What is the 'alien spaceship' on Mars?

Earlier this week the mainstream media reported the possibility that an alien spaceship crash might account for some strange tracks and pointed structures spotted recently on the surface of Mars. Such a scenario, say researchers, “cannot be discounted with absolute certainty”, particularly as “fragments including what appears to be wheels, an axle and a cratered debris field have been photographed at another Gale Crater location”. So is it ET, or down to something more mundane like seismic activity? Dr David Whitehouse is a space scientist and author of The Alien Perspective: A New View of Humanity and the Cosmos.

David - Well, they come from the Curiosity Rover, which has been exploring Gale Crater now for over three and a half thousand Martian days. And it's taken a lot of pictures, made a lot of measurements, taken a lot of analysis. And these pictures, they draw the eye because they are remarkable structures in the sense that you see half buried in the Martian sand. You see a series of a dozen or so spikes, which reminds some people of vertebrae, of a skeleton half buried in the sand. You see others where you see regular patterns across the sand, other rocks tilted in various directions. You can, with the eye of faith, see something that you might consider to be some sort of structure in there. Something that doesn't look quite natural. And this happened particularly at the one location with the spikes. But there is a cottage industry, I think, of enthusiasts who look at every picture sent back from Mars, not only from Curiosity Rover but from Perseverance Rover and from the satellites going around Mars looking for something that is strange in the hope of finding, you know, the big discovery of aliens or ancient aliens.

Chris - <Laugh> I think we've seen doorways, we've had faces reported in the past, haven't we? Is there a rational explanation for this? When we're thinking about what could explain why they're seeing these pictures? This could be a crashed alien spacecraft. It could be a dead alien dinosaur, but what else could it be?

David - Well, yes, you're quite right. Nobody can say for certain that an alien spacecraft couldn't have crashed on Mars. Nobody could say it is impossible that an alien spaceship could arrive in Earth orbit tomorrow. It is possible. Question is what is the evidence? And the evidence of these rocks are, is that they are just rocks that have been on the surface of Mars for billions of years. Some of them laid down and when Gale Crater was a shallow sea, you have erosion when they were exposed and the water disappeared from Mars as Mars dried out. So for billions of years, these rocks have been exposed to sand blasting and erosion. And these have sought out the weaknesses in the rocks. These spikes look like regions where deposition occurred of slightly stronger rocks that are related perhaps to seasonal weather or climatic cycles on Mars. And the softer rock has been weathered away, leaving the harder spikes in between. And you can see that in the rocks behind it.

Chris - How big are these structures? Just to give people an idea, when you say the sort of spikes and things sticking out, how big?

David - The spikes are six or seven inches long, and they're remarkable. I go and look at them, they are remarkable, but they are natural.

Chris -
And the US Senate this week has been having some hearings, haven't they, on UFOs and things? has all the usual conspiracy theories coming out of that. Have you watched any of that? And did they talk about this?

David - Oh yeah, I watched it. It was great. It was a great theatre. And there is a particular David Gros there. He is an ex intelligence officer who claims to have been told that the United States has 121 crashed alien spacecraft and actually has alien bodies, which they have studied. And they've kept this secret for 80 years or so. Way back to the 1930s, they had alien spacecraft. But to be honest, we've heard all this before and what was yesterday was in front of Congress, so they were under oath and they were testifying, we heard the same story we've heard before. And generally I would classify this, as the Americans say, yesterday's event as a great big nothing burger, because it's all very well to have stories. We all love stories, but there comes a time when you have to have evidence and there's always a soft shoe shuffle with aliens and UFOs that the evidence never quite comes. it's somewhere else. It's classified, it's been covered up, there's a conspiracy. What yesterday showed is that we've reached a stage where stories aren't enough. We need the picture. Somebody says they've seen the picture. Well, for heaven's sake, show it to us.