- Researchers studied photos of the Martian surface taken by rovers and orbiters
- They say there are repeating and changing patterns of dark patches
- They also saw evidence of circular blobs that appeared and grew in a few days
- These are evidence of fungi, mold, lichens, algae and similar species, they say
- The authors say it would be ‘surprising’ if there wasn’t life on the Martian surface
A scientist dubbed the ‘Space Tiger King’ has claimed that strange ‘puffball-like’ rocks on Mars are actually mushrooms.
Microbiologist Dr Xinli Wei from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, astrophysicist Dr Rudolph Schild from Harvard-Smithsonian and Dr. Rhawn Gabriel Joseph, aka Space Tiger King, made the claims after studying images snapped by NASA’s Curiosity rover on the Red Planet and the orbiting HiRISE craft.
Their study, was has met been with skepticism from the scientific community, argues that what NASA called rocks are actually fungus-like specimens growing in the Martian landscape.
The trio claim that these ‘mushrooms’ seem to shrink, appear and disappear over a period of days, weeks and months. In one example, the team says there is evidence of fungi resembling Puffballs on Earth ‘re-sprouting’ in tracks left behind by the NASA Curiosity rover.