Did NASA find an alien crab on Mars?
Scientists dismiss claim saying that is just our brain trying to make sense out of unfamiliar stimuli
By : DC Correspondent
Update: 2015-08-07 11:08 GMT
Alien buffs claim that they have spotted a mysterious ‘crab-like’ creature on Mars after seeing one of the images taken by Nasa’s Curiosity rover. The image, which is being circulated widely by social media networks, seems to be proof enough for some people that there is life on the red planet.
The ‘crab’ seen in an image, appears to be on something that looks like a cave mouth. With many people calling out to its resemblance to ‘face-hugger’ monster from the 1979 film Alien, scientists explain that this simply the result of a psychological phenomenon called apophenia. This means that people often see patterns or connections in random unconnected data, which in turn makes it easier for human eyes to spot faces within their environment and recognise friends in a crowd or work out how fast a car is travelling.
With people insisting in the past of even sighting pyramids on the planet’s surface, most scientists describe it as just our imagination going overdrive. Seth Shostak, director of the Centre for SETI Research goes on to say that, “'Recognising a crab in a landscape filled with wind-weathered rocks is no more surprising - nor more significant - than seeing a winking face in a semi-colon followed by a parenthesis,” as reported by the Daily Mirror.
Take a closer look:
.@NASA 'discovers' strange image of a crab-like object on Mars http://t.co/Si6IjW0Lth pic.twitter.com/MXVxgGTdYG
— Herald Sun (@theheraldsun) August 6, 2015