Clearly, it's not a rock...

June 6, 2011 6:18 PM

An 'armchair astronomer' named David Martines has found something on Google Mars which he believes is some kind of space station. Allegedly, NASA is investigating the image. Another theory says that what he sees is a "linear streak artifact produced by a cosmic ray".
posted by anastasiav (104 comments total)

oh yeah
well i think it looks like david martines' BUTT
what's it like poopin' without a BUTT
daaaaaaave
posted by Sticherbeast at 6:19 PM on June 6, 2011 [2 favorites]

My immediate reaction was, "Well, bless his heart."

("I hope it's not a weapon," he says so plaintively.)
posted by Countess Elena at 6:21 PM on June 6, 2011 [4 favorites]

It's the missing WMD trailers Powell was so concerned about in Iraq!!!!

Clearly it's well maintained (pixalated blobs of light)
posted by edgeways at 6:23 PM on June 6, 2011 [1 favorite]

The flash of light you saw in the image was not a space station. Swamp gas from a weather balloon was trapped in a thermal pocket and reflected the light from Venus.
posted by oxford blue at 6:28 PM on June 6, 2011 [8 favorites]

Anyone else excited about Coast to Coast over the next few nights?
I am in no position to speculate either way about the existance of Bio Station Alpha, but I love listening to who think they are. How cool would that be...
posted by kittensofthenight at 6:28 PM on June 6, 2011 [2 favorites]

Those flippin' self storage units are popping up in the damnedest places. Are there no zoning laws there at all?
posted by cccorlew at 6:28 PM on June 6, 2011 [6 favorites]

Daily Mail UK is my 'go to' place for science news, as in "don't 'go to' Daily Mail UK for science news".
posted by vidur at 6:29 PM on June 6, 2011 [14 favorites]

Don't believe everything you see on google maps.
posted by crunchland at 6:29 PM on June 6, 2011 [12 favorites]

Not a monolith, non-canonical.
posted by Capt. Renault at 6:30 PM on June 6, 2011 [2 favorites]

"Appears fairly well maintained."

But, sir, the Hoth system is supposed to be devoid of human forms.
posted by hanoixan at 6:31 PM on June 6, 2011 [3 favorites]

Please stop giving these twits linkjuice and attention. My Facebook feed is full of enough conspiracy theories, pseudoscience, and medical quackery already.
posted by ixohoxi at 6:31 PM on June 6, 2011 [9 favorites]

...and the damn thing is just down the street from the Martian West Point. Get real.
posted by davebush at 6:32 PM on June 6, 2011 [4 favorites]

Certainly it is fun to speculate as to what the white pixels represent, but what a wonderful imagination that man has.

Also I enjoyed the inference that if this structure was not built by NASA, then certainly it must be extra-terrestrial. I can only imagine how small the Europeans or Asians would make such a structure (if in fact they could get it there at all)
posted by lonelid at 6:32 PM on June 6, 2011

For those playing along at home: lat 71.8222, lon -29.5513
posted by gubo at 6:34 PM on June 6, 2011

I can only imagine how small the Europeans or Asians would make such a structure (if in fact they could get it there at all)

Japanese secret Mars installations are notoriously tiny and expensive.
posted by planet at 6:34 PM on June 6, 2011 [3 favorites]

HTML5 is going to support something called "links", which will be great for things like this. The articles, and this post, could somehow "link" to the Google Mars location in question so we could look at it!
posted by DU at 6:35 PM on June 6, 2011 [17 favorites]

It could be this, it could be that. Or it could be Occam's Razor says David Martines is full of crap and its an imaging glitch caused by aforementioned cosmic ray or some other artifact.
posted by Old'n'Busted at 6:38 PM on June 6, 2011 [1 favorite]

I'm not sure it's necessary just yet to look for explanations in anything as exotic as "cosmic rays"; it seems to me there are probably even simpler simple explanations for the artifacts on the footage. It'd sure be cool if this were actually something. I'm sure it's not, because of course things like that don't just happen and it would be a transgression of prevailing social norms to express any firm belief otherwise, but no doubt, it would be really cool if this actually were something.
posted by saulgoodman at 6:39 PM on June 6, 2011 [1 favorite]

HTML5 is going to support something called "links", which will be great for things like this. The articles, and this post, could somehow "link" to the Google Mars location in question so we could look at it!


