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Claims of 'fungus' on Mars spark controversy


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Not again, I think it was not long ago that the "fungus" on Mars were posted here on UM the last time, and as some people pointed out then, there are scientific explanations for the shapes that have nothing to do with fungus.

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Won't be a bit surprised when we see a thriving micro-biome process ongoing on Mars.

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19 minutes ago, quiXilver said:

Won't be a bit surprised when we see a thriving micro-biome process ongoing on Mars.

Honestly, could it be that by now we have contaminated Mars with microbes and fungi from Earth and they are surviving there somewhere, somehow close to the underground water, or in underground caverns and some such, maybe?

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7 minutes ago, Orphalesion said:

Honestly, could it be that by now we have contaminated Mars with microbes and fungi from Earth and they are surviving there somewhere, somehow close to the underground water, or in underground caverns and some such, maybe?

Not likely. Nothing here could survive the harsh conditions on Mars. If we ever do find anything alive there it's gonna be a bad ass life form that can survive insane temperatures. If it was on the surface, and not under water some place, then it would have to survive an extremely low oxygen level as well. 

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17 minutes ago, Orphalesion said:

Honestly, could it be that by now we have contaminated Mars with microbes and fungi from Earth

 

We contaminated already Moon with 'water bears'(Tardigrades):

 

The moon might now be home to thousands of planet Earth's most indestructible animals.

Tardigrades - often called water bears - are creatures under a millimetre long that can survive being heated to 150C and frozen to almost absolute zero.

They were travelling on an Israeli spacecraft that crash-landed on the moon in April.

And the co-founder of the organisation that put them there thinks they're almost definitely still alive.

The water bears had been dehydrated to place them in suspended animation and then encased in artificial amber.

https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-49265125

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Just now, jethrofloyd said:

 

We contaminated already Moon with 'water bears'(Tardigrades):

 

The moon might now be home to thousands of planet Earth's most indestructible animals.

Tardigrades - often called water bears - are creatures under a millimetre long that can survive being heated to 150C and frozen to almost absolute zero.

They were travelling on an Israeli spacecraft that crash-landed on the moon in April.

And the co-founder of the organisation that put them there thinks they're almost definitely still alive.

The water bears had been dehydrated to place them in suspended animation and then encased in artificial amber.

https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-49265125

Yeah that was what I was thinking of when I asked, though to be fair, iirc they are in their stupor state, so they aren't very "alive" right now.

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Fungus, my foot! That photograph CLEARLY shows that the ancient Martians were Bocce Ball players.

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Yeah, right. The more "fungus", the more funds NASA gets.

 

Edited by josellama2000
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It is hard for me to believe that any fungus could find enough moisture to survive on Mars. And no one has mentioned whether fungus could survive any place that has no protection from the Sun's radiation. Mars lost it's magnetosphere approximately 2 billion years ago, so, every thing on Mars is bombarded by all manner of harmful rays.

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A couple things to note:

1. This paper has not yet been published in the journal Advances in Microbiology despite the various articles claiming that it has. So far it has only been uploaded to ResearchGate as a preprint (link) and there is no mention of it on the Advances in Microbiology website (link).

2. Advances in Microbiology is published by Herald Scholarly Open Access, which is a predatory publisher included on Beall's list (link).

3. The lead author Rhawn Gabriel Joseph is a known crank who has a long history of outlandish claims and is associated with his own fake journal (link) (link).

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13 hours ago, Orphalesion said:

Honestly, could it be that by now we have contaminated Mars with microbes and fungi from Earth and they are surviving there somewhere, somehow close to the underground water, or in underground caverns and some such, maybe?

Yes it is possible, we have already identified microbe life in orbit around Earth where it is colder and has less water than on Mars

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On 5/8/2021 at 12:56 PM, Gaden said:

It is hard for me to believe that any fungus could find enough moisture to survive on Mars. And no one has mentioned whether fungus could survive any place that has no protection from the Sun's radiation. Mars lost it's magnetosphere approximately 2 billion years ago, so, every thing on Mars is bombarded by all manner of harmful rays.

Quote

"Fungi thrive in radiation intense environments," the researchers wrote.

From the second paragraph of the article

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If someone can come up with definitive mycelia (the "roots" of the fungus), or even a couple of loose spores, I'll start considering this. But just for fun, let's say this does show some sort of fungus. Would it have originated on Earth, or on Mars? If from Earth, how did it survive at any sort of macro level? If from Mars, could it even be biologically classified as fungus?

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On 5/8/2021 at 8:30 PM, josellama2000 said:

Yeah, right. The more "fungus", the more funds NASA gets.

 

Fund us with Fungus!

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On 5/12/2021 at 3:04 AM, theotherguy said:

If from Mars, could it even be biologically classified as fungus?

Don't quote me on this, but I think it would be safe to assume that yes, it could be classified, biologically, as fungus if it meets the criteria of fungus.

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16 hours ago, Nuclear Wessel said:

Don't quote me on this, but I think it would be safe to assume that yes, it could be classified, biologically, as fungus if it meets the criteria of fungus.

So, we're assuming it has DNA, that the DNA is eukaryotic, that they have cell walls, that the cell walls are chitinous, and that's just the basics. That's a lot to ask for something whose abiogenetic origins would have literally nothing in common with anything on Earth. Even if it could fit into one eukaryotic kingdom, they could be the seed pods of plants, for all I see.

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