OK so Curiosity is at it again. The rover that refuses to run out of surprises has spotted strange holes on a Martian rock and, in the most delightful scientific phrasing possible, the researchers looking at them are basically shrugging.

The [story was first reported by MSN](https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/nasa-found-strange-holes-on-mars-scientists-arent-sure-what-made-them/ar-AA2bSc7F?ocid=BingNewsVerp), and the images are exactly the kind of thing that makes you lean closer to your screen. Small, clean holes punched into rock on a planet where nobody was supposed to be doing any punching. And just to be clear, this wasn't Curiosity's own doing; the rover does have a drill, but it collects small powdered-rock samples, and scientists say that's not what made these. So there's no drill rig. No little Martian handyman. Just holes, sitting there, being mysterious.

Now before anyone fires up the ancient aliens documentaries, there are actual earthly candidates. Wind-carved hollows, gas escaping from cooling rock, grains of some softer material dissolving out over a few million patient years, that kind of thing. Mars has an extremely long resume of making weird shapes out of rock using nothing but time and thin air.

But this is what gets me. The scientists don't know yet. Like, actually don't know. And there's a version of that that would feel frustrating, but to me it feels like the opposite? The rover is up there photographing rocks in high resolution and beaming the pictures across space, and the result is that a team of extremely qualified people gets to say "huh" out loud in a meeting, which is genuinely my favorite kind of science. I've said it before and I'll say it again: my favorite scientists have always been the delightedly baffled kind.

And Mars keeps earning its reputation as the solar system's best weirdo. It has a giant canyon that would stretch across the United States, a volcano taller than anything on Earth, and now apparently rocks with unexplained perforations, like the planet is cosplaying as a loose-leaf binder. Every time we send something there we expect answers and instead we get a fresh batch of "what is THAT." Curiosity has been rolling around up there for years and years and it still finds stuff that makes mission scientists stop and squint.

The team will keep imaging and analyzing, comparing the holes to similar features they understand, and eventually we'll probably get a satisfying answer about wind or minerals or some combination that makes everyone nod and go "ah, yes, obviously." The mystery will shrink into a fact and I will be a tiny bit sad and a lot a bit happy, because a solved mystery on Mars means we learned a new thing about another planet using a robot we built, and that loop is the whole beautiful part.

Until then the holes stay unexplained, and I'll be over here refreshing the raw image feed like it's a group chat waiting for good news. Joy is worth documenting, and so is confusion. Especially when it comes with photos.