Photo: Daniele Colucci // Unsplash
Over the course of a decade, NASA’s Curiosity rover has provided scientists with key insights into the red planet’s past, including evidence supporting the theory that there is liquid water on Mars. The latest finding to possibly support the theory occurred last Thursday, when the rover encountered a novelty wave surfer recording a vlog there. How the vlogger got to Mars wasn’t entirely clear, but that’s often the case with novelty surf vloggers: No one quite understands how they end up that far away from actual waves. That’s why NASA scientists remain in doubt as to whether this actually provides any evidence of flowing water.
“It’s a tough call, because while one would think that a surf vlogger would only appear at a location that had some sort of wave, our research has found that this is not necessarily the case,” said David Brynmar, Curiosity project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “The presence of the surf vlogger could indicate that there is some sort of flowing water in the vicinity, but it is equally likely that he’s just making filler video where he shows off his hotel room and then talks to somebody on speakerphone looking for info.”
NASA requested footage from the vlogger’s GoPro, with the hope that perhaps it would shed some light on the reason behind his appearance, but even that proved inconclusive. “It’s really just 90 percent close-ups of his face while he talked about his sponsors,” said Brynmar. “There was one frame that may have had a small amount of water in the background, but unfortunately it was obscured by a text counter tallying how many times the vlogger said the word ‘epic.’”
Confused that a video about surfing could have so little information as to the presence of water, NASA researchers went to posts from other vloggers for clues. After poring over footage from YouTube, they found that the majority of the videos posted by surf influencers actually consisted of loading soft-top surfboards into trucks, driving at night and talking to their girlfriends. “We even tried analyzing their narrations to see if we could make an inference on the presence of waves based on their demeanor,” said Brynmar. “However, since the vloggers appear to have a uniformly enthusiastic reaction to everything, regardless of the presence of waves or water, it was impossible to find any sort of correlation.”
“We’ve got some heavy claims out there, and the dream is real,” said the vlogger, when asked to comment. “I’m just mega psyching to be here, because coming to Mars has been a lifelong dream of mine, ever since I saw a tweet from NASA two weeks ago. Don’t forget to smash that like button and subscribe for more content.”
“We’re going to continue to work with the vlogger to see if maybe he comes up with some usable footage,” added Brynmar. “However, it’s all POV mouth-cam stuff, so even if he does manage to find any water, it probably will be a pretty one dimensional video with a lot of heavy breathing.”
Editor’s Note: Johnny Utah is an “Eff-Bee-Eye” agent and an expert in satire. More of his investigative work can be found here.
