How did it get there? Weird balancing rock on Mars has the internet crying aliens

An image of an eerie balancing rock on the surface of Mars was captured by NASA's Perseverance Rover on June 16.

NASA’s Perseverance Mars Rover has been hard at work snapping pictures of oddities found on the surface of the red planet, and its finds are sending alien conspiracy theorists into a frenzy.

Since Perseverance landed on Mars on Feb. 18, 2021, it has been exploring the Jezero Crater area, which was created by the impact of an ancient meteorite. This location was selected because more than 3.5 billion years ago, scientists believe that a lake once filled the crater and may have been home to microbial life.

“There is evidence of ancient river flow into Jezero, forming a delta that has long since been dry,” according to NASA, which has tasked Perseverance with finding signs of past life in the primordial lakebed.

But some internet denizens believe that life on Mars is not as ancient or microbial as scientists assert after Perseverance sent back a picture of a precariously balanced rock on top of a boulder on the uninhabited planet.

The rock is about the size of a bowling ball, according to Yahoo! News, and was found in Hogwallow Flats, an area that sounds like it was plucked straight from a Harry Potter book.

The find was posted to Perseverance’s social media pages on June 16 along with additional photos of the area. The mighty robot said its team back on Earth was “happy as pigs in mud(stone)!”

It cheekily didn’t mention the eerie balancing rock that was shared in a subsequent post, simply saying that the photos mean there are “Tons of potential targets for study.”