The theory of three researchers not new to this type of announcement has already made even NASA discuss, in the photos the possible evidence that there is life on Mars.
The words "life on other planets" evoke intergalactic battles with blasters or, if we imagine everything with a touch of horror in more, gray silhouettes that wake us up in the middle of the night to transport us on a spaceship stationed just above our heads. However, it's more likely that extraterrestrial life forms, at least the ones we'll be the first to discover, will look less, well, "Hollywood": for example, they might look like mushrooms.
What's in the research hypothesizing life in space
These organisms are the ones discussed in the case of some NASA shots from the surface of Mars. The microbiologist Xinli Wei of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the astrophysicist Rudolph Schild of Harvard-Smithsonian and Rhawn Gabriel Joseph (the latter curiously nicknamed "Tiger King") have examined some images of the rover Curiosity finding, in the grooves drawn on the ground by the vehicle and elsewhere, what, according to the three scientists, would be the first form of life ever sighted on the Red Planet.
In the conclusions of their work, published here, the three authors write: "The specimens emerge from the ground and have gradually increasing size (...) new spherical, some with stems, have appeared along the top of the ridges of the old tracks (of the rover, ed.)".
What NASA says about the shots of the probe Curiosity
Now let's move on to the less exciting part: the paper has not yet undergone the process of peer review, by which the scientific community validates the work of its members, and is not in line with the assessments of NASA. The American body claims that what is seen in the images is nothing more than the effect of seasonal melting of ice of carbon dioxide.
It should also be noted that Wei, Schild and Rhawn already in 2020 had announced to the world the discovery of space mushrooms. Also, in 2014, Schild had asked the U.S. agency to examine what he said was a living organism. And that turned out to be a simple and inanimate rock.
On the other hand, perhaps on the back of past experiences, the three scholars this time went with lead feet, and in the abstract (a kind of brief summary) of the study actually reads that "similarities in morphology are not evidence of life," although "the growth, movement, and changes in shape and position" of the alleged fungi would support "the hypothesis that there is life on Mars."
Maybe, in a few years, Elon Musk will be able to tell us more.
Giuseppe Giordano