Recent photos taken by NASA's Mars rover might appear to show a gleaming alien bonfire burning in the distance—at least according to some Internet loonies—but that's not exactly what's happening.
Fact is, there still isn't any evidence for life on Mars. None.
The provocative, shiny smears of light appear in two images snapped by rover Curiosity's navigation camera, one on April 2 and the other on April 3, provoking excitement among some in the UFO-spotting crowd.
The photos come courtesy of the camera's right eye and show nearly vertical bright smudges emerging from a spot near the horizon. Photos of the same spot shot by the camera's left eye, meanwhile, show no such things.
Rather than emanating from an underground Martian disco, the bright spots are probably caused by cosmic rays colliding with the rover's camera or by glinting rocks reflecting the Martian sunlight, said NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Justin Maki, lead imaging scientist for the Curiosity team.
He said that glimmers appearing in similar spots on two consecutive days are oddly coincidental.
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