A recently published study claims to have discovered evidence for mushrooms on Mars. As it occurs, these specific features are commonly known and were detected by cameras aboard the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity of NASA shortly after its 2004 landing.
The mushrooms are not actually living organisms at all, as described in an article posted on Space.com, although hematite concretions, tiny sphere-shaped pieces of mineral hematite, and their exact origin remain debated and argued on by scientists.
Hematite, as described in this report, is a compound of oxygen and iron and is commercially essential on this planet.
The spherical rocks on the Red Planet may have been created by the gradual buildup of the material in slowly-evaporating liquid water environments. They could have been generated by volcanic activity, as well.
This recent research found they are actually not mushrooms. The site surrounding the landing of Opportunity is littered with them; they can be seen around the surface and were found buried underneath the soil and even rooted within rocks.
Worm-Like Organisms
A similar The Conversation article specified that the said space "mushrooms" were reportedly not the first claim of life. In 1996, former president of the United States, Bill Clinton, stood on the lawn of the White House and announced the probability that scientists had discovered olden, fossilized remains of micro-organisms in a meteorite that had been recovered in 1984 in Antarctica.
Called the ALH 84001 meteorite, it is one of the handful of rocks from Mars this planet currently has. They were blasted off the planet's surface through volcanic eruptions or meteorite effects, drifted through space, possibly for millions of years, before they ended up on Earth.
The small structures found within, through the use of powerful microscopes, look like microscopic worm-like organisms that are probably billions of years old.
Arguments over the exact origins of these structures continue today; a lot of scientists have pointed out that recognized inorganic processes are quite capable of developing structures that are similar to living organisms.
Meaning, simply because something might appear slightly like life, mushrooms, or otherwise, that does not actually mean it is.
Methane Discharge
The Viking robotic landers of NASA in 1970 carried a series of investigations designed to test the Martian soil for the microorganisms' presence.
The experiments chemically treated tiny samples of the soil on Mars in reaction chambers on board the said landers. In one of the chambers, nutrients that have radioactive carbon-14 were added to the samples of soil. Theoretically, this needs to be absorbed by any developing and multiplying bacterium.
When this carbon-14 would then increasingly be exhaled over time, exhibiting a steady rise in concentration within the reaction chamber.
Following the chemical analyses, each sample of the soil was steadily heated to hundreds of degrees to kill any bacterium, with the intention of finding out if any such response in the soil ceased.
Interestingly, this specific experiment did present a stable rise in carbon-14 over time which was certainly terminated after heating to higher than the water's boiling point.
A lot of inorganic chemical reactions have been suggested as an explanation. Consequently, these results stay inconclusive and remain debated at present.
More recently, small quantities of methane have been detected in the Martian atmosphere. This is interesting as well, as living organisms on this planet are known to discharge methane.
Nevertheless, once again, it needs to be emphasized that this not conclusive proof of life. Methane can be generated as well by a lot of inorganic processes, which include heated rocks.
The study, Fungi on Mars? Evidence of Growth and Behavior From Sequential Images was published in ResearchGate.
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