Aliens Among Us: Did Mars Rover Spirit Find Evidence of Extraterrestrial Life?

It's a woman waiting for a bus. No, it's a man walking down a hill. No, it's Osama Bin Laden!

NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit has been on the Red Planet since January 3, 2004. As of October 30, 2007, it logged 4.59 miles, ran diagnostic tests, watched for dust devils, took panoramic camera images, and measured atmospheric dust levels. Apparently, it also found life on Mars. But shhhhhh....it's a secret.

Tabloids and Internet blog sites were let in on the discovery before the rest of us. NASA didn't know. None of the major news networks reported what would be the most significant finding in the history of history. Space geeks and science fictions freaks were given the scoop, though, and before you know it, Elvis and Bigfoot will be visiting the little green guy for a cup of joe.

I admit to being something of a skeptic on all things beyond the realm of my own experience. And I tend to look for the ordinary explanation rather than the sensational. If I see an odd light in the sky or a figure in the distance, I don't automatically think UFO or Bigfoot. I think "I'm leaving on a jet plane" or "oh my heck, that's a really big bear." When the hair stands up on the back of my neck or I get a cold chill, I don't assume a poltergeist is nearby. I assume I am coming down with a cold or subconsciously thinking of my ex-husband and shudder again at the thought.

However, haunted houses scare the bejesus out of me. I watch Ghost Hunters with a profound sense of respect for the fruit loops that choose to spend their nights in spooky digs and acknowledge the possibility of lingering energy from past lives.

Similarly, I will not dismiss the idea of extraterrestrials. I think humans who don't recognize the possibility of life beyond Earth's atmosphere are arrogant indeed. And, to misquote Carl Sagan, clearly a serious waste of space.

However, until true, undeniable, empirical evidence exists, I remain cautious and skeptical and try to look for commonplace causes for extraordinary events before letting my imagination run away with me. I look at the picture from the Mars Rover Spirit and wonder.

Stills from the 1967 Roger Patterson and Robert Gimlin film footage of a Sasquatch figure in Northern California are well-known and very similar in form to the pictures from the Mars Rover Spirit. If the Patterson Bigfoot picture wasn't as notorious as it is, would the outcropping of rocks in the pictures from Spirit even have stood out as more than just an interesting rock formation?

If pictures hadn't surfaced that supposedly depicted victims of a UFO crash near Roswell, New Mexico, would we all think aliens have big eyes and long skinny necks and huge foreheads? Or would we associate a different image when the word "alien" or "Roswell" is mentioned?

If Erich Kaiser hadn't captured the bizarre image of three sideways saucer-shaped forms hanging above an Austrian mountain in 1954 or if A.P. Villa hadn't taken the startling photograph of the unidentified object near Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1963, would we even refer to UFOs as flying saucers? Would saucers have ever become more than a dish upon which to set our teacups or from which a kitty loves to lap milk?

Could we, as a society, have become so swamped with supposed visual evidence of aliens, and Bigfoot, and UFOs, and ghosts that we now subconsciously search for proof of their existence using those images as guideposts? Are our minds so inundated with certain images of unlikely beings that we see them everywhere, like a child seeing pictures in fluffy clouds? And if so, would we even recognize the real thing if it appeared in front of us or would we be so caught up in what media has trained us to see that a true extraterrestrial could walk among us unnoticed?

Sources:

Spirit and Opportunity Mars Exploration Rovers, http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mer/spirit-update.html

NASA to Search Files on UFO Incident,http://www.chat-avenue.com/forums/showthread.php?p=2824193

The Best UFO Pictures Ever Taken, Page 2 Years 1960-1969, http://www.ufocasebook.com/bestufopictures2.html