NASA’s Mars Curiosity rover captured a photo of what appears to be a purposefully carved doorway leading somewhere deep into the Red Planet last week.

The image was captured by the Curiosity rover’s Mastcam on May 7 as the rover climbed Mount Sharp. According to Gizmodo, the grainy image has piqued the interest of conspiracy theorists because the formation does not appear to be a naturally occurring phenomenon, but rather as if a doorway was purposefully carved into the side of the hill.

But NASA scientists are tempering expectations.

“It’s just the space between two fractures in a rock,” says Ashwin Vasavada, a project scientist with the Mars Science Laboratory.

“We’ve been traveling through an area formed by ancient sand dunes.” The fractures in this area are mostly vertical. “I believe we have either two vertical fractures with the middle piece removed, or one vertical fracture with the blocks slightly separated.”

Experts believe that what is going on here is the human brain’s tendency to see familiar shapes when looking at unfamiliar environments. According to Gizmodo, a squirrel and a spoon were also thought to have been seen on Mars. It’s not just limited to Mars, either.

In December, China’s Yutu 2 lunar rover photographed what was described as a “mystery hut” on the moon’s furthest side, and Chinese scientists were willing and ready to examine what appeared to be signs of extraterrestrial life.

“An obtrusive cube on the northern skyline drew their attention,” the scientists explained at the time. “This object struck the winding skyline like a ‘mysterious hut’ that appeared out of thin air.”

However, upon closer inspection, which took the rover more than two days to complete, it was discovered that the shape was just a trick of the camera, lighting, and perspective, as the “hut” was revealed to be nothing more than a rock.

Skeptics are really not convinced, and many make the argument that nature, despite numerous examples to the contrary, doesn’t tend to make straight lines like those seen in Curiosity’s photo.

A hoverboard was once a fictional levitating board used to transport a person from one place to another. As seen in the movies, this is the future to replace all modes of personal and public transportations. Scientists and engineers endeavor to make it a reality, but there come many challenges. An average flying hoverboard has to be lightweight, consume less fuel and should be able to fly for a longer time to cover long-distance travel. There have been a lot of prototypes that became successful at some point, but were not launched commercially because of their limitations being in the developmental stage, the exorbitant price, and pose risks to users.

Some companies are investing a lot of money to make it work publicly. Here are some of the prototypes that had been developed so far:

1. Jet-Powered Hoverboard by Zapata

Franky Zapata always dreamt of flying, but because of his disability of being a color-blind, he was never qualified for being a helicopter pilot. After being disqualified, he didn’t stop there and focused on jet ski racing and later he founded his own jet ski company Zapata Racing. But even after making a career in jet ski business he never gave up on his dream. Using various models of jet engines from an airplane and a platform, he designed EZ-Fly, which was capable of flying 80mph (129kph) at an altitude of 9,000 feet (2,743 meters). Along with the hardware and computer program, Franky developed a steady algorithm to keep the board as steady and safe as possible to fly. This prototype is still at the development stage and costs around $200,000 to $250,000.

2. SLIDE Hoverboard by Lexus

The world-famous Japanese luxury car company, of course, tried their luck in this futuristic innovation. It was originated from a corporate project to develop a premium sedan. Inspired by the movie Back to The Future II, Lexus has announced the Lexus SLIDE hoverboard. It was built for scientific achievement, and not for public sale. This slide relies on Flux Pinning and Meissner effect. And this all worked because of the superconductors inside the board. Superconductors are conductors that have no internal resistance as long as they are kept below a certain temperature. It creates a magnetic field by passing an electrical current between the ground the board. These magnetic forces between the board and ground repel each other and so the board is lifted above the track. It was tested by a pro skateboarder Ross McGouran at a custom-built skate park in Barcelona, Spain.

3. Omni Hoverboard

Catalin Alexandu Duru, a Canadian inventor tested a new type of propeller-based hoverboard prototype and achieve a world record. Omni doesn’t use magnetic field technology and instead, they focused on quadcopter technology. Their startup Mark-1 already made a world record for the longest hoverboard flight and they are already working on Mark-2.  Mark-1 prototype can fly up to 1min 30sec for the distance of 905ft but they are constantly improving their system and technology to last their battery for a longer time. Currently, they are working on flight efficiency and stability until their batteries become powerful enough for commercial use. The only drawback of this propeller-based technology is it makes the hoverboard very noisy.

