13 ms·
Fungi on Mars? Evidence of Growth and Behavior from Sequential Images [pdf]
- bdamm 5y agoDiscovery of fungi or bacteria growing on Mars would be absolutely shattering science. The claim of fungus-like growth didn't seem to be supported by the photographic evidence, though. edit: After looking through all the photos again, I admit that I am feeling pretty compelled by the evidence. If these photos are unaltered, the processes producing the phenomena are absolutely worth studying.
- adriand 5y agoThe photographs are incredibly interesting. What colours my excitement about them, however, is the knowledge of how ignorant I am of non-biological processes that may produce similar results. Two examples that come to mind are stalagmites/stalactites and large crystals. Crystals, especially, exhibit behaviour that - were I unfamiliar with the phenomena that produce them - appear biological, such as growing upwards. In other words, when I excitedly ask myself the question, "What, other than biology, could possibly create those 'puffballs'?" I have to be honest that there is probably a long list of things that I've never heard of. But still - this is the most interesting thing I've stumbled across in a long time!
- yetihehe 5y agoThe only abiotic explanation of those puffbals I could come with is recrystallization of dry ice. I've many times seen water recrystallized as white puffy balls (a kind of very small hail). Maybe in special pressure/temperature range that also happens to CO2? Almost all of them DON'T look like they have stalks, only spheres laying on ground, but then there is figure 30 on page 29.
- marcosdumay 5y ago> What, other than biology, could possibly create those 'puffballs'? Honestly, the entire thing looks like bubbles to me. If you heat some viscous material that contains some water, you'll see all of those features. The filament thing is much more lifelike to me. But keep in mind that we don't have experience on a non-oxidizing atmosphere.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- xkjkls 5y agoMost probably they would be fundamentally different in classification from any Bacteria/Fungi on earth.
- bdamm 5y agoThis would be the exciting thing. If there really is fungus growing on the surface of mars, or even some life growing in the recesses of the rover, then getting samples and obtaining DNA (if the DNA is even the same structure) would almost certainly show that there are common ancestors, or there aren't. If there are common ancestors, then panspermia is all but proven. If there aren't common ancestors, then it is proven that life can evolve more easily than we thought, and the great filter becomes really shocking. Either way, big result!
- pacman2 5y ago"Similarities in morphology are not proof of life. It is possible that all the specimens presented here are abiotic. We cannot completely rule out minerals, weathering, and unknown geological forces that are unique to Mars and unknown and alien to Earth. However, growth, movement, alterations in location and shape, constitute behavior, and coupled with life-like morphology, strongly support the hypothesis there is life on Mars." They really should put more focus on the first sentence. Extraordinary claims need extraordinary data, which they don't have. They should have phrased it otherwise around. While abiotic phenomenons are more likely, we can not rule out a biological background. Further investigation should be undertaken.
- prox 5y agoThat depends on the expertise as well. Extraordinary claims need that proof, of course, but it seems they took a lot of factors into account that seems to skew it towards their hypothesis.
- jboggan 5y agoDid you read the paper or at the very least examine all of the photo sequences in the full text article? The examination of the spheres in the rover treads and their reappearance is significant, as is the positional analysis of various spheres as they grow in size over a 3 day period. It isn't just morphology, there are some dynamics at work that point to a fungal-like growth as the simplest explanation.
- pacman2 5y agoCrystal growth?
- tsimionescu 5y agoNo, they point to growth as an explanation, and the authors dismiss one possible geological process known from earth. There is no reason to dismiss unknown geological and chemical processes that can happen at the extremes of low pressure and temperature found on the Martian surface. Jumping straight to multicellular life, one of the most complex structures that we've ever seen in the universe, is absurd.
- adrianN 5y agoInteresting. To a layman like me the pictures are pretty convincing, but I know nothing about geology and very little about fungi. It would be really neat if we had humans on Mars that could just walk over, pick something up and put it under a microscope and in a test tube. The paper itself cites several other authors that provide abiotic explanations. I wish we could just test it instead of speculating.
