Like a dog with a bone, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) Curiosity Rover has discovered something new on the Red Planet. It was a ball.

What looked like a ball was discovered and released to the press, at the end of last month. The Curiosity Rover, which is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), has caused quite an elevation among scientists, experts, and avid Mars and Curiosity watchers. The ball is not the only thing of note; two months before, a "bone" was also discovered.  

It was not really a ball, but it sure looked like one. The "ball" turned out to be a rocky formation known to scientists as "specificity," El Dínamo reported. The specificity are concretions of rocks created during the settling of the Martian surface millions of years ago. It would have occurred at a time when the Red Planet's surface was wetter.

While the ball appears large in size, it is only a few inches in diameter experts conclude.

Mars' surface is strange. The Curiosity Rover has taken thousands of photographs of Martian rocks showcasing beautiful planetary geology and some that are very peculiar, iO9 reported. The "ball" image was uploaded onto the NASA JPL photo archive on Sept. 11. The ball is a perfect sphere sitting on a flat surface. It looked like a old cannon ball or possibly a golf ball.

According to the MSL scientists at JPL, other examples of this concretion have been found on the Martian surface before. It was observed by the Mars Rover Opportunity in 2004, iO9 reported.  

The discovery of the ball needs to be added to a long list of "out of this world" finds for Curiosity. Besides the ball, Curiosity has found a number of strange looking stones, and even an ancient lake bed, The Inquisitor reported. For over a year since the Curiosity landed, it has found a number of components that make it possible for life to have existed there, at least three billion years ago. Albeit that the life was all just microbes. 

The ball was one of "the" strangest finds, but first it was the "bone." In mid-August of this year, the Curiosity Rover discovered what looked like a thigh bone. It was spotted among rock debris, Tech Times reported.

NASA has neither confirmed or denied the so-called bone, but some experts call it a case of pareidolia; similar to how one would see a Jesus figure in toast, this applies to science. It is the human mind's over-sensitivity to perceiving patterns in some random phenomena.

Bone or not, the Curiosity Rover's mission is to explore and uncover whether the Gale Crater could have supported simple life forms. The Curiosity did find areas that held water, Tech Times reported. Water is the crucial factor for supporting life.

In order to extend further research and in seeking signs of life, NASA is working on a new rover to arrive in 2020, The Inquisitor reported. But the Curiosity Rover still has much work to do until then. It took the Curiosity Rover 15 months to complete a five-mile journey.

It was worth it. The rover has since drilled into the ground to locate and figure out more about the chemical compositions of ancient Martian fluids.