Yeah....that'll be cool.
posted by Salvor Hardin at 6:39 PM on June 6, 2011

I kind of screwed that snark up. Twice. 1) HTML5 is already here. 2) He found it on the stand-alone Google Mars globe thingie, not the flat map linked here.
posted by DU at 6:40 PM on June 6, 2011

Meh. The streetview photos show nothing.
posted by GuyZero at 6:40 PM on June 6, 2011 [12 favorites]

DU: "HTML5 is going to support something called "links", which will be great for things like this."

I don't think that's needed. The internet has survived until now without links. If it ain't broke why fix it, right? I mean can you imagine how annoying knowing that a accidental click on a page filled with text could potentially redirect you to a crude lithograph or etching. No, this will never be adopted.
posted by oxford blue at 6:42 PM on June 6, 2011 [2 favorites]

Are we sure it's not Wayne from The Flaming Lips?
posted by neuromodulator at 6:42 PM on June 6, 2011 [1 favorite]

Mars. Needs. Women.
posted by bwg at 6:44 PM on June 6, 2011 [1 favorite]

It is a cluster of eggs. I'm afraid that the giant insect that terrorized the German village of Hülen was not the last of its kind.
posted by Anything at 6:45 PM on June 6, 2011

MARSIAN INVASION PLAN EXPOSED BY AMATEUR ASTRONOMER
posted by Foci for Analysis at 6:46 PM on June 6, 2011

Do mars.google.com and google earth mars have different imagery sources? I did the same calculation gubo did and figured out how to enter those coordinates, but there's nothing like the feature in question there. Of course, they have probably already removed the evidence… my hyperlink (also no salient details in "elevation" or "visible" views)
posted by jepler at 6:46 PM on June 6, 2011 [1 favorite]

Well, one thing's for sure: it is definitely NOT Anthony Weiner's penis.
posted by briank at 6:47 PM on June 6, 2011 [1 favorite]

My theory, and I know this is crazy, but...

Copyright trap, coded in by a Google tech with a sense of humor.
posted by Navelgazer at 6:48 PM on June 6, 2011 [4 favorites]

Foci for Analysis: "MARSIAN INVASION PLAN EXPOSED BY AMATEUR ASTRONOMER"

ALIEN WAR MINISTER: "I WOULD HAVE GOTTEN AWAY WITH IT IF NOT FOR THOSE MEDDLESOME ASTRONOMERS"
posted by oxford blue at 6:48 PM on June 6, 2011

Guys, it's obviously a Spice Harvester.

(though it rather looks like a milk tanker)
posted by likeso at 6:52 PM on June 6, 2011

What's the lag time between here and Mars for things like radio waves? I say we bounce some off that thing and if no one answers we call it a day.

Ah hell, I'm calling it a day either way.
posted by cjorgensen at 6:53 PM on June 6, 2011

I'm not sure it's necessary just yet to look for explanations in anything as exotic as "cosmic rays"

what's so exotic about that explanation? it's a known part of the space environment, with well understood effects on hardware outside a planetary magnetosphere...
posted by russm at 6:53 PM on June 6, 2011

I was looking very closely for round pigs wearing cracked helmets.
posted by Joey Michaels at 6:53 PM on June 6, 2011 [1 favorite]

With a million hits, his YT video is raking in some serious bank now. Too bad he's a fucking looney. Loved the quote from the engineer: "Google needs to document what the heck they're doing so we can go back and look at the raw data."

And yet, across the gulf of space, minds immeasurably superior to ours regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely, they drew their pants against us. #withpants
posted by seanmpuckett at 6:54 PM on June 6, 2011

Don't believe everything you see on google maps.

My God! The aliens are attacking the world's bridges with some kind of warp ray!
posted by dephlogisticated at 6:54 PM on June 6, 2011 [2 favorites]

Not much to look at. You might say it's a God-awful small affair...
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 6:54 PM on June 6, 2011 [3 favorites]

I can't see anything on the Google Maps version of Mars, but on the Google Earth version of Mars, there is indeed an artifact there (in the image sense, not the woo woo aliens sense). Take a look at 71°49'21.83"N 29°33'8.09"W are the coordinates Google Earth gives me.
posted by borkencode at 6:55 PM on June 6, 2011

Then came the night of the first falling star...
posted by No-sword at 6:57 PM on June 6, 2011 [1 favorite]

well i think it looks like david martines' BUTT

You think it looks like a Backwards Utilized Tracking Torpedo? Wrong planet son, Fwiffo was hiding on Pluto.

please someone get this!
posted by nathancaswell at 6:58 PM on June 6, 2011 [3 favorites]

2) He found it on the stand-alone Google Mars globe thingie

You can still make links to the standalone one.
posted by Threeway Handshake at 6:59 PM on June 6, 2011

Don't believe everything you see on google maps.