- ademup 5y agoI agree with the cool-factor of having people on mars. And with that said: for this specific task, we could get remote robots to do this task with zero threat to well educated, trained, and physically fit human life. People on mars would be AMAZING... and, NOT having people on mars is amazing too: it gives us such a great moment where "Hey, we NEED to solve this with technology.", and I see that leading to benefits across the board.
- adrianN 5y agoYeah sure we can build robots that can do a lot of specific things. But robot iterations are really long. You can tell a human to do a completely novel task with a twenty minute or so delay. I bet you'd find thousands of well educated, fit humans who would be willing to play robot on a one-way trip to Mars.
- toast0 5y ago> You can tell a human to do a completely novel task with a twenty minute or so delay. Even more useful is that a human may do a completely novel task and provide results of their own volition within the 20 minutes comm delay.
- the_duke 5y agoHumans probably could do in a week what all rovers have done over decades. We are a long ways away from having robots that are advanced and flexible enough to replace people. Well trained, educed people die every year in the thousands from completely unnecessary activities like wing suit jumping. Many millions if you include things like smoking and drinking. I don't see anything wrong with a few astronauts willingly risking their lives on new frontiers. And I'm sure this will happen once we have the capability. I think the primary reason why we haven't sent anyone to Mars is the lack of public interest and funding. We don't even have the rockets to launch any considerable payloads to Mars, without incurring insane cost. Starship (the new rocket from SpaceX) makes me optimistic that things might actually happen in the next 1-2 decades.
- _Microft 5y agoAs much as I want to believe but half of these phenomena look either like something venting from the ground (fig. 1, assuming a prevailing wind direction), flowing down a hill (fig. 4, linear structures) or things previously covered (by dust) being layed open (fig. 22). The most interesting images were the spherical things that appeared or grew during a few sols (e.g. fig. 8).
- echelon 5y agoFig 8 is given much more treatment below in figures 41 - 44.
- YeGoblynQueenne 5y agoWell, there's fungi on Yuggoth, at the far reaches of the Solar system, so why not Mars? “Do you know that Einstein is wrong, and that certain objects and forces can move with a velocity greater than that of light? With proper aid I expect to go backward and forward in time, and actually see and feel the earth of remote past and future epochs. You can’t imagine the degree to which those beings have carried science. There is nothing they can’t do with the mind and body of living organisms. I expect to visit other planets, and even other stars and galaxies. The first trip will be to Yuggoth, the nearest world fully peopled by the beings. It is a strange dark orb at the very rim of our solar system—unknown to earthly astronomers as yet. But I must have written you about this. At the proper time, you know, the beings there will direct thought-currents toward us and cause it to be discovered—or perhaps let one of their human allies give the scientists a hint. https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/wid.aspx https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/wid.aspx
- EGreg 5y agoWell I think Einstein himself knew that he was wrong, and trolled everyone. He used the vast sums of money he made from his patent trolling he had secretly approved, and paid off all those experimenters to confirm his wacky theories. He then established a fund to keep it going. If you pay enough, you can change how mathematical functions operate whenever someone actually uses them. That was Einstein’s actual discovery. Did you know Einstein was actually one of the richest men who ever lived? But his estate hid it so well that no one mainstream ever will know that! EDIT: Look up Poe's law I guess, No matter how obvious I tried to make it...
- mseepgood 5y agoWhy didn't Opportunity prod the puffballs with its arm to see if they are squishy?
- YeGoblynQueenne 5y agoBecause it felt squeamish.
- raldi 5y agoThese photos are from like sol 965; it’s currently well into the 3,000s. The rover would have to backtrack significantly.
- mseepgood 5y agoSounds like a missed opportunity.
