{"id":16450,"date":"2015-06-20T11:06:09","date_gmt":"2015-06-20T11:06:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=16450"},"modified":"2015-06-20T11:07:06","modified_gmt":"2015-06-20T11:07:06","slug":"why-is-there-a-3-mile-high-pyramid-on-ceres","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=16450","title":{"rendered":"Why is there a 3 Mile High Pyramid on Ceres?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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NASA spies 3-mile-tall ‘pyramid,’ more bright spots on Ceres<\/h1>\n

Dwarf planet Ceres gets weirder as NASA’s Dawn spacecraft gets closer. Check out the latest shots from the cosmic paparazzi.<\/h3>\n

<\/p>\n

by Eric Mack
\nCNET<\/p>\n

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The reflective area around the crater in the top right of the image is what the Dawn team calls “spot 1.”NASA\/JPL-Caltech\/UCLA\/MPS\/DLR\/IDA<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

Ancient astronaut alert! More weird features have been spotted by NASA’s Dawn spacecraft on Ceres, a dwarf planet and the largest object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.<\/p>\n

As Dawn first made its approach on Ceres<\/a> earlier this year, it caught sight of large, bright and mysterious reflective spots in a crater on the big rock, which is also believed to contain quite a bit of water<\/a>, ice and\/or mud in its interior.<\/p>\n

Now orbiting at a near altitude of just 2,700 miles, those big spots remain a mystery (the leading guess<\/a> is still reflective patches of ice or salts), but Dawn is also beginning to pick out other bright spots and an odd pyramid-shaped peak that NASA estimates to be three miles tall, which would put it higher than any of the Rocky Mountains. The image with the peak<\/a> was taken on June 6 and released Wednesday.<\/p>\n

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You’re pretty far from ancient Egypt, son…NASA\/JPL-Caltech\/UCLA\/MPS\/DLR\/IDA<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

Plenty of observers have suggested — with varying degrees of seriousness — that the bright lights on Ceres could be evidence of current or past alien occupation of the dwarf planet. The discovery of a mountain-sized pyramid feature must have some cable channels looking into how much it would cost to get their own film crew to Ceres.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the ancient Egyptians and ancient Indian astronauts<\/a> had a celestial joint venture of sorts going on back in the day? Or perhaps Ceres is more geologically interesting both today and in the past than what meets the eye.<\/p>\n

We’re still closely monitoring the images coming back from Dawn for new close-ups of the other bright spots, so be sure to keep checking back with Crave and keep\u00a0your guesses<\/a> coming in the comments as well.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NASA spies 3-mile-tall ‘pyramid,’ more bright spots on Ceres Dwarf planet Ceres gets weirder as NASA’s Dawn spacecraft gets closer. Check out the latest shots from the cosmic paparazzi.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16450"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16450\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}