Yum! Just look at this interplanetary deliciousness! (NASA/JPL-CalTech)
We love donuts.
Crullers, fritters, cake donuts, sprinkled donuts, cream-filled ... we'll eat them all and come back for more.
So you can imagine our delight here at OWLconnected when we came across a recent find on Mars made by the NASA rover Perseverance.
A donut-shaped rock.
It was discovered by the rover on June 22, 2023. That's a picture of it at the top of the post, and all we want to do is just take a bite!
So ... what is it exactly?
Hello! I'm the rover named Perseverance! (NASA)
Once our tummy stops rumbling, our thoughts naturally start turning to what the rock actually is and how it got to look that way.
And after we eliminated the possibility that a giant alien accidentally dropped a sour cream glazed donut on the surface, we're left with a few possibilities.
It could be a meteorite that fell to the planet's surface. Or it could a native rock that was a part of the original planet. Either way, the hole in the middle wasn't created by someone who loves Timbits and ate the centre.
Instead, it would have been created by many thousands of years of erosion. And because Mars doesn't have any precipitation (rain or snow) or flowing water, this would've been erosion caused by wind and dust storms.
This makes sense to us. But as much as we love science around here, you'll forgive us for wanting to believe that if we were on Mars right now, we could take a bite of this thing and be welcomed by a rush of soft, sugary yumminess.
Who's hungry?