- slim 5y agoThey are a few millimeters wide. Opportunitys arm is probably physically unable to grab them
- mklingen 5y agoIt did! It found them to be hard, and empty.NASA studies strongly suggest they are just hematite accretions. https://www.intechopen.com/books/mineralogy-significance-and-applications/hematite-spherules-on-mars https://www.intechopen.com/books/mineralogy-significance-and...
- rasputnik6502 5y agomushrooms feed on organic matter so plants would have to be there first. And even with lots of food and water they dont grow several meters a day.
- ultraklempo 5y agoNot quite true, there are some rock-eating fungi. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/03/iron-eating-fungus-disintegrates-rocks-acid-and-cellular-knives https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/03/iron-eating-fungus-d...
- jtms 5y agoThese are all statements that are true of earth fungi, but we have no idea what is possible with a hypothetical martian "fungi".
- freshair 5y agoWhen we're talking about potential alien lifeforms, assumptions like "fungus eat plants" need to be loosely held. This may not be fungi as we know it at all, but rather an alien analogue that fills a similar role despite having completely different origins. On earth, we know that evolutionary forces can "recreate" similar organisms independently. The same could be true between earth and alien worlds. Ichthyosaurs and Dolphins have a lot in common but aren't related [by earth standards]. Maybe there are comparable similarities between life on different worlds.
- 5y ago
- WORMS_EAT_WORMS 5y agoI'm ignorant on this. Say we send humans or a probe to Mars, how would they confidently conclude something under a microscope wasn't brought by humans unless it's like super foreign/alien/obvious?
- _Microft 5y agoIf we go to the considerable length of sending actual human researchers to Mars, we shouldn't cheap out on equipment: mass-spectroscopes, microscopes, electron microscopes, ... you name it. That would give us lots of opportunity to examine samples and compare that to what we know from Earth. That's assuming that we are not contrained by mass or volume on the mission which seems reasonable with a SpaceX Starship-style mission because if we were then we shouldn't be sending humans at all imo.
- ISL 5y agoLanders are generally sterilized to avoid precisely that contamination: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_protection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_protection (This strategy works until a human arrives. Once humans are there, we'll be bringing with us all of our microbiotic friends.)
- johnchristopher 5y agoYou mean once our microbiotic overlords land on Mars, clad in their humane scaphander?
- WORMS_EAT_WORMS 5y agoOkay, this made me laugh... In all seriousness, I know this was in jest, but I think this is actually still on topic and applies to the bigger discussion of our mission in finding and understanding what the heck life really is. So upvote.
- jboggan 5y agoSequencers are the size of a USB stick now, so they could obtain a sample and attempt to read the genetic code. If it is a branch related to an Earth species it will show up easily in a BLAST search. If it won't sequence because it isn't using DNA then that is even more conclusive.
- tejtm 5y agoMy vote is the images are also consistent with some sort of seasonal subsurface brine squishing out and about. And fungi are genetically very complex compared to what Occam is apt to offer first.
- TheAdamAndChe 5y agoCurrent evidence shows that Mars was habitable and had a lot of water for billions of years. It was only after their magnetosphere disappeared that their atmosphere got stripped away from solar winds. I could easily see complex forms of live adapting and surviving from that time. We also assume that the 'fungus' seen here has any genetic similarity to fungus on Earth. It could be quite different, only seeming similar because of convergent evolution[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convergent_evolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convergent_evolution
- mseepgood 5y ago> And fungi are genetically very complex compared to what Occam is apt to offer first. They would probably not be the beginning of life on Mars, but the last to turn off the light.
- tejtm 5y agothat is fair conjecture, Myself, I would expect the life stack to unwind to back to primitive on the way to the off switch.
- twic 5y agoNone of these photos have scale bars! Was this actually peer-reviewed? I don't know this journal - should this be taken seriously?
- bloopernova 5y agoAccording to the study, the puffballs are 3 to 8mm in diameter. I don't know how reliable this site/journal/study is, hopefully its wide availability will lead to people replicating or debunking it.