Big time. They put jessamyn's town in a lake last year.
posted by ActingTheGoat at 7:04 PM on June 6, 2011 [3 favorites]

Im certain there is an Anthony Weiner joke somewhere in all this. Come on MeFi you can do it.....
posted by humanfont at 7:06 PM on June 6, 2011

I believe it's a guitar factory.
posted by Sailormom at 7:12 PM on June 6, 2011 [2 favorites]

There's the remains of Atlantis on Google Earth, also revealing that the floor of the oceans are a bright blue color.
posted by bendybendy at 7:20 PM on June 6, 2011

weather balloon. filled with swamp gas.
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 7:33 PM on June 6, 2011

Normally i'm all over stuff like this (even if totally fake, it's fun to pretend, something the skeptics need to remember sometimes, joyless people they seem to be most of the time) but i don't see it.

Side question, what ever came of how people seemed to see changes in the patterns of mars back in the day? I know they were blurry back then, but didn't there used to be what seemed to be seasons on mars? Why is it all static and unchanging now?

Fun thing to do (at least to me) is imagine the low lying spots being water filled, and pretend the higher are the land, and figure out where cities could be, like on earth. Made a Gamma World campaign like that once. ;)
posted by usagizero at 7:34 PM on June 6, 2011

General rule of thumb: when in doubt, call CIA and ask what Area 51 is up these days.
posted by Postroad at 7:37 PM on June 6, 2011 [2 favorites]

"kmz" link to the imagery (self-link). For this to work in my google earth (on linux), I had to "save as", start google earth, load it, say "yes" to switch to mars, and then load it a second time.
posted by jepler at 7:45 PM on June 6, 2011 [1 favorite]

It's David Bowie, and some spiders.
posted by 4ster at 7:46 PM on June 6, 2011

Dave isn't really an armchair astronomer, he happens to be a friend of mine, interesting sort of person, heck of a nice guy, we have been exchanging greetings news and ideas at a coffee shop and in friends living rooms for decades, IIRC Arthur Clarke also entertained the same sort of idea of habitats on Mars, he will be on the local news tonight . personally I think it is an artifact of projection or compression noise in the signal.
posted by hortense at 7:57 PM on June 6, 2011 [3 favorites]

hortense, did the aliens make you say that?
posted by Brian B. at 8:06 PM on June 6, 2011

Say, what are the chances of anything coming from Mars?
posted by obiwanwasabi at 8:06 PM on June 6, 2011

The main unit/abnormality would measure ~650 feet long x ~150 feet at the thickest point.
posted by edgeways at 8:13 PM on June 6, 2011

say what?
posted by hortense at 8:16 PM on June 6, 2011

It's obviously a huge light saber so there is really nothing to worry about. Next discussion please.
posted by Meatafoecure at 8:19 PM on June 6, 2011

moisture farm
posted by clavdivs at 8:29 PM on June 6, 2011

what's so exotic about that explanation? it's a known part of the space environment, with well understood effects on hardware outside a planetary magnetosphere...

It's not so much how exotic an explanation it might really be (cosmic rays, I mean) as much as it is how exotic it sounds or looks in a headline--honestly, the video is really not a whole lot to start with. It doesn't seem to me to require any particular skeptical explanation. It doesn't even rise to that level. Anybody can see it's probably a visual artifact. It's sort of self-debunking.
posted by saulgoodman at 8:36 PM on June 6, 2011

The main unit/abnormality would measure ~650 feet long x ~150 feet at the thickest point.

