'Monolith' Object on Mars? You Could Call It That

Natalie Wolchover, Life's Little Mysteries Staff Writer

Date: 11 April 2012 Time: 05:33 PM ET

The Martian surface feature in question. CREDIT: Image: NASA HiRISE; Arrow: thesun.co.uk View full size image

Amateur stargazers have discovered an intriguing object jutting out from the surface of Mars. The seemingly perfectly rectangular, upright structure, found in NASA images of the Red Planet, bears a striking resemblance to the monoliths planted on Earth and the moon by aliens in the classic sci-fi film "2001: A Space Odyssey."
The object in question was first spotted several years ago after being photographed by the HiRISE camera onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, a NASA space probe; every so often, it garners renewed interest on the Internet. But is it unnatural — a beacon erected by aliens for mysterious reasons, and even more mysteriously paralleled in the imaginations of Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke, creators of "2001"? Or is this rock the work of nature?

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