- fit2rule 5y agoThe tracks are the scale bars.
- flobosg 5y agoIt’s a preprint.
- harles 5y agoIt’s not peer reviewed and never will be. So, you’re right to be suspicious.
- drclau 5y agoLet's not bring it back to Earth, though. We've already seen this scenario in fiction many times, and it doesn't end well for us.
- thrwyoilarticle 5y agoI've never understood this notion. We know fiction isn't history, right?
- meowster 5y agoOur fiction is just someone else's fact, in a parallel universe.
- jonplackett 5y agoHow do they know this isn’t from earth, taken there on the rover? Would be weird if it is in any way similar to earth fungi - could be from earth or evidence of Panspermia theory.
- freshair 5y agoTo be fair, supposing it were a recently introduced earth fungus, it would still be pretty incredible to learn that an earth fungus can evidently flourish on Mars.
- jonplackett 5y agoIt would be cool, but defo not as exciting as life on Mars for real. Actually I’d take panspermia as most exciting! Life in the rest of the universe too!
- yosito 5y agoThere was a caption on one of the photos: > perhaps fungi may have been transported to Mars already attached to the rover And another photo of a dark patch emerging from a seam on the rover. Seems to be to be pretty suggestive of Earth being the source. A crazy scenario would be if Mars becomes covered in mushroom-based life that evolves distinctly from life on Earth.
- echelon 5y agoFigure 8 and its subsequent treatment in figures 41-44 is very interesting. Was this noticed by NASA scientists at the time it was originally captured? If this was flagged as an item of interest, did Opportunity not have the instruments onboard to conduct analysis? When papers like these are published, do NASA/JPL/etc. scientists tend to make statements?
- jvanderbot 5y agoLots of image pairs showing "growth" (7&8 esp which is the image pair they did their hypothesis testing on) can be perfectly explained by the sand just blowing off and revealing more of the round pebbles. The "smaller" ones are nearly all covered more in "before" than "after" and the "appearance" might just be "reveal of". See 41, 42, 44 for the close-up of changes. I don't buy that whole section. Fig 29-30 is interesting ... Fig 31-32 can be explained by the treads collecting blue sand. All the images of dark streaks and clumps are in line with these: https://www.universetoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/PIA19127_ip.jpg https://www.universetoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/PIA... which show that there's a bunch of dark stuff under the surface that shows when you disturb the surface. Interpreting fresh impact imagery with a fungii story would be "Rocks impacting the surface cause fungii growth" which makes very little sense. Even dust devils strip off the surface enough to show the dark stuff. https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2021/02/Mars_dust_devils_in_action https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2021/02/Mars_dust_... I'm doubtful but hey what do I know, I just make robots. I hope it's all fungi and I hope it's edible.
- jboggan 5y agoOther images show the "sphericals" as being hollow and easily crushed by the treads, and having stalks, and growing together. The "growth" photos which could be possibly explained in isolation by wind exposing round pebbles on previously existing stones doesn't explain the appearance of additional sphericals in the 3 sol period of the same size as the ones being "revealed". If it was just that photo sequence I could understand that argument but the rest of the evidence really pushes towards organic growth as the most likely scenario.
- jvanderbot 5y agoI assume you're referring to Fig 31. (I was referring to Fig 32) "Spherical" clumps of blue dust would crush just the same. Mars is reeeeally cold a lot of the time and has a bit less gravity. Dust can clump. Again, not a geologist. What's important to me is that they're presenting crossing tracks as evidence of before/after, when it's not. They don't have two images of the same area separated by X days, they have one image of two tracks separated by X days, and are interpreting the crest-clumping as "new". This is a somewhat disingenuous way to present, if I'm reading it right. I'm into sending a robot to grab some, don't get me wrong, but I'm also not privy to all the details to make an intelligent prioritization of the robots' time.
