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In a blow to UFO enthusiasts, NASA has said that a mysterious bright flash that appeared in photos of Mars taken by the Curiosity rover on April 2 and 3 is probably not a signal from aliens.

Justin Maki, who is in charge of Curiosity's engineering cameras at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, says the bright spot is "either a well-placed flash of reflected sunlight, or light shining through a chink in Curiosity's camera housing," according to NBC News' Alan Boyle.

The bright spot appeared in two photos taken on two different days by Curiosity's right-hand navigation camera. The navigation camera is a stereo camera and the flash did not appear in photos taken by the left-hand camera.

In an email to NBC News, Maki said:

In the two right-eye images, the spot is in different locations of the image frame and, in both cases, at the ground surface level in front of a crater rim on the horizon. One possibility is that the light is the glint from a rock surface reflecting the sun. When these images were taken each day, the sun was in the same direction as the bright spot, west-northwest from the rover, and relatively low in the sky."

In other Mars news, the Red Planet will light up the night sky on Tuesday during a rare event when the sun, Earth, and Mars arrange in nearly a straight line, called the opposition of Mars.

SEE ALSO: Don't Miss Tonight's 'Opposition Of Mars,' An Event That Only Happens Every Two Years

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Tonight, April 15, 2014, at 2:00 a.m. ET, Earthlings in the United States will have the pleasure of witnessing a total lunar eclipse. The sun, Earth, and moon will align perfectly, causing the moon to turn red.

When a full moon drifts into Earth's shadow, called the umbra, a total eclipse takes place. The moon looks red on Earth because the sun's light filters through the Earth's atmosphere before hitting the moon's surface. Normally, the sun's white light would head straight to the moon, making it appear white. However, when the light hits Earth first, our atmosphere filters out the longer wavelengths of light, the blue, and lets most of the shorter wavelengths, like red, pass through. It's the same principle that gives our sky its blue color.

The eclipse will be visible from all over the U.S., weather permitting. The moon will first enter earth's shadow at 2:00 a.m. and be red for a full hour. If it's cloudy in your neighborhood, you can watch live coverage of the event on the Slooh Space Telescope. Slooh will also be covering Mars' closest approach to Earth, coincidentally on the same night of April 14, starting at 10:00 p.m.

This total eclipse will be the first of four in the upcoming year and a half, known as a tetrad, according to a NASA press release. This is a special event. Though there is usually a lunar eclipse once every six months, they aren't normally all full eclipses.

"During the 21st century, there are nine sets of tetrads," but some centuries have no tetrads at all, said a video by NASA.

After this month's full moon, the next of the tetrad will glow red on Oct. 8, 2014. Then on April 4, 2015, and Sept. 28, 2015. Amazingly, all four of the eclipses will be visible from at least some part of the U.S.

The view from the moon for the full eclipse will be even better. If you were standing on the moon, looking at Earth, you'd see the view in the GIF below. As the planets align, the Earth hides the sun. "The rim of the planet seems to be on fire," said the NASA Video. "As you scan your eye around Earth's circumference, you're seeing every sunrise and every sunset in the world. All of them. All at once."

To learn more about the eclipses, check out the cool Science@NASA video below:

SEE ALSO: NASA Explains The Source Of A Mysterious Bright Light On Mars

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After sifting through more than 50,000 entries, Smithsonian Magazine has announced the 60 finalists for its 2014 Annual Photo Contest. The photos fall into six different categories: Natural World, Travel, People, Americana, Altered Images, and Mobile.

Voting is now open for the public to select the Readers' Choice winner, and will continue through May 6th. The winners will be announced May 15.

We selected 10 of our favorite images from the finalists, which came from 132 countries. See the full gallery at Smithsonian Magazine.

