Whilst making a pit stop during its tour of the Red Planet, NASA's Mars exploration rover Spirit has taken a series of photos of what may be evidence for a strange form of life on Mars.
JPL has reported that after being stopped for an hour to allow the solar cells to recharge it's batteries, the onboard motion sensors detected movement and switched on the camera, initially recording a small "wobbly" motion of what appeared to be a brown rock about 15cm (6") across.
With each "wobble" of the rock, numerous small brown particles no bigger than 1cm wide slowly moved towards the rock, eventually merging with the central mass to form a larger body.
After two hours, this initially shapeless growing blob started to exhibit structure and as the structure developed it gradually became a mirror image of Spirit. (see image top right)
Spirit's sensors showed the structure to be totally silicon-based, and computer analysis of data from the directional CT scan revealed a lattice, or matrix of silicon crystals locked together but also displaying a distinctly non-crystalline flexibility, being able to change its surface shape and lock into each other.
A low level of radio noise emanated from the structure, but whether this was an attempt to communicate or was merely related to its growth and function is unclear, as no message can be identified.
Questions abound. Is what we are seeing some sort of life form? If so, is it a single entity or some sort of community of entities bound by radio communication or perhaps telepathically?
Will it be capable of communication? It seems capable of learning. When Spirit moved a few centimetres in its direction, it attempted a similar move but totally fell apart into a shapeless pile.
This shapeless pile then started to reassemble itself, but this time into the form of a humanoid figure (see image bottom right). Looking somewhat feminine, at least to an astronaut who had been marooned for some years on a space station, it has maintained this form for some weeks.
What has been encountered may well be some crystalline community which has the ability to reproduce forms that it encounters. If so, one may wonder when and how such a community encountered a humanoid figure. Has Mars been visited by the grey aliens, and if so, when?