- bluenose69 5y agoFor context, https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Rhawn-Joseph https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Rhawn-Joseph holds the profile of the first author.
- chromaton 5y agoI believe he's better known as the author of "The Time Machine of Consciousness Quantum Physics and the Time Machine of Consciousness: Past Present Future Exist Simultaneously. Entanglement, Tachyons, Relative Time, Circle of Time, Quantum Time, Dream Time, PreCognition, Retrocausation, Deja Vu, and Premonitions".
- koheripbal 5y agoI don't know anything about this author, and I don't care. Can we discuss the merits of his claims instead?
- Buttons840 5y agoThe Fermi paradox is going to get even weirder if we find life on the nearest planet.
- pp19dd 5y agoOur 33-LY neighborhood, green are detected planets: https://gruze.org/fly_10pc/ https://gruze.org/fly_10pc/
- checker 5y agoSome kind of interplanetary spillover would still align with Fermi paradox.
- adrianN 5y agoGiven the number of rocks Earth and Mars have exchanged it would be very surprising to find no microbial life at all on Mars, imo.
- avaldes 5y agoVenus is the closest planet to earth. In average should be Mercury, but you get the point.
- pengaru 5y agoWow, some convincing photographs in that pdf. As of this moment I'm operating under the impression Mars is teeming with shrooms. The orbital photographs did't make much impact, since at that scale you can convince yourself all sorts of atmospheric and geological activity resembles life. But the rover photographs comparing to puffballs and clearly showing stems in some cases, very convincing. Edit: elsewhere in the comments it was pointed out that stems could easily be explained by blown away dust/sand after formation, without involving biological processes. Which is a very good point. It's still fun to imagine a Mars covered in mushrooms however.
- dragonelite 5y agoIs this like the Face of Mars kind of scenario?
- stan_rogers 5y agoYep. Ranks right up there with Richard Hoagland.
- anigbrowl 5y agoHe seems pretty cranky but 'are these observable phenomena maybe some kinda fungus? I don't think it's calcified minerals' is a much more modest claim than 'extinct civilizations built pyramids and giant faces for us to discover.'
- Herodotus38 5y agoI read the paper, I think that this is pseudoscience garbage, in my non-expert opinion. I think the sphericles can be explained geologically, the "growth" of the pebbles is explained, as others have pointed out, by the sand around them being removed and being exposed more. I don't like to do this because I would rather attack the evidence but for context, look at the author's history and other publications on researchgate as /bluenose69 pointed out. Read the wikipedia article on the "Journal of Cosmology". This author has a belief that there is life on Mars, and if it isn't puffballs like this paper, it is lichens, or stomatotites. Or suing NASA to examine a rock that was flipped by the wheel of Opportunity that the rock was alive and moved around. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journal_of_Cosmology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journal_of_Cosmology
- neuah 5y agoI am also not en expert in this area, but I agree with this assessment. This looks like classic anomaly hunting rather than careful science, but I would love to be proved wrong.
- koheripbal 5y agoI don't know anything about this author, and I don't care. Can we discuss the merits of his claims instead?
- Herodotus38 5y agoIdeally that would be best but I wasted my time reading the entire paper because I took the initial upvotes it got as a signal that it was worth reading. I gave two examples above where the authors’ claims are very weak and explained by something that myself and others with an initial reading seems more plausible. If you want to discuss the merits further that is fine but in my opinion it is a waste of time. I think you should post your opinions on the merits of the paper as well, I think, but I'm not certain and I could be wrong, that you'll wish you hadn't read the paper or taken the author seriously because we all have limited time and competing things that we find interesting.
