YAHOO.COM - NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has photographed a
shiny, metallic-looking object that bears a passing resemblance
to a door handle or a hood The Curiosity rover has not stumbled
onto evidence of an ancient civilization that took the family
van to Olympus Mons for vacation, however. The object is simply
a rock that the wind has sculpted into an interesting shape,
scientists "The shiny surface suggests that this rock has a fine
grain and is relatively hard," Curiosity scientists wrote Monday
(Feb. 11) in an explainer blurb accompanying the image, which
was taken on Jan. 30. "Hard, fine-grained rocks can be polished
by the wind to form very Similar "ventifacted" (wind-eroded)
rocks can be found here on Earth, notably on the dry, gusty
plains of Antarctica, they added. The newfound rock is not the
first shiny object Curiosity has photographed on the Red Planet.
In October, the car-size rover paused its first soil-scooping
activities to investigate a bright sliver lying on the ground
nearby. Scientists th