By Tim Binnall
A peculiar picture from NASA's Mars Perseverance rover shows a sizeable boulder that appears to be oddly balanced atop a rock tower. The intriguing image came to light last week when the team operating the exploratory vehicle shared several photos on Facebook in a post marveling at the many "potential targets for study" to be found in an area of the Red Planet that the space agency has dubbed 'Hogwallow Flats.' Curiously, they made no mention of the balanced rock seen in one of the photos, though it was quickly noticed by people online and the picture soon went viral with all manner of suggestions for how the weird rock wound up there.
As one might imagine, some observers amusingly theorized that the boulder had been placed there by aliens. Meanwhile, more skeptically minded individuals argued that the rock may, in fact, not be balanced at all. Their reasoning is that it could actually be a part of the larger geological formation beneath it and simply came to appear that way due to thousands of years of erosion. Suggesting that NASA could give even the most ardent anomaly hunter a run for their proverbial money, the bewildering boulder is the latest in a series of strange objects found on Mars that have been showcased by the space agency this month, following the release of images featuring trash and a pair of puzzling 'spikes' seen protruding from the Red Planet.