- papito 5y ago
- sam-2727 5y agoThe first author has had questionable publications in the past: "Quantum Physics of God: How Consciousness Became the Universe and Created Itself" (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/344906681_Quantum_Physics_of_God_How_Consciousness_Became_the_Universe_and_Created_Itself https://www.researchgate.net/publication/344906681_Quantum_P...) and "Quantum Entanglement with the Future: Lincoln Dreams of His Assassination" (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/344907026_Quantum_Entanglement_with_the_Future_Lincoln_Dreams_of_His_Assassination https://www.researchgate.net/publication/344907026_Quantum_E...). Other coauthors have past evidence for fringe publications (the last author is an astrophysicist who doesn't believe black holes exist). Given the publication records, I would be very skeptical of this paper, even if it seems convincing at face value.
- udev 5y agoFirst author definitely creative with his titles. This kind of papers are testament to the amount of data that we are bringing from Mars: multiple rovers with progressively better and better resolution cameras, and the orbiters. As the amount of data coming from Mars will increase over the years we will see more such "creative" attempts to pick convenient subsets of this data and try to reach for conclusion. But over time, I think, the wind will blow away the chaff and reveal real results, just like the marsian wind moves the sand around hiding and revealing pebbles at its surface.
- sam-2727 5y agoTotally agree. It's easy, as an unexperienced individual, to get tied up into mysterious patterns present in martian imagery and immediately jump to the conclusion of life if you don't know of the underlying physical processes. Everybody wants to find life on Mars, so when you look at the images long enough, you start seeing it. This is nothing new: back in the 19th century, people speculated that there were canals on mars (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martian_canal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martian_canal).
- papito 5y agoIt's like.... https://www.cnet.com/pictures/weird-objects-on-mars-pictures/4/ https://www.cnet.com/pictures/weird-objects-on-mars-pictures...
- mosseater 5y agoNot to totally discount this work based on the author's previous works...but the main listed author of this article works for this site: http://cosmology.com/ http://cosmology.com/ I was so excited about these photos before seeing this. I'm kind of bummed.
- jboggan 5y agoWere the photos faked? Is there something wrong with the authors' line of argument? Can you provide the name of your favorite exobiologist who, if they had published an identical paper, you would remain unwaveringly excited about?
- dysfunction 5y agoWhen someone has a long history of making false claims, it doesn't mean their current claim is automatically wrong but it does mean their argument for it doesn't count as strong evidence for the claim, IMO.
- yosito 5y ago> perhaps fungi may have been transported to Mars already attached to the rover That seems like the most likely explanation.
- andy_ppp 5y agoWould be fascinating if Mars had a different way of making life, I wonder if in the vastness of space time there are different formulas than DNA...
- engineer_22 5y agoThe first author on the paper is associated with cosmology.com. I visited the website and got the "We want to believe" vibe.
- mseepgood 5y agoOh no, you're right.
- vkou 5y agoI would be incredibly skeptical of anyone claiming that 5 meters of growth in a day in a Martian environment may have something to do with fungi.
- dukeofdoom 5y agoReminds me of deep sea ecosystems around lava vents. Still nothing unique, just regular creatures that adapted. Always wondered how deep life goes underground. I read before of vast caves deep underground never explored. But how deep? Seems like it would be more analogous conditions on Mars below the surface than above.
- jamal-kumar 5y agohttps://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Rhawn_Joseph https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Rhawn_Joseph FTA on the primary author of this paper: Joseph has been criticized by the scientific community for embracing unorthodox mechanisms of evolution. In one instance, the biologist P.Z. Myers ridiculed a claim by Joseph that a rock found on Mars is a living organism similar to a type of fungus existing on Earth.[5] He has also made controversial comments about sex, including "Biologically, females serve one purpose: to get pregnant".[6] Yeah this guy... hmm http://brainmind.com/images/JosephGalaxy.jpg http://brainmind.com/images/JosephGalaxy.jpg HMMMMMMM
- mritchie712 5y agoin case you get a 403: https://retractionwatch.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/JosephGalaxy-768x474.jpg https://retractionwatch.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Josep...