NATURAL WORLD: "Absolute Head Scratcher" is a photo of a blue macaw, taken in Quebec City, Canada. NATURAL WORLD: Photographer Graham McGeorge spent 6 hours waiting to get the perfect image of this eastern screech owl out of its nest in Georgia.NATURAL WORLD: After finishing off a springbok, these two cheetah cubs began chasing each other for who got to hold onto the "prize," a piece of skin left over from the kill. NATURAL WORLD: During their annual migration, wildebeests are forced to find new river crossings in the Serengeti-Mara region. In this picture, the currents were so strong that the animals had to struggle desperately to get to the other side.TRAVEL: This photographer caught Vietnam's famous terraced fields during harvest season.TRAVEL: As part of a show called "Well of Death," this Bangladeshi biker performs a stunt at a fair to celebrate Rath Jatra, a Hindu festival.PEOPLE: Mourners cover themselves in mud while beating their chests and standing around a fire during Ashura, a religious commemoration of the martyrdom of Husayn ibn Ali.PEOPLE: Photographer Candy Feng's son is dwarfed by the majesty of a glacier at Fjallsárlón.AMERICANA: Dust swirls around citizens of Black Rock City as they peek into the "Black Rock Bijou Theatre," an art installation at the 2013 Burning Man Festival.AMERICANA: A champion bronco bucks a champion rider at the Helmville Rodeo.

SEE ALSO: 37 Breathtaking Winners From Sony's World Photography Awards

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German robotics firm Festo has come up with a unique take on robot locomotion.

Their newest robot is built on the principle of "recovering, storing, and releasing energy based on a natural model" in order to move around. In this case, the "natural model" is a kangaroo, so Festo's robot literally jumps to get from A to B.

Here's what it looks like at speed: 

And here's what it looks like slowed down:

The kangaroo's jump process is divided into three phases, outlined in the diagram below. First is the take-off phase, in which the kangaroo leans forward to shift its center of gravity before engaging valves in its legs for take-off. During the flight phase, it moves its legs forward in preparation for landing and raises its tail. Then it finally lands.

Although it looks bizarre, it's actually an efficient method of locomotion. In real kangaroos, the Achilles tendon stores energy from the last jump when the animal hits the ground, and releases it in propelling the next jump. In other words, potential energy created by the jump is continually being stored and harvested for the next jump. Kangaroos actually use oxygen more efficiently when jumping at speed than they do when walking slowly. The implication of Festo's work is that it is possible to create a robot that can move efficiently at speed over rough terrain that may impede a robot using wheels.

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In late April 2010, the BP's Deepwater Horizon oil rig suffered an explosion that engulfed the platform. The resulting oil leak become the largest accidental marine oil spill in the history of the oil industry.

Shortly after the explosion, Greenpeace asked conservation photographer Daniel Beltra to head to Louisiana and the Gulf of Mexico. Beltra contracted a plane to see the real effects of the oil spill.

The work has been collected in the book "Spill," which you can purchase on his website. Beltra shared a number of photos from the first two months of the spill with us here.

On April 22, two days after the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig, an oil leak was discovered when an oil slick began to spread at the former rig site.

Originally, BP reported that no oil was escaping from the well. On April 24, the Coast Guard confirmed that there was a "serious spill" occurring.

With no oil reaching the shores yet, Beltra contracted a plane to take him over the Gulf. Even that task was difficult, with planes barred from numerous areas and unable to fly below 3,000 feet.

Enceladus, a small moon orbiting the planet Saturn, is likely filled with liquid water under an icy crust. Giant oceans of salty water mean the moon could contain alien microbial life.

We know Mars was once flowing with water and there's currently frozen water in the shadowed craters on Mercury. Two other moons in the outer solar system, Titan and Europa, also seem to contain liquid water.

Enceladus — which is about 300 miles across and maintains a temperature of minus 292 degrees Fahrenheit on its surface — is unusually active. 

Scientists have suspected that Enceladus has liquid water since 2005, when NASA's Cassini spacecraft observed huge plumes of it escaping the moon's icy crust, like in the image below. 

Until now, though, we haven't had clear evidence of this liquid water. The discovery was published in the April 4 issue of the journal Science.

New gravity measurements were obtained by monitoring the tiny motions of NASA's spacecraft Cassini, which has spent the last 10 years photographing and measuring Saturn and its moons.

The measurements indicated that there was a significant difference in the local gravity fields that would have been created by an ice-only pole and the one detected by Cassini's instruments. The gravity from the southern pole tugged at the spacecraft harder than would have been expected if it was just made of ice.

Specifically, a dimple in the ice crust at the south pole didn't decrease the local gravity as much as it should have. There had to be something denser between the ice crust and the solid silicate rock core to make up for this discrepancy: an ocean of water. 