4. Hendo Hoverboard

Arx Pax, the company behind the Hendo Hoverboard tried to make the futuristic fantasy of riding on a hoverboard across the town. They are mainly focused on harnessing the power of electromagnets in developing their hoverboard technology. The basic premise in this technology is called Magnetic Field Architecture (MFA). It uses disc-shaped magnetic hover engines located at the bottom of the board which works on a custom-made track that allows the board to levitate by using magnetic fields which unfortunately limits its application. Moreover, it’s battery only lasts just a few minutes, and the price for the hoverboard starts at $10,000.

It has believed that aliens have been vising earth since ancient times. There are a lot of stories circulating about aliens. Some also believe that aliens have been living among us for over 7000 years.

Alien abduction is an alledged interpretation that they have been secretly kidnapped by aliens. Somewhat forcing them to be a part of their physical or psychological experiments. Here we have about 3 of these peculiar cases where people claim to be abducted by aliens.

1 – Travis Walton

On November 5^th, 1975, Travis Walton was working as a timber stand improvement crew in Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest near Heber, Arizona. While driving back home along with his co-workers one evening, Travis noticed a bright light coming through the trees. When they got closer, they saw that it was a “strange golden disc” hovering stationary 20 feet off the ground. It has a diameter of about 15 to 20 feet and about 8 to 10 feet of width. Though his co-workers warned that he should stay away, Travis approached the craft. There were loud vibrations as the craft began spinning erratically. Suddenly a bluish-green light sprung from the craft, striking Travis in the chest and the head, catapulting him backward several feet.

Travis remembered “All I felt was the numbing force of a blow that felt like a high-voltage electrocution. My mind sank quickly into unfeeling blackness.” Having witnessed this, Travis’ friends fled the scene, assuming Travis to be dead. On their retreat, one of the men observed the saucer flew up to the top of the trees and away to the northeast. Some of the men returned to the scene out of guilt only to find the Travis was no longer there.

Travis’ experience inside the craft

According to Travis’s own writing about the experience, Travis awoke in what appeared to be the medical facility or a laboratory with the triangular ceiling. And among him were 3 humanoid beings with large brown eyes and abnormally large heads. They stood under 5 feet tall and were wearing soft billowy orange-brown overalls. And they had bald heads, no hair. They looked like fetuses.

Travis tried attacking the three beings who then retreated. As Travis explored other rooms in an attempt to escape, he encountered a large muscular man. He was wearing a helmet who forced him out of the craft into a warehouse with other saucers.

Eventually, he found himself into another room with three more “good looking” people. “Two men and a woman were standing around the table. They were all wearing a velvety-blue uniform. And they had no helmet. The two men have the same muscularity and same masculine looks. The woman also had a face and a figure. That was like the epitome of her gender. They all have smooth skin and no blemishes. No moles, freckles, wrinkles or scars visible on their skin.”

These people gently pushed him onto a table and put a mask over his mouth and nose. At which point Travis passed out. The next thing Travis knew, he was lying on the ground in Heber, Arizona. He saw a silvery disc-shaped craft hovering above the road near him which then flew straight up into the sky and disappeared silently.

Conclusion

Although he believed that he was gone for an hour or an hour and a half, he later learned that he had been missing for five days. Over this period, the rest of Travis’s crew came under investigation for Travis’s disappearance. During the investigation, the suspect went under psychiatric testing and polygraph testing. And during which, none of the men confessed to faking the abduction. A psychiatrist suspected that the entire abduction was in Travis’s imagination, but could not explain why others went along with it.

In the HuffPost Weird News Podcast, Travis said “About 15 years later, It was discovered that the trees nearest to where the UFO hovered had been producing wood fiber at 36 times the rates it had been producing 85 years before that. A complete core sample revealed that this thickened growth was only on the side towards or in the direction that the craft had been”.

As if this case couldn’t get any bizarre, Travis appeared on Fox’s Moment of Truth game show, where a polygraph was conducted on stage. This particular polygraph determined that he was not telling the truth about his abduction. Regardless, Travis maintained that the events transpired as he has told them.

2 – Linda Napolitano

The second case is the abduction of Linda Napolitano. UFOlogist Budd Hopkins was working closely with Linda to document and publicize her case.

On November 30, 1989, around 3:15 am in New York City, Linda claims that she awoke to find short aliens around her bed. She found herself unable to wake up her husband, as she perceives the being to be telling her to be quiet in an odd language. The 3 beings then levitated her outside her 12-story apartment window, floating in a blue-white light up into a clamshell shaped spaceship.

When inside, the beings started experimenting on her. Including putting an instrument inside her nose. Afterwards, she woke up nearly 2 hours later at 5 am next to her husband in bed.

An object embedded inside Linda’s nose?