- headmelted 5y agoI mean, on one hand I know it’s not really acceptable to outright call someone a loon without a good reason, but the other hand is adjusting a pair of aviators over a photoshopped galaxy background.
- koheripbal 5y agoI don't know anything about this guy, and I don't care. Can we discuss the merits of his claims instead?
- holoduke 5y agoWas about to tell my father about mushrooms found on Mars. Till I did some background checks on one of the authors. Bummer. Too good to be true I think.
- spiritplumber 5y agoI asked a few folks at the Mars Society what they thought. Ryan Kennedy Moderator It almost looks like the spider webbing caused by CO2 sublimating during spring 2 · Reply · 1h Don Davis Ryan Kennedy That's what I thought, some have the characteristic radially arranged dendritic features of the CO2 'geysers'. This makes me think of that sad episode when Arthur Clarke interpreted them as banyan trees on Mars.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- UncleOxidant 5y agoIf there is fungi on Mars did we deliver it there with our various rovers and probes? I know they do a pretty good job of making sure those things are sterile, but have all countries who have sent probes to mars been as careful? List of all Mars missions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_missions_to_Mars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_missions_to_Mars Looks like the Soviet Union landed a couple of probes on Mars in the early 70s.
- heavyset_go 5y agoI'm not aware of any fungi that will grow without readily available moisture. Even in environments with high humidity, fungi don't grow on dry, untreated wood, even though many species thrive on dead trees.
- heavyset_go 5y agoSome of those pictures do look like mycelia, but it could also be ice. The pictures that claim that there is "growth" could also be explained by wind covering and uncovering structures that are only a few millimeters or centimeters below the surface. Fungi basidiocarps are mostly water, so I find the comparisons between puffball fruit on Earth and the pictures of puffball-like structures on Mars questionable. Why would fungi on Mars be macroscopically similar to those on Earth when conditions are so drastically different? I think this is just another case of pareidolia.
- oxymoran 5y agoThe mushrooms on Mars are quite a trip. I’ll see myself out.
- __void 5y agothis rubbish was already been debunked years ago[0], the author has only published the paper in another rubbish-journal [0] https://www.sciencealert.com/here-s-the-truth-about-that-photo-of-mushrooms-growing-on-mars https://www.sciencealert.com/here-s-the-truth-about-that-pho...
- koheripbal 5y agoThis doesn't address the "blueberries" on the ends of stems, like in image #30.
- __void 5y agoYes, the article explains the "blueberres"[0] literally halfway through (but evidently there was more hurry to put a downvote on me than to read an article already published in March 2019 and easily found with little searching) I would like to reiterate this: the author has already 'published' this 'paper' in the past in (vanity)newspapers of dubious reputation and has already been debunked (by nasa, esa, scholars and ordinary geologists) several times. They don't even fall for it on reddit anymore, and that's saying something. [0] a.k.a. iron oxide/hematite
- koheripbal 5y agoNo. It explains the "blueberries", but it does not explain them ON THE END OF STEMS. Please look at the photo I'm talking about before you downvote and ignore what I'm saying.
- __void 5y agoI can't even downvote. Having said that: if you are a such a believer, there is no one in the world who can convince you otherwise: for every oddball argument that gets taken apart, three more will pop up to work on. If it's not the tinyballs it's the stems and if it's not the stems it's the nuances of something else. I don't have the preparation, time or patience to argue with a believer: so yes, those are definitely mushrooms, Have a nice day.
- MrQuincle 5y agoYeah, such a bummer that is probably not real! I like the panspermia hypothesis. I guess most can be explained by the quadcopter (or just wind) if they use that to make pictures. There's a lot of dirt/dust/sand that it will move. That will reveal "new pebbles" and make older ones "bigger".
- mikewarot 5y agoClosing up this thread, is Beau of the Fifth Column, giving a fairly good description of what happened on his excellent Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXjP6W_Pydg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXjP6W_Pydg