The measurement doesn't specifically indicate this is a water ocean, but it's the most likely explanation. Especially since we know the crust of the moon is water ice, and we know there are water plumes emanating from the southern pole.

The newly-discovered ocean is up to 6 miles deep and lies under up to 24 miles of ice.

"This water ocean...may extend halfway or more towards the equator in every direction," study researcher David Stevenson, of Caltech, said in a statement."This means that it is as large — or larger — than Lake Superior."

SEE ALSO: NASA Releases The First Images From Cassini And Messenger's Glimpse Of Earth

THROUGH CASSINI'S EYES: Stunning Images Of The Solar System

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BI Answers: Why do we grunt when we exercise?

Grunting — that loud, sometimes obnoxious noise produced when we exercise — has been an ongoing source of debate among psychologists. 

From a scientific standpoint, the grunting noise is made as we "exhale against a closed, or partially closed, vocal fold," said Dennis O'Connell, a professor of physical therapy at the Holland School of Sciences & Mathematics in Texas.

The vocal folds, or vocal cords, refer to the two bands of muscle tissue that open into the windpipe. The vocal folds are open and relaxed when we breathe in, sometimes producing a rushing noise. But when the vocal folds close as we exhale "you are going to hear some turbulence," said O'Connell.

The reason we grunt is slightly more complicated. Some experts say it improves performance; others say it's just blowing smoke.  

Belisa Vranich, a psychologist at willspace, a boutique training studio in New York City, believes grunting is a natural and necessary physical response to exerting effort.

"Think about tennis," she said. "When you hit the ball, it's hard to be explosive and not grunt."

And if you're not grunting, you should be, because it gives you more power. "It helps you push more weight, hit harder, and throw farther," said Vranich. 

When we do something like squats or power lifting, we take air in and hold our breath for a moment. By doing that, the middle of our body gets squished together, creating a pressure ball in our belly that makes the body rigid in order to stabilize and protect our spine from injury, said Vranich.  

All that pressure built up inside our gut means that when we finally do exhale "it's almost impossible to let that energy out without making a grunt," said Vranich.

Scientists don't know exactly why a sharp yell or grunt gives people that extra oomph when they do things like lift weights or swat at a tennis ball, but it's probably related to a communication signal from the part of the brain that controls breathing to the part that controls muscle function, said O'Connell.

When we forcefully push air out, the brain sends information down to the muscles, which either excites muscle groups or decreases inhibition — or both. The result is enhanced performance.

This beneficial effect of grunting was demonstrated in a study of college tennis players. O'Connell's students found that grunting increased serve and forehand velocity by an average 4.5 mph. It didn't matter if the players were regular grunters, if they were male or female, or how they felt about grunting.

Although grunting seems like a natural reaction, Vranich said unnecessary or excessive grunting is annoying. That kind of testosterone-pumped animalistic sound designed to psych the person up and get adrenaline going — or even intimidate a competitor — is rooted more in psychology than in physiology.  

The controversy over whether grunting should be allowed or discouraged is growing, particularly at the gym and on the tennis court, where it can be distracting.

In 2006, a bodybuilder was kicked out of a Planet Fitness for grunting, which violated the club's strict "no-grunting policy." Shortly after that incident, a man was attacked at an Equinox gym in New York City for being too noisy in spin class. 

O'Connell recognizes that grunting maximizes force production. He also believes that all the hooting and hollering can be controlled, and that there are quieter breathing techniques for achieving comparable muscle activity and peak force. 

A recent study from O'Connell's department found that in a simulated forehand stroke, athletes got the same power boost from grunting as they did by forcefully expelling air. 

"Forced exhalation without the annoying sound is just as good at increasing force production as exhaling with the annoying sound," said O'Connell. 

O'Connell offered an anecdote from his daughter's softball games, where he would overhear dads telling their kids to grunt. If you can be coached to grunt, he said, then you could certainly be coached to exhale without grunting.

This post is part of a continuing series that answers all of your "why" questions related to science. Have your own question? Email dspector@buisnessinsider with the subject line "Q&A"; tweet your question to @BI_Science; or post to our Facebook page.

What should you drink when you workout? The truth about carbonated water

SEE ALSO: More BI Answers

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We hunt.

Pattern recognition, Klaus Leidorf