Sometimes you just have to hold your hands up in despair.

Various newspapers in the UK have taken a photo from one of NASA’s Mars rovers, blown up a rock feature and posed the following questions:

Does this show there’s life on Mars? (Times)

Bigfoot on Mars? NASA captures alien figure (Telegraph)

…continued in a similar vein by The Sun, freepaper Metro, the Daily Express, and others. I’m sufficiently upset about this to deny them the linkage.

It’s a rock.

If you don’t believe me here’s what the respected Bad Astronomy blog says: it’s a rock. In full BA says: “First, puhlllleeeeze. A man? It’s a tiny rock only a few inches high. It’s only a few feet from the rover!”

Here’s the full NASA image from which the above was clipped:

I’m off to find a random feature of a NASA photo I can zoom in on and claim it’s an orang-utan. That will ingratiate me with the news editor — and if we’re making stuff up I want a whole zoo up there.

Images: NASA