Thanks for opening this discussion Dr. Slyusar. I think your proposal of training AI to recognize potential life forms is a very useful project Idea. To a great extent, what the team of researchers that published the ”Fungi on Mars?” has been doing is manually examining the vast image database from Mars missions, which is a time consuming approach that could be greatly streamlined by having an AI doing a first step of flagging the potential positives for later human review.

Regarding the hypothesis of Fungi on Mars, needless to say it’s controversial, and goes “against the grain“ of the scientific consensus. I am however always favoring of a pragmatic approach, and instead of reacting emotionally to apparently outrageous claims, try to focus on their technical merit. After studying the paper, I think the analysis presented calls the attention on comparative images that hint of very dynamic processes at small scale of time in the surface of Mars, which is something that is surprising, at least for me, and have not seen widely discussed elsewhere. Seasonal changes have been known for long, but changes within a few sols was something surprising to me. This alone is something noteworthy, and that I am surprised to not have seen widely reported before.

Now, without doubt, what calls more powerfully my attention is the analysis of the comparative images of Opportunity data base between sols 1145 and 1148. This comparison suggests significant growth, in a short period of time,

of what is officially deemed to be hematite granules. To my best knowledge if these were hematite granules, they could not show any growth in this time span, nor in a very long time span, and under the Martian environment, these should experience erosion and thus become smaller, if anything.

This observation alone challenges the official consensus and calls for a much more detailed assessment, to provide an explanation for the apparent growth.

Now, as unlikely as it is, one of the traits of live organisms is that they grow, so the suggestion of these granules being living organisms, potentially Fungi, is a valid hypothesis, and collecting further information to support or discard it, is the next step. Of course other hypothesis are possible to explain the apparent observation of growth in mineralogic or geological terms, those favoring that hypothesis can pursue that venue and then the assessments can be compared to determine which has more merit.

I think there’s also the need to perform a further analysis of the images themselves to discard the possibility that the apparent growth is not an artifact of the images, I don’t see it as being the explanation, but performing and audit to the distance of the lens to the martian soil, resolution, lightning sources, etc. should be part of a rigorous analysis to ensure that the growth is real and not only an artifact.

Thank you, Camilo Urbina , your opinion is very important for me and this discussion. I'd like to highlight that AI can not only decrease the time of the image recognition but also in a few cases AI can have a better ability to such recognition than a human.

This article is unfortunately premature and biased. Authors assume life on Mars is consistent with life on earth describing phenomena as life forms (fungi etc. - often subjectively in quotes) and then offer an hypothesis that their description is accurate. This is clearly confirmation bias.

A valid approach would have offered an objective, unbiased description of phenomena with subjective interpretation in discussion and suggestion as to methodology to support that hypothesis. Rather than the eager bias to claim specific life forms, authors address if "life" is consistent with observations. There is no assurance that "life" (or chemistry or some "-ology" to be discovered) on Mars is the same as has been found on Earth.

In their excitement , they also offer hyperbole (upfront bias) to support their later hypothesis - "Fungi thrive in radiation intense environments" is an absurd extrapolation. Some black fungi have shown moderately greater growth rates (not thrive) after limited exposure to gamma and xrays - in fact most of the work involved one specific fungus.

Please recall the premature, later retracted revelation during the Clinton administration of "life" claimed for a meteorites thought to have come from mars. Observations here are much more profound but should be approached for what they are - rather than forcing them into what we want them to be.

That something looks like life or a fungus is not enough to claim it as such.

Dear Phil Geis , thank you for your answer. Yes, it is the hypothesis, and the authors tried to be as convincing as possible in order to motivate other researchers to test these hypotheses.

Their observations preceded and anticipated/subjectively-supported hypothesis. Confirmation bias.

If they want to encourage - write an editorial. if they want to pursue science, do so objectively.

I think the paper, as presented,

meets the bare minimum requirements of formal research and objective analysis. It could have employed a more rigorously revised language, ultimately its a matter of personal style within certain reasonable formality, but I also honestly think that there is a general bias against discussion of the topic of potential life on Mars, and an overzealous tendency of favoring any abiotic hypothesis,

no matter what, and even going to great lengths to imagine abiotic mechanisms, above the slightest possibility of a biological one, not unlike the same tendency that is seen on the controversy still surrounding the earliest fossil evidence of life on Earth (fossil stromatolites).

In the present paper I value the approach of performing comparative analysis of images, data that has been available for a long period already, and that with this new starting hypothesis, has yielded a set of interesting observations of surface dynamics, at different scales of size and times, that, to my best knowledge, has not been presented in this manner by other research teams previously.

It is entirely possible that the dynamics observed has an abiotic explanation, but already by observing it, which is the essence of Science (observation of Nature) we have collectively gained knowledge of a phenomena previously unreported, and now comes the step of finding the explanation of that phenomena by means of testing hypothesis against the evidence.

