Mushrooms on Mars???

Scientists believe these photos show mushrooms on mars

Did fungi beat us to Mars?  Is that at all surprising?  What do you think (read the whole story first!)?  And how much would foraged Martian mushrooms go for?

Greg, I just read that article.

I REALLY, REALLY want it to be true!  I am afraid that Mars has been teasing hints of life for over a century.  Lately it seems like every approximately 20ish years we get new clues that suggest life on Mars, but ultimately they are either ambiguous or untestable.

In the 1970s the Viking probes ran experiments that at first indeed suggested life.  Later analysis demonstrated that the results could also be caused by simple chemical reactions.  The final results were an ambiguous “maybe not?”

In the 90s meteorites from Mars seemed to show signs of bacteria.  Later these were explained away as micro-geological phenomena.

A mushroom on Mars would be right on schedule.  

I really want to find out that somehow life persists on Mars.  I don’t want to be a downer but I can remember going down this road before—I don’t actually remember seeing the 70s Viking experiments but I read about them as a child.  I vividly remember when Martian bacteria were “discovered” in rocks, only to be let down.

I hope this pessimism is misplaced.  I just can’t get my hopes too high until I see more evidence.  But I really want to find out this discovery is true.

Here’s Hoping,

Eric

I don't think anything about Mars precludes fungal life from living there.
If Cryptococcus neoformans can thrive on the radiation from  Chernobyl, anything is possible.
Did Viking find life on Mars seems to be an open question.
Like wise it seems there is life on Mars, and we put it there.

Well, it has also been speculated that Mars seeded Earth with lifey-bits long ago. So, the first astronaut to relieve herself on Mars will be bringing the biome home.

Incidentally, it has been suggested that the tools that would let humans survive an extended asteroid/volcanic/nuclear winter are mushrooms and Norway rats. Neither needs the sun to thrive.

Nasa couldn't splurge for a color camera? Is it night vision or something? Looks more like a mineral deposit to me.

Edit: Found a bunch more photos on the actual Research Gate Publication than on MSN's crapy article.

I really wish news companies would actually cite their sources at the bottom of articles instead of in hyperlinks unfortunately that is part of the lazy sensationalist yellow journalism we get these days.

Imagine if NASA dropped their escapist fantasy and instead terraformed Greenland or Arizona... you know tough environments that don't cost billions and billions to go to...and like have an atmosphere.

William,

I actually agree with you that given all the seemingly inhospitable places on Earth that we find life—near deep ocean volcanic plumes, under glaciers, etc, it seems that Mars is not so inhospitable to life after all.

And then there are Tardigrades.  Tardigrades might just be the most resilient creatures found, literally everywhere, on earth,  they are almost impossible to kill—good thing they are basically harmless.  A Tardigrade when faced with adverse situations can shed something like 98% of its water and biologically shut down to survive scorching heat, high aridity (think being buried for years in the Sahara, Atacamba, or Namib deserts) just waiting for a bit of moisture.  They can also survive being completely frozen and come back out of a sort of stasis just fine.  They even survive the vacuum of space.  

The first probes sent to Mars were not properly sterilized, it was thought the heat and violence of launch, the vacuum and high radiation of space and the blazing heat of decent would certainly kill any organisms that hitched a ride.  In fact, some objects retrieved from orbit suggest otherwise.

And then there are water cooled nuclear reactors.  I am not making this statement to talk about nuclear, only to mention some of the bizarre places that life survives and even thrives.  Believe it or not, there are strains of algae that somehow have mutated to survive in the main tank of water that gets raised to high temperatures and pressures by being directly adjacent to highly irradiated nuclear fuel.  This gets accomplished by the algae growing it’s own backup copy of DNA so that when one gene gets damaged, another is available to take its place.

The short of it is life persists just about everywhere we look for it.


Douglas,

Indeed Mars may have seeded Earth with early life, but the opposite is possible too—Earth may have seeded Mars, either in antiquity or recently.  As I mentioned above, Mars may actually have active colonies of life that were brought directly from Earth from recent probes and landers. I would especially watch out for those Tardigrades!

If this transformation is recent, it would be certain evidence that at least some forms of life are incredibly resilient indeed.

Eric

Paul Eusey wrote:
Some might call me pessimistic and others would call me pragmatic. I would love to be more optimistic, but the more I learn about space, planets, physics, and the universe, the more pragmatic I become.

I think those are all solid thoughts and the probability that you're correct is high Paul.  We have quite a gift with our planet which we should never forget when we make our daily choices that affect it!

The reason I hold out hope that this may be life is that surviving long term frozen conditions, waiting for the times when things warm up, seems to be a trick that life has mastered.  Since Mars does have seasons where parts of it get above freezing and liquid water is observed then that part seems conducive to some form of life.  I agree about the radiation problem due to the solid core.  If something were to live on Mars it would need to be shielded.  That seems to necessitate living under ground, where the minerals would act as a filter.  Fungi do that for a living.  Mars seems likely to have have been covered in life and then went through a long slow transition to what it is now....lots of selective pressure over a large gene pool over lots of time.  I don't know....I can imagine fungi would be up for the task if anything was.  We need real analysis, but until the data is in I won't count life out...life is always too amazing to me.

Greg,

You may have missed my above post as we posted at about the same time but we actually already have good evidence of life persisting in high radiation environments.  Shielding on Mars might not be necessary for a Martian organism.

Eric

Yeah, I was typing at the same time your post hit Eric...you beat me!

It is a good point Eric, and also here we're only talking about pushing up a spore release organ for just a few days, which makes it easier to manage.  Does anyone know if this observation was occurring during a warm phase or cold phase at the observation site?  If it was during a warm phase then I'm more likely to think it could be life as we know it.

I don’t know what season that photo was taken and I don’t know an easy way to find out.  I guess if we take the date (had to be recent), know the latitude, we should be able to find the season, but we would have to find a calendar for Martian seasons.

Another complicating factor is that warm temperatures are found at the lowest elevations and the probes we send are to the flattest parts of Mars to make landing easier—just think, which would be easier to parachute into, the Great Plains or a mountain valley!  My point is that the spot we are seeing might not get so “balmy” as the other high temperature areas.

But you have a good point, a fungal body living under soil and only occasionally pushing up a mushroom would have certain advantages.

Eric

Eric Hanson wrote:the probes we send are to the flattest parts of Mars to make landing easier—just think, which would be easier to parachute into, the Great Plains or a mountain valley!

I hope that Ingenuity can do that! It's already flying around on Mars.
Also the very cloudy planets might have some life... but much harder for us to detect.