The week in fake news: These viral social-media claims have flunked the truth test - The Seattle Times
A roundup of some of the most popular but completely untrue stories and visuals of the week. None of these are legit, even though they were shared widely on social media. The Associated Press checked them out. Here are the facts:
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Experts: Mars ‘doorway’ just small crevice on barren terrain
Claim: NASA’s Mars rover has captured images of a doorway cut into a mountainside of the red planet, suggesting the presence of extraterrestrial life.
The facts: Social media users shared a magnified version of the image, which made it appear the formation was much larger than its actual dimensions. NASA officials and Mars experts say the curious formation is nothing more than a narrow, naturally occurring crevice in the rocky, barren terrain.
Andrew Good, a spokesman for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, told the AP that the image being circulated is a “very, very, very zoomed-in shot” of a naturally formed rock crevice.
On Wednesday, NASA posted on its website more detailed renderings of the area, which it says is a mound of rock nicknamed “East Cliffs” on Mars’ Mount Sharp. Curiosity, a rover that’s been exploring the mountain since landing in 2012, took the image of the crevice on May 7.
Good said that NASA scientists overseeing the rover estimate the opening is 12 inches (30 centimeters) tall and 16 inches (40 centimeters) wide. “You can see all kinds of cracks and fractures in the surrounding area,” Good wrote in an email. “There are linear fractures...
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