REAL LIFE NEWS: NASA SUED OVER MYSTERIOUS ROCK THAT SUDDENLY APPEARED ON MARS
by Hazed
Although this is a real life news story, it reads like a deranged fantasy, but I assure you I haven’t made it up. A Californian man (where else would he be from?) is suing NASA, on the grounds that they are failing to investigate a strange rock that suddenly showed up in front of the Opportunity rover.
This donut-shaped rock suddenly appeared in camera shots taken by the rover last month, where previous shots had shown no rock. NASA has narrowed down the time during which the mysterious rock appeared to four days. It suspects that the rock is a piece of material dislodged by one of Opportunity’s wheels. You can see a picture of the rock at the source link below.
But Rhawn Joseph PhD isn’t buying that. He thinks the donut-shaped object is actually a fungus similar to the ones you find on Earth, which has suddenly sprouted and grown right in front of Opportunity. He’s suing NASA over their refusal to take close-up photos that would prove he is right.
I can do no more than quote from his lawsuit: “The refusal to take close up photos from various angles, the refusal to take microscopic images of the specimen, the refusal to release high resolution photos, is inexplicable, recklessly negligent, and bizarre.
“Any intelligent adult, adolescent, child, chimpanzee, monkey, dog, or rodent with even a modicum of curiosity, would approach, investigate and closely examine a bowl-shaped structure which appears just a few feet in front of them when 12 days earlier they hadn’t noticed it. But not NASA and its rover team who have refused to take even a single close up photo.”
Joseph’s demands are that NASA take 100 high res pictures of the donut, as well as 24 microscopic pictures of its interior, and then make them public. He also wants the right to name the fungus if it does turn out to be a biological organism.
This bonkers lawsuit comes despite the fact that NASA has already explained that it is investigating the object using its microscope and spectrometer. The lead scientist for the Mars Exploration Rover, Steve Squyres, said that the object contained unusual amounts of sulphur and manganese, and was definitely a rock. Not a fungus.
Of course, even if Joseph got NASA to agree to take all the pictures he demands, how could he trust them not to doctor the evidence before releasing them?
