NASA's Curiosity rover snapped this view of polygon-patterned bedrock on May 4. Mars is home to a lot of odd-shaped rocks that can look pretty random. Patterns, however, can catch scientists’ eyes.
Some animals carry patterns so precise and mathematically exact that scientists struggle to explain how nature produced them ...
Perfect circles of stones cover the ground in parts of Alaska and the Norwegian islands of Spitsbergen. Elsewhere in the far north, stones form other striking patterns on the ground: polygons, stripes ...