Within some error margin, that fits the expected 1:3:9 dimension ratios.
posted by CaseyB at 8:47 PM on June 6, 2011

I meant 1:4:9, of course.
posted by CaseyB at 8:49 PM on June 6, 2011

saulgoodman - but.. "linear streak artifact produced by a cosmic ray"

This sounds exotic? Ok, sure, granted. But it basically says that it's a visual artifact and what exactly produced said artifact.
posted by porpoise at 8:50 PM on June 6, 2011

This appears to be the photo used by Google Mars. The white artifact is visible if you zoom in.
posted by gubo at 8:52 PM on June 6, 2011 [3 favorites]

I've seen at least twice someone claiming UFOs or weird anomalies on Google Earth, when in both cases it turned out to just be a glitch in the pictures being stitched together. I'm too lazy to look it up, but a few years ago there was a GE picture of a massive green or yellow block in Greenland. Turns out it was just the separate satellite photos of Greenland pasted together inaccurately, by a computer program likely.

Why would we assume this is anything but a glitch like that? Is there any more evidence? Higher resolution pics of that same spot?
posted by zardoz at 9:06 PM on June 6, 2011

Fricking Starbucks are everywhere!
posted by Poet_Lariat at 9:08 PM on June 6, 2011 [1 favorite]

Whatever it is, it has simian features.
posted by c13 at 9:09 PM on June 6, 2011

Clearly this is just an indication that there are rods and skyfish on Mars.
posted by hattifattener at 9:18 PM on June 6, 2011

Duh, everyone knows that's Bowie Base One.
posted by sugarfish at 9:30 PM on June 6, 2011

I took a look via Google Earth. Best guess: awesome and giant Martian dinosaur skeleton. Second best guess: greenhouses and hydroponic farm from the Soviet manned Mars missions in the early 70s. Third best guess: since the satellites have got to have a pretty strong telephoto rating, this is a really blurry macro shot of the earth microbe that's going to contaminate the planet and invalidate every attempt to find life on Mars.
posted by thecjm at 9:35 PM on June 6, 2011 [2 favorites]

Clearly a cloaking device failed at just the wrong time and the error was never caught. Eventually, NASA will aim a camera or two at the site and "prove" there's Nothing there.

Bio Station Alpha. That name is priceless.
posted by longsleeves at 9:57 PM on June 6, 2011

I am unaware of any such activity or operation... nor would I be disposed to discuss such an operation if it did in fact exist....
posted by Kronos_to_Earth at 10:24 PM on June 6, 2011

Say, what are the chances of anything coming from Mars?

Roughly the same as the chances of "accidentally falling" on a model Bio Station made of fusilli.
posted by Lazlo at 10:33 PM on June 6, 2011

Meh. The streetview photos show nothing.

Did you pan 180? The face was blurred out, but that looks like Pauly Shore across the street looking for a bathroom.
posted by eddydamascene at 10:40 PM on June 6, 2011

Man goes looking for Google Mars artifact, finds it.
posted by sophist at 10:44 PM on June 6, 2011 [1 favorite]

No doubt it's an image artifact of some sort. And a timely reminder that taking pictures from a distance isn't the same thing as actual exploration.

"Fun thing to do (at least to me) is imagine the low lying spots being water filled, and pretend the higher are the land, and figure out where cities could be, like on earth. Made a Gamma World campaign like that once. ;)"

Now that's a cool idea! If Mars was eventually terraformed, could it even have shallow seas, or would there just be a bunch of lakes spread around the surface? Or maybe the water would all run into the Valles Marineris and stay there.
posted by Kevin Street at 10:47 PM on June 6, 2011

This appears to be the photo used by Google Mars. The white artifact is visible if you zoom in.

Where? According to the map scale, it's .0125 km/ pixel - which is about 41 feet. At that resolution, the thing (if it is a thing) would only be 17 pixels long.
posted by The Light Fantastic at 10:49 PM on June 6, 2011

Where?

I had to find the thingie in Google Mars first (see coordinates above) and then used that to find it in the HRSC photo.
posted by gubo at 10:59 PM on June 6, 2011

"No one would have believed in the early years of the twentyfirst
century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by
intelligences greater than martian's and yet as mortal as his own; that as
martians busied themselves about their various concerns they were
scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a martian with a
microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and
multiply in a drop of water."
posted by fallingbadgers at 11:23 PM on June 6, 2011 [2 favorites]

--Another theory says that what he sees is a "linear streak artifact produced by a cosmic ray"--

It wouldn't be the first time 'interference' has generated interest about apparent constructs on Mars.
posted by peacay at 11:37 PM on June 6, 2011

his YT video is raking in some serious bank now

Forgive my total ignorance - is there some way you as a channel owner / uploader can actually make money from your youtube vids?
posted by Meatbomb at 11:38 PM on June 6, 2011

Meatbomb: This should explain it.
posted by yoHighness at 12:38 AM on June 7, 2011

OOOOOOOLLLAAA
posted by fire&wings at 1:19 AM on June 7, 2011 [1 favorite]

Bio Station Alpha was one of George Clinton's worst albums.
posted by ShutterBun at 1:37 AM on June 7, 2011

what's so exotic about that explanation? it's a known part of the space environment, with well understood effects on hardware outside a planetary magnetosphere...
It's even more mundane than that - you get the things in cameras on the ground too. No need to leave the atmosphere, let alone the magnetosphere.

