Mushrooms Growing on Mars? Rock-Like Formations on Surface May Actually Be Fungi

"Space Tiger King," as to how a scientist is dubbed, recently claimed that the odd 'puffball-like' rocks found on Mars "are actually mushrooms."

A Mail Online report said, Dr. Xinli Wei, a microbiologist from the Chinese Academy of Science; Dr. Rudolph Schild, an astrophysicist from Harvard-Smithsonian; and Dr. Rhawn Gabriel Joseph, also known as the Space Tiger King, were the ones who made the claims following study of images snapped by the Curiosity rover of NASA on Mars and the orbiting craft, HiRISE.

Their study, Fungi on Mars? Evidence of Growth and Behavior From Sequential Images, published in published in the Advances in Microbiology journal and is presently accessible via a preprint, which has been met with skepticism from the scientific community, contends that what NASA identified as rocks are in fact, fungus-like samples that grow in the Martian landscape.

The three experts also claimed that the said mushrooms appeared to shrink, appear and disappear over a number of days, weeks, and even months.

In one instance, the team said there is evidence of fungi similar to Puffballs on this planet "re-sprouting" in tracks that the NASA Curiosity rover left behind.

Earlier Claims About Mushrooms on Mars

As this report specified, Wei, Joseph, and Armstrong have been sifting through the Mars images of NASA for years and they have shared their numerous discoveries with the world on several occasions.

In April 2020, Joseph and Armstrong came out with a similar study on Research Gate, claiming that mushrooms were indeed, growing on the Red Planet.

In its entire mission at Eagle Center, Meridiani Planum, the Opportunity rover captured thousands of "mushroom-lichen-like formations" which had thin stalks and spherical caps, bundled together in colonies attached to, and protruding outward from the rocks' top and side parts.

The said top-sides were frequently jointly oriented, through their caps and stalks, in the same upward-angled direction, as is usual of photosynthesizing organisms.

This previous study's so-called wild claims of life on the Red Planet were said to be controversial in the scientific community.

Evidence of Fungi

The researchers referred to araneiforms, as described in Discover Planet as dark channels in the soil on Mars seen by Curiosity, as evidence of fungi, specifically, black fungi, mold, algae, lichens, as well as other sulfur-reducing species.

They claimed that these said forms can grow up to 980 feet in the spring when their temperatures can reach 42 degrees Fahrenheit during the day, and vanish by winter when their temperatures drop to minus nine degrees Fahrenheit.

The study investigators also explained this is a pattern that recurred every spring may signify massive immense gatherings of black fungi, alae, mold, methanogens, lichens, and sulfur-reducing species that grow on the surface of Mars.

NASA stated before that these massive araneiforms are the outcome of the melting of periodic carbon-dioxide ice.

Nevertheless, the researchers made the point that frozen CO2 ice is not black although semi-transparent white, contending that they are certainly made up of immense colonies of fungi, as well as other living species.

Furthermore, along with sprouting from the ground, the study authors claimed too, that they discovered evidence of mushrooms growing atop Curiosity.

Related information about life on Mars is shown on Rumble Viral's YouTube video below:

Check out more news and information on Mars on Science Times.