Fungi on Mars? Evidence of Growth and Behavior from Sequential Images [pdf]
researchgate.net
researchgate.net
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.
Pretty confident to write this one off to be honest.
lmao @ website & valuation up top
funny thing to want to get rid of, you'd think the truth would be more valuable than that!
His personal website is a certified 100% pure gem as well
http://brainmind.com/publications.html
his chest hair's got some sparkly brilliance reflective index out of this world
don't ctrl+f "as for girls" on that page lmao
Why do these people all try to fit it on one page? It seems to be a bit of a hallmark in this genre.
my other favorite crazy person website must be https://arngren.net/ -- see if you can find the hoverpod
Still struggling with this...
(come to think of it though, how does a story fall off of HN this quickly since there's no way to downvote?)
Can we discuss the merits of his claims instead?
My immediate hunch is that it might be some sort of liquid condensation which then freezes and merely resembles fungi (ie tiny hailstones) but even if wrong it's interesting.
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/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_...
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.
"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.
We know next to nothing about geological processes that can happen at low temperatures and extremely low air pressure. Biological explanations are never 'the simplest', as there is no kind of geological formation that comes even close to the complexity of a single cell, nevermind the complexity of a multicellular organism.
This is an example of "proving too much". If Mars had plant life developed to the point of having stalks and visibly growing in macroscopic amounts over this time frame, we wouldn't be "debating" life on Mars because it would be plainly obvious that it has life, if life was that active.
This is why we discuss whether or not it has a micro-organism based ecology that it is hiding, rather than discussing whether or not it has forests that we just haven't found yet.
I've noticed this is one of the key signs you can use to identify cranks massively overfitting data about life being here or there.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_soil_crust [2]: https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2021/02/15/antarctic-ice-new...
Nope, there is no real chance to find fungi living at -50C to -70C, with no liquid water. There is no life on Earth that lives at such low temperatures, and there is no way for life as we know it to work without liquid water (or perhaps other liquid solvents, though that is highly speculative).
Also note, fungi in particular can't deal with extreme cold, the coldest I've read about any kinds of fungi living is ~0C. There are bacteria and other prokaryotes that survive at temperatures below that, but even then only at high pressures that allow liquid water to exist at very low temperatures - whereas Mars has extremely low pressure, much lower than anyone on the Earth's surface (Martian atmospheric pressure is comparable to Earth's upper atmosphere).
Whoa, imagine being the first human to eat alien mushroom stew.
I'm not sure I do. If we can eat it, it can eat us.
That reminds me of a passage from H.G. Wells's «The First Men In The Moon», where the narrator protagonist is so hungry that he can't help but take a bite out of some fungi-like lunar vegetation, and convinces his colleague Cavor to indulge in it as well... but the fungi happens to be psychoactive!
If anyone's interested, it's at the end of Chapter XI, «The Mooncalf Pastures», from the paragraph that begins “We roused ourselves...” onward: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1013/1013-h/1013-h.htm#chap1...
there was a link here or on reddit a few days ago studying the link between mushroom growth and the lightning. they claimed just using small electrical charges (1/billion of the power of a lightning) they could get up to %10 more growth
Even if it's not organic, they are pretty odd looking formations that I haven't seen on Earth in any inorganic way.
Nevertheless, the image on picture 30 looks like something that grew out of the ground because it's on a stem.
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.
Jumping straight to multicellular life, one of the most complex structures that we've ever seen in the universe, is absurd.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martian_spherules
[1] https://mars.nasa.gov/resources/6944/martian-blueberries/
[1] https://astrobiology.nasa.gov/news/check-type-iron-blueberri...
So the next time you take that sip of coffee in the morning, just know that you can't do that for millions of light years around you - or maybe anywhere.
There are pieces of Mars on Earth. Possibly there are pieces of Earth on Mars. If they didn't contain spores, that would be unusual.
