Sometimes we have to work to make a story seem creepy. This time, it’s no work at all.
Ceres is a dwarf planet – that’s an actual scientific term for a body that’s large enough to be a planet but doesn’t actually orbit the sun in the normal way. NASA sent a special probe, the Dawn mission, to Ceres and it’s just begun to send some really amazing images back to Earth…
… Including the view of one particular crater, seen from 2,700 miles up, that shows an oddly well-shaped pyramid…and spots of intense brightness right in the pyramid itself. We’re talking about a… structure?…that seems to rise at least three miles above the flat surface.
And what about those lights? “Dawn scientists can now conclude that the intense brightness of these spots is due to the reflection of sunlight by highly reflective material on the surface, possibly ice,” said Christopher Russell, one of the Dawn mission researchers, recently. But of course, that’s what they would say, isn’t it? And no, science is no closer to understanding what’s making this far-off planet glow.
Meanwhile, the investigation continues. In a few weeks, Dawn will move into a lower orbit around 900 miles, arriving sometime in early August, and we should get some even better pictures.
