doughnut” like appearance thanks to its white crust containing a red centre. Further analysis just deepened the mystery as Pinnacle Island (as it was then dubbed) contained levels of sulphur and manganese far above that of any other rock formation previously analysed from Mars. Such composition suggests that this rock formed in the presence of water, adding fuel to the theory that Mars was once not unlike Earth, but its uniqueness didn’t help in identifying where it had come from and thus the theories began rolling in.
Many initially postulated that it was an ejecta from a nearby asteroid strike, something that would be very likely to dig up unusual specimens like this and land them at our feet. Unfortunately since this was the only potential piece of ejecta found anywhere nearby this was unlikely as something like that would have created much more debris than just a single rock. Most of the other explanations devolved into conspiracy theories and crazy talk although I will admit that it was entertaining to think that aliens would mess with us by placing single rocks in front of our rovers. Now, after many months of speculation, NASA has announced the source of the mysterious rock and it’s as intriguing as it is mundane.
In short Opportunity created it.
The before and after pictures that made the rounds on the Internet are actually from 2 different cameras. The first is from the high resolution, typically forward facing, camera responsible for most of the beautiful images we see beamed back. The after picture is from a reward facing camera which was taken a couple days after Opportunity had passed by that particular location. Between those two pictures Opportunity actually ran over a small rock, crushing it into pieces and sending this one fragment rolling down the hill it was climbing up. This gave rise to Pinnacle Island and it’s former compatriot Stuart Island both of which can bee seen a mere 3 feet from each other.
This was always going to be the most plausible explanation (anything else would’ve been a little too fantastical) but it was great to see the wider world captivated by this scientific mystery, even if the speculation got a little bit crazy at times. Whilst it won’t lead to any major scientific revelations or brilliant insights into Mars it did serve as a good exercise in figuring out the origin of strange happenings, even if the origin turns out to be us.