In 1991, 2 years later the abduction, Linda reached out to Hopkins with an x-ray of her nose, showing a cylindrical object that Hopkins describes as having “spiraling extensions that curl out away from her face”. The x-ray was taken by the podiatric surgeon and Linda’s niece, Lisa Bayer.

Shortly after, Linda claimed that the object was removed during another abduction. Hopkins reports that Linda visited a nose and throat specialist who confirmed the object was gone. A conspicuous ridge of built-up cartilage showed where it had once been embedded.

Prime witnesses to the event

These details are somewhat common among abduction tales, but what makes this case famous are the supposed witnesses to the event. In 1991, nearly 2 years later after Linda’s abduction, Hopkins received a letter from a police officer detailing an experience with his partner in November 1989. The two were sitting underneath the Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) Bridge when they saw a blue light with a woman being levitated alongside 3 strange beings as they made their way into the light.

They reportedly felt guilty for not helping the woman as one of the officers had a nervous breakdown. Hopkins told Linda, not to speak with the officers if the reached out to her to avoid contaminating their accounts. Unfortunately, the two officers visited Linda multiple times on their own volition, revealing their names to be Richard and Dan looking for answers about what they saw that night. Linda directed them to Hopkins and after a few weeks, Hopkins received a letter. This letter revealed that the two officers were actually bodyguards on security detail for an important political figure. This political figure who was also present with the two bodyguards during the abduction also signed the letter albeit under the moniker HIM. Some UFOlogists believe this figure is the former Secretary-General of the UN, Javier Perez De Cuellar.

Victim of a hoax?

However, while this seems impressive in terms of proof, it should be noted that Hopkins never physically met with Richard and Dan and only corresponded via letters. This has led many to believe that Hopkins was the victim of a hoax where Linda made up Richard and Dan alone or Linda and a group of people coordinated to complete the hoax.

According to Sean F. Meers, a UFO and alien abduction researcher who worked with Hopkins, there were 23 witnesses on the public record. Ranging from family and friends to complete strangers.  Three of these strangers worked at the nearby New York Post. One of whom was an investigative reporter named Steve Dunleavy. Despite the question of credibility of the two main witnesses, Linda maintains the truth Lies in all the witnesses. She has said “If I was hallucinating, then the witnesses saw my hallucination. That sound crazier than the whole abduction phenomenon”

3 – Frederick Valentich

This extremely compelling case is a little different from the two others as the abducted person never returned. This incident has gained worldwide attention and sparked many conspiracy theories, with the most popular being that this person was abducted by a UFO.

Frederick’s Fate

On October 21, 1978, at 6:19 pm, instructor pilot Frederick Valentich began the flight from Moorabbin Airport in Victoria, Australia to King Island, Tasmania over the Bass Strait in a Cessna 182L. His Destination was only about an hour away. Visibility was good and there were only light winds. Valentich, 20 years old at the time, reportedly wanted to get more flight hours in. Valentich made contact with Steve Robey at air traffic control in Melbourne between 7:06 and 7:12 pm.

During the transmission, Valentich asked whether there was any known aircraft in his area. After air traffic control said there was not, Valentich claimed a large unknown aircraft was flying about 1,000 feet above him at a fast speed with 4 bright lights. Valentich then reportedly said, “It seems to be playing some sort of a game. He’s flying over me. It’s not an aircraft”. He continued to describe the craft saying “It seems like it’s stationary. What I’m doing right now is orbiting, and the thing is just orbiting on top of me. Also, it’s got a green light and sort of metallic. It’s shiny on the outside. It’s just vanished”.

His last message around 7:12pm to air traffic control was “Ah, Melbourne, that strange aircraft is hovering on top of me again. It is hovering and it’s not an aircraft”. After 17 seconds of silence, there was a loud sound of metal scraping.

An extensive search was conducted by the authorities at the sea and any surrounding land for four days, but Valentich nor any indication of a crash site was ever found.

Speculations

After the story came out, there were contradicting reports about why Valentich was heading to the island, and he was deemed to be an inexperienced pilot.

He had told his father that he was heading out to catch crayfish. However, later on, he told flight officials that he was picking up some of his friends.

According to the Victorian UFO Research Society, based at Moorabbin, near the location from where Valentich’s disappearance took place, there had been a UFO wave ongoing for at least six weeks before the date of Valentich’s disappearance.

Others have concluded that he faked his own death. Some also speculated that he was flying upside down and the lights he saw were actually him reflecting on the water before he crashed.

And in a disturbing coincidence, it was also discovered that Valentich was obsessed with UFO’s watching films and had collected articles on the topic.