Mars photos: Signs of life, or signs the Internet has lost its mind?

When is a rock more than just a rock? When it's an iguana, of course. Conspiracy theorists have been trawling through photos taken by NASA's Curiosity rover and pointing out mysterious objects that they say are proof of life on Mars.

For most of us Earthlings, the photos of Mars taken by the Curiosity rover reveal little more than a desolate red landscape inhabited mostly by rocks. Lots and lots of rocks.

But to the more, er, imaginative minds in our midst, these are no ordinary rocks. They're signs of alien life on the planet next door.

For years, eagle-eyed conspiracy theorists have been trawling through the photos beamed back to Earth by NASA probes and "discovering" mysterious objects that they say proves the existence of extraterrestrial activity on Mars -- a world where lizards, mermaids, traffic lights, jelly donuts and a statue of Barack Obama all apparently coexist in the dusty expanses of the red planet. In reality they're probably all just weirdly shaped rocks, but why spoil the fun?

The latest arrival, as it were, is the sighting this week of a spaceship -- or at least a spaceship-shaped rock -- that UFO buffs believes crash-landed on Mars.

"I found this anomaly in the latest Curiosity Rover photo. The black object looks like a crashed UFO," writes Scott C. Waring on the UFO Sightings Daily website.

Hunting for aliens in Mars photos

The Star Destroyer: UFO buffs claim this pic shows a Star Wars-like spaceship that crash landed on the red planet.

The Star Destroyer: UFO buffs claim this pic shows a Star Wars-like spaceship that crash landed on the red planet.

"The craft is only about 2.5-3 meters across, so it probably only held a few passengers. Since many of the figures we found on Mars are about 5-8 cm tall, then we can conclude that his [sic] ship could carry about 20-40 passengers."

Far out indeed, but not as far out as the discovery of a giant Martian crab in early August. Or the "strange woman" peering down at the Curiosity rover last month. Or the levitating rock in June. You get the idea.

But let's not trade our tin foil hats for helmets and prepare for Mars to attack just yet. One NASA scientist says there's a perfectly good explanation for these sightings.

"We have color HD cameras on this rover that far exceed anything ever sent to the planet before, and yet in order to find these things that kind of trick your brain into thinking it's a mermaid or whatever, you do have to zoom in where it's kind of a fuzzy shadow at that point," Ashwin Vasavada, a scientist who works on the Mars rover project, told CNN.

See photos below:

The Squirrel: Observers spotted a squirrel crouched between two rocks in this Curiosity photo. NASA says rodents would be "further up the food chain" than Martian life, if it existed, ever made it to.

The Squirrel: Observers spotted a squirrel crouched between two rocks in this Curiosity photo. NASA says rodents would be "further up the food chain" than Martian life, if it existed, ever made it to.

The Strange Lady: This ghost-like "woman" seems to peering down at Curiosity from a cliff. NASA says it's probably just an oddly shaped drift of sand.

The Pyramid: Alien hunters say this pyramid is roughly the size of a small car, and believe it may be the tip of a much larger pyramid buried underground.

The Floating Rock: Eagle-eyed spectators spotted this sphere levitating above the surface of Mars.

The Crab: One blogger spied a "crab-like" object clinging to the cliff on the right side of this photo.

The Helmet: It's definitely a weirdly shaped rock. But is it a World War I helmet? That's what some have claimed.

The Skull: This "humanoid skull" was spotted on Mars last year. Paranormal Crucible says "it's clearly not a rock." Right.

The Dinosaur Spine: To the uninitiated, it looks like series of rocks protruding from the ground. But alien hunters say it's a fossilized dinosaur spine.

The Mermaid: Before there was Curiosity, there was the Spirit rover, which captured this image of a "mermaid" in 2008.

Culled from CNN

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