Anyway, it looks like an obvious cosmic ray to me - and I've seen plenty of them in astronomical imaging before.
posted by edd at 4:41 AM on June 7, 2011

> Now that's a cool idea! If Mars was eventually terraformed, could it even have shallow seas, or would there just be a bunch of lakes spread around the surface? Or maybe the water would all run into the Valles Marineris and stay there.

The whole Northern hemisphere of Mars is a couple of kilometres lower than the Southern hemisphere, so you end up with a lovely ring ocean surrounding the North pole. There are a few renders on this page, and the Wikipedia page, but you can sort of imagine how it might look if you just use the elevation map on Google Mars
posted by lucidium at 4:51 AM on June 7, 2011 [1 favorite]

Say, what are the chances of anything coming from Mars?
posted by obiwanwasabi at 8:06 PM on June 6 [+] [!]

A million to one.
posted by kcds at 5:00 AM on June 7, 2011

fallingbadgers: ""No one would have believed in the early years of the twentyfirst
century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by
intelligences greater than martian's and yet as mortal as his own; that as
martians busied themselves about their various concerns they were
scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a martian with a
microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and
multiply in a drop of water.""

SPOILER TAG damn it!
posted by Splunge at 5:01 AM on June 7, 2011

Closeup of the Mars photo (top of page).
Examples of cosmic ray particle streaks.
posted by gubo at 5:11 AM on June 7, 2011

Even though it's probably a cosmic ray, I would like a second image just to check if it's something temporary or a fixed part of the landscape. Are other images of the same area online?

(Of course it's not anything that could be described as a "bio station", but seeing that white speck in the sea of brown tickled my curiosity a bit.)
posted by ymgve at 5:29 AM on June 7, 2011

Say, what are the chances of anything coming from Mars?
posted by obiwanwasabi at 8:06 PM on June 6 [+] [!]

A million to one.
posted by kcds at 8:00 AM on June 7 [+] [!]


...kcds said.
posted by SPUTNIK at 5:34 AM on June 7, 2011 [1 favorite]

That's no space station, that's a planet.
posted by octobersurprise at 6:20 AM on June 7, 2011

I am sick of all these armchair bullshit artists. I saw a face on mars, I saw a pyramid, I saw a space station, I saw a robot's head, I saw scaffolding on the moon. All I see are a couple of assholes.

These people, whose sole problem seems to be that they weren't beaten enough with baseball bats, see a picture of a cosmic ray and invent an elaborate fiction around it to support their overarching thesis of victimization and paranoia. They do this instead of asking the actually interesting question "You can accidentally photograph a cosmic ray?" That to me is a billion times more interesting than some fictional planetary base from which the forces of history, Nazism, and Freemasonry conspire to hurt the feelings of people who washed out of high school physics.

When Columbus discovered the Americas, it wasn't vague or ambiguous. There wasn't a lot of uncertainty around whether or not he saw the native people. Or ran into a land mass that wasn't supposed to be there. It was a genuine historical "holy shit" moment. If we ever encounter aliens or some archeological artifact indicating intelligence, it won't be vague, or shrouded in mystery because advanced intelligent extraterrestrial life will never be among the first possibilities considered. It will be an image or a signal that simply cannot be anything else. Scientists will try to explain it as any one of a myriad of natural phenomena and none will fit. And at that point they will announce, in the most tentative language they can think of, that there is a high degree of probability that the phenomenon identified on the image captured is of such an unusual nature that if the phenomenon were found on earth it would be classified as possibly being of man-made origin. But because it was found somewhere humans have never been, they, the scientists, are forced to accept the possibility that the phenomenon may be the product of intent or deliberation on the part of some entity or life form, but that further investigation is needed to confirm. And then they will spend hundreds of millions, if not billions, to verify that conclusion using instruments and equipment multiple orders of magnitude more sensitive and precise than the ones that made the initial capture.

