With its pointed peak and wide brim, it looks like nothing discovered on Mars before.
In fact, this Martian rock, newly spotted by NASA‘s Perseverance rover, is leaving people baffled with its hat-like appearance.
The bizarre feature, snapped on Mars’ ancient Jezero Crater, is being likened to the ‘sorting hat’ from Harry Potter.
On Reddit, it’s also being compared with a helmet, a volcano, a codpiece and Marvin the Martian.
One commentator joked: ‘It’s quite obviously the helmet of a Spanish conquistador.’
While another added: ‘Looks like part of a cup holder.’
The curious feature is covered in little rocky blobs, which may reveal secrets about its formation – potentially billions of years ago.
Mars was once dotted with thousands of huge volcanoes which saw ‘super eruptions’, according to NASA – the most powerful type of volcanic blast there is.
The rock was snapped on August 5 by Perseverance using its Mastcam-Z instrument, the NASA rover’s primary science camera
The image was shared to Reddit where it was likened to the ‘sorting hat’ from Harry Potter (pictured)
While it may be reminiscent of the sorting hat, this effect may be due to a psychological phenomenon known as ‘pareidolia’ – perceiving likenesses on random images.
As one Reddit user pointed out, the human mind is ‘great at seeing patterns’ which it recognizes from objects and phenomena down here on Earth.
‘This rock pattern looks like a helmet when viewed from this very specific angle,’ they said, adding: ‘From any other angle it’s going to look like any old rock.’
The rock was snapped on August 5 by Perseverance using its Mastcam-Z instrument, the NASA rover’s primary science camera.
It was found at the Jezero Crater, a 28-mile impact basin on Mars that held liquid water billions of years ago.
A closer look reveals it is covered from top to bottom with small bobbles, which are known by geologists as ‘spherules’.
Spherules, already found on the Red Planet, are roughly spherical pebbles, ranging 0.01mm to 4mm in diameter (up to 0.15 inches).
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.
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
But why the whole object has formed such an unusual hat-like shape is leaving people scratching their heads.
Dr Keyron Hickman-Lewis, earth scientist at Birkbeck, University of London, called it a ‘very interesting object’.
‘It reminds me of one of those rather battered helmets one often finds in medieval hordes, though I do not think we should expect anything so anthropogenic on Mars,’ he told the Daily Mail.
‘I think its clearly distinct colour and texture relative to the surrounding bedrock certainly tells us that this is an ‘out of place’ object in the Martian landscape.
‘It seems to be composed of spherules – spherical particles that might be sedimentary or volcanic in origin – and has been eroded from its original location and redeposited here.’
But from this image alone it is difficult to determine its origin, the academic added.
Dr Lydia Hallis, planetary scientist at the University of Glasgow, said it isn’t surprising to see a rock like this on Mars.
‘The shape is typical of weathering in the harsh environment of Mars, and the nodules look similar to those first discovered by the NASA Mars exploration Rover Opportunity, which were named ‘blueberries’ in the media,’ she said.
The Red Planet (pictured) is an average of 140 million miles (225 million km) away from Earth. Jezero Crater is located on the western edge of a flat plain called Isidis Planitia, just north of the Martian equator
‘These nodules form via the interaction of water in sediments, and are made up of iron oxide.’
This isn’t the first time strange spheres have been spotted on Mars, which is an average of 140 million miles (225 million km) away from Earth.
Earlier this year, A close-up image captured by Perseverance showed an alien-like mass comprised of hundreds of the millimeter-sized spheres.
Perseverance touched down on Mars’ Jezero Crater – believed to be the home of a lush lakebed and river delta billions of years ago – in February 2021 after a nearly seven-month journey through space.
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.
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