Rain Gryphon (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rain_gryphon) wrote2021-05-15 12:55 pm
rain_gryphon) wrote2021-05-15 12:55 pm
Puffballs from Mars
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/351252619_Fungi_on_Mars_Evidence_of_Growth_and_Behavior_From_Sequential_Images
There comes a time (and I think it was reached back in 1976, honestly) when you have to invoke Occam's Razor. It's somewhat disconcerting to have one's image of a clean, dry Mars, lifeless for a million years, replaced by that of a mouldy, stinky Mars where puffballs grow on everything, but that seems to be what we have.
A few times a year of late, it seems, we have another indication that free water is much more common on Mars than we'd expected. While increased amounts of water favour solubility-based mineral processes, life is, in general, more efficient at scavenging and conserving water than is abiotic mineral growth. Something else I'd very much like to hear the abiotic faction address (or if they have, I've not heard of it) is how iron peroxide, which was positted as a rather remarkable explanation for Viking's rather remarkable tagged oxygen results, could exist in an environment wet enough to grow mineral excrescences?
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There comes a time (and I think it was reached back in 1976, honestly) when you have to invoke Occam's Razor. It's somewhat disconcerting to have one's image of a clean, dry Mars, lifeless for a million years, replaced by that of a mouldy, stinky Mars where puffballs grow on everything, but that seems to be what we have.
A few times a year of late, it seems, we have another indication that free water is much more common on Mars than we'd expected. While increased amounts of water favour solubility-based mineral processes, life is, in general, more efficient at scavenging and conserving water than is abiotic mineral growth. Something else I'd very much like to hear the abiotic faction address (or if they have, I've not heard of it) is how iron peroxide, which was positted as a rather remarkable explanation for Viking's rather remarkable tagged oxygen results, could exist in an environment wet enough to grow mineral excrescences?
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