They won't record a shaky, blurry video of some jackass's monitor showing Google Fucking Mars zooming into a little pin labeled "Bio Station Alpha."

"Bio Station Alpha." Your mom is Bio Station Alpha.
posted by Pastabagel at 6:40 AM on June 7, 2011 [2 favorites]

A little learning is a dangerous thing;
drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
there shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
and drinking largely sobers us again.

         -- Alexander Pope, 1709
posted by aught at 6:40 AM on June 7, 2011

This gets more enraging the more I think about it. You spotted a little image artifact and get excited about it? How about you get excited by the fact that you are looking at the surface of another planet.
posted by Pastabagel at 6:48 AM on June 7, 2011 [2 favorites]

Give. Me. A. Fucking. Break.

You realize that MRO can see things like Spirit's landing site, including the heat shield and parachute? Never mind seeing the rover itself, including tracks?

Yeah, if there's a station, it wouldn't have been imaged as a few full-white pixels. The only person who believes this is the same fools who believe that the government is covering it up.

Go back to something you know, like armchairs. Single source photos are never proof of anything. Show me multiple orbiters showing this artifact, and you have something.

Oh, and by show me? I mean as FITS files from the mission archives, not JPEGs from Google.
posted by eriko at 7:14 AM on June 7, 2011 [1 favorite]

To anyone who's worked with astronomical images, it is blatantly obvious it's a cosmic ray, transformed via some image conversion from the original fits file to a jpeg. These things are found on pretty much any raw image you take of the night sky, from the ground or from a satellite (I don't know where they got the thing about the magnetosphere), and always need to be cleaned from your images.

saulgoodman - but.. "linear streak artifact produced by a cosmic ray"

porpoise: This sounds exotic? Ok, sure, granted. But it basically says that it's a visual artifact and what exactly produced said artifact.

Cosmic rays hit the camera at odd angles. Just because there's an artifact there doesn't in any mean there's a corresponding source on Mars that produced it.
posted by Tooty McTootsalot at 7:49 AM on June 7, 2011

To give a bit of context for just how common they are in images see this raw HST image of NGC 4013 which is covered with the blighters (the big long line all the way across is another satellite or something though).
posted by edd at 7:56 AM on June 7, 2011

it is blatantly obvious it's a cosmic ray,

Regardless, I'm declaring Mars an ENEMY PLANET!!

Because just look at that fucker, sitting up there, mocking us.
posted by quin at 8:00 AM on June 7, 2011

Side question, what ever came of how people seemed to see changes in the patterns of mars back in the day? I know they were blurry back then, but didn't there used to be what seemed to be seasons on mars? Why is it all static and unchanging now?

Mars isn't unchanging. Mars has seasons, and we still observe alterations, particularly due to dust storms. There aren't Percival Lowell's canals, oases, etc, but there is stuff going on.
posted by zamboni at 9:44 AM on June 7, 2011

The-astronomer-in-my-living-room took one look over my shoulder at the picture, said "Cosmic ray" unprompted and without blinking, and then went on about her business.

So, I'm thinking it's probably a cosmic ray.
posted by kyrademon at 12:22 PM on June 7, 2011

Not only is Mars (and the rest of the universe) still changing, but we've gotten better at putting our observatories places where Earth's seasons won't effect the observations (mountain tops and, now, low Earth orbit).
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 12:26 PM on June 7, 2011

What the Grok?!
posted by Capricorn13 at 4:03 PM on June 7, 2011

Looks like a bit of ice, probably melted shortly after that photo was taken.
posted by mnemonic at 6:26 PM on June 7, 2011

From the 'raw' image, not jpeg compressed, that's a cosmic ray. One pixel wide trail, couldn't be more obvious.
posted by edd at 2:16 AM on June 8, 2011

guys, guys guys! It's no longer the era for doubt! As this thread showed, we no longer need to turn to "experts" or "authorities" to get our answers. Since we are now involved in a technologically engendered state of universal understanding and unity, where we can now seek the answers from consensus-based websites, we can simply read what the guys on Above Top Secret are stating as truth AS the truth.

Remember: in our glorious new age, once enough people post that something's the truth, it is the truth.
posted by happyroach at 12:04 PM on June 8, 2011