All articles tagged with #cosmic ray
A photo from NASA’s Mars Curiosity rover (Aug 20, 2023) showing a horizon-shaped blob sparked jellyfish theories, but experts say it’s most likely a camera artifact—probably a cosmic-ray hit on the sensor or a readout glitch—especially since a nearby frame 13 seconds earlier doesn’t show the object.
NASA's Curiosity rover captured a brief, tripod-like speck in Gale Crater that went viral, but experts say it’s almost certainly a camera artifact caused by a high-energy particle hitting the NavCam sensor, a common cosmic-ray effect; the object appears in only one frame and is not seen in frames taken seconds before or after, suggesting no physical structure was present.
A Curiosity image from August 20, 2023 in Gale Crater shows a tiny jellyfish-shaped dark spot on a distant hill, which disappears in a later exposure. Because it’s only about 15 pixels and appears in a single frame, the most likely explanation is an imaging artifact—potentially a cosmic-ray hit or electronic/transmission glitch—rather than a real Martian object. The lack of corroborating data (wind sensors, additional images) means the true cause can’t be confirmed, though a glitch is the leading explanation.
Scientists are probing Amaterasu, the Sun Goddess–named ultra-high-energy cosmic ray detected on Earth, to pinpoint its origin. As the second-most energetic cosmic ray observed, Amaterasu may arise from nearby star-forming environments such as the galaxy M82 rather than solely from the Local Void; researchers used a data-driven approach with Approximate Bayesian Computation to map probable source regions, with results published in The Astrophysical Journal on Jan. 28.