So if its possible for fungi to grow in a Mars environment, it seems the more likely outcome. That's the question - can they grow there? Then, they are likely growing there.
Also, there are no fungi living off frozen water at -50 to -70 C or below on Earth, and an asteroid impact doesn't really provide time for evolution to work its magic. Perhaps extremeophiles could be found that would survive, though even that is shaky without some form of liquid water, and they would be extremely unlikely to evolve to something approaching fungi (remeber that extremeophiles are prokaryotes, while fungi are eukaryotes, and as far as we can tell eukaryotes arose from prokaryotes only once in the history of life on Earth, so it was literally a once in 2 billion years event).
Edit to add: Mars' surface is also extremely toxic to essentially all Earth-based life.
Overall, it is very hard to imagine that any form of Earth-based life would have survived the series of events you suggest: an asteroid impact with Earth which propelled a chunk of rock to space, being exposed to space, then burning through the Martian atmosphere, crashing into Mars, then encountering the extreme cold, low pressure, missing oxygen and CO2, high radiation, the toxic soil of Mars, and not just surviving, but growing and thriving from this.
I recall reading another paper indicating there is an unresolved increase and decrease of methane ? in the Martian atmosphere as well. But I’m still inclined to think this is geological not biological.
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
HMMMMMMM
https://retractionwatch.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Josep...
Can we discuss the merits of his claims instead?
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.
Can we discuss the merits of his claims instead?
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.
It's safe to take this shortcut. The burden of *overwhelming" proof is on the author.
I'm also confused as to what evidence you would accept for proof of the claim that there are fungus-like things on Mars, if you don't accept pictures of them.
Further, scientific claims should be evaluated by scientists, not laymen. Since this person isn't even a scientist, actual scientists needn't deign to evaluate these claims.
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.
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!
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.
Either way, big result!
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.
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.
http://www.homepages.ucl.ac.uk/~ucfbiac/Human_efficiency_pap...
So before any scientific equipment you've got literal tons of life support to get to Mars. For robotic probes they can be mostly scientific instruments. They also aren't really limited by consumables like astronauts.
It's not like astronauts wouldn't be cool or useful but for the same cost as one manned mission we can spam Mars with robotic probes. There's also the added benefit of an unexpected lithobraking not leading to some flag draped coffins and a total halt to the program for years.
Or we need to retool and try to get robots to mine the asteroids for us-cus money.
I'm not against manned spaceflight at all but I think it's important to recognize it is very expensive per quanta of scientific data. In a world where money for pure science can be hard to come by it's often better to get more science bang for your space bucks.
Clearly, if we send people on Mars we should make sure they are not just well trained and educated.
This seems highly unlikely at first glance, given the fact that Curiosity has been able to explore 25km and has been performing experiments and observations for 8 years and counting. A human on an exploratory Mars mission would not be able to venture any significant distance from the landing site (unless you also send a vehicle down), and they would definitely not survive for 8 years of soil-level observations.
Where are Curiosity and Perseverance when they are needed??
Can we discuss the merits of his claims instead?
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].
They would probably not be the beginning of life on Mars, but the last to turn off the light.
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?
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.
(This strategy works until a human arrives. Once humans are there, we'll be bringing with us all of our microbiotic friends.)
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.
https://store.nanoporetech.com/us/configure-minion-enhanced/
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.
Would be weird if it is in any way similar to earth fungi - could be from earth or evidence of Panspermia theory.
Actually I’d take panspermia as most exciting! Life in the rest of the universe too!
> 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.
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?
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.
List of all Mars missions: 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.
I was so excited about these photos before seeing this. I'm kind of bummed.
Ryan Kennedy Moderator It almost looks like the spider webbing caused by CO2 sublimating during spring 2
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That seems like the most likely explanation.
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".
I’ll see myself out.
[0] https://www.sciencealert.com/here-s-the-truth-about-that-pho...
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
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.
“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.
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...
Also: you're completely insane.