I this step, to get back to the methodological proposal of the beginning of this discussion,

and considering that there is already an existing voluminous amount of data in the form of images, the possibility of devising an AI algorithm and train it to recognize changes between images of the same location at different times (to find more evidence of similar size, number and movement dynamics) and also training it to identify potential morphological indicators of life (based in our current knowledge of life on Earth and it’s morphological and behavioral characteristics) could serve to add more evidence to be later further characterized.

Objective it is not. Phenomena described subjectively by mycological terms - authors claim support that the phenomena are fungal. Circular reasoning and subjective.

@Phil Geis, you are taking a stance that is focusing in the form and not the substance, a position too often associated to the problem of “throwing the baby with the bath water”.

Had I the opportunity to have been a reviewer of this paper, I would have suggested significant improvements to it, starting from a change to the title (“Analysis of surface dynamics observed in Mars image data as potential indication of biological processes: a comparative assessment with terrestrial homologous observations” would be my proposal and perspective to approach the topic).

You can’t deny that the work done by these researchers and presented in the paper, regardless of any formal objection you may rise against it, has highlighted a series of observations that have previously been mostly overlooked, and this is very valuable.

I focus in substance rather than form, specially when the observations are objectively relevant, and thus may have fundamental implications, and therefore I prefer to focus on helping these observations be given the relevance they have, rather than attacking any perceived lack of formal tidiness in their publication.

I wish @Rhawn Joseph would engage in this debate, he could see that there are people that value the work his research group and are willing to help them improve the formal quality of their work, and also to develop better research tools by incorporating AI in the image analysis.

Sorry for The abundant typos in my previous comments, The self correct of my phone sometimes is a burden rather than a help.

Camilo Urbina

This is a pedantic piece of work describing potentially profound phenomena driven by authors' bias that the observed phenomenon is not only biotic but very probably fungal. The phenomena exists with or without the publication and hopefully will find unbiased study by others who can describe and evaluate in an objective manner.

This is not about you or your focus. We should care about the phenomena not someone's research group.

Please also remember, this is not the 1st time life was attributed to Mars. Tho' embarrassed by sensational release re. meteorite observations, NASA then and hopefully now will be objective re. phenomena addressed in this discussion.

Phil Geis , I do care for the phenomena at the most, and am certainly not defending the research group per se nor saying their work is perfect, I have stated clearly it has formal deficiencies in the presentation of the results, but please tell me, who else is studying this phenomena doing comparative analysis as the oner presented by this paper? I would love to know. The merit of this group, again, regardless of stylistic, formal or even personal taste objections, is that they have brought to our attention a deeply interesting set of observations. As I see no one else doing the same kind of analysis, which is time consuming, I think supporting this group and helping them to achiever a higher standard of publication is a valid strategy, because, again, the phenomena needs to be studied in depth.

Edit to add: Just to be clear, I think the conclusion that the observed behavior and morphology corresponds to Earth bound Fungi is a stretch. It may be compared as having similarities, but that's the extend of it as far as one could conclude. I do think that the observations have a potential biologic explanation, and the researchers should make that the limit of the reach of their proposal. I certainly hope they engage in this discussion and learn to differentiate what they can conclude from the data and what they can offer as speculation or conjecture as part of their publication endeavor.

11 May MMXXI

There's a fungus among us.

Cordially...

ASJ

Dear Vadym Slyusar many thanks for your interesting technical question. In fact, I had not heard about this before. According to a recent article the finding of fungi on Mars could not be verified, and it is even said that the original report in "unscientific". In this context please see the following link:

No, NASA photos are not evidence of fungus growing on Mars, sorry

https://www.cnet.com/news/sorry-nasa-photos-are-not-evidence-of-fungus-growing-on-mars/

(Published May 8, 2021)

Also please have a look at the following more recent article:

"Scientists Claim to Spot Fungus Growing on Mars in NASA Rover Photos”

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/may/10/blog-posting/no-rover-photos-arent-proof-scientists-have-found-/

(Published May 10, 2021)

According to expert scientist the originally published photos of fungi / mushrooms do not show living organisms.

Possibility of fungi on Mars need more research in upcoming future.

Camilo Urbina - bull.

As Frank T. Edelmann seems to confirm, the article is not a stretch - it's false, unscientific and possibly a cynical attempt to garner sensational headlines in popular press. These guys are jerks and the relevant editor and reviewer for Advances in Microbiology should suspended. .

Certainly not for fungus, but the authors never even bothered even to define life so as to elevate the observations for that 1st consideration.

Frank T. Edelmann , Phil Geis , I see that all we can agree about is that we are in disagreement.

I don’t know much about the story behind Rhawn Joseph, I focus on the article published and what is valuable about it, and also considering that there are other 10 authors in the paper, that, I can only assume as the logic explanation, wouldn’t lend themselves to be involved if they did not agree with the paper as it was presented.

I hope we can steer the discussion to the technical and methodological aspects and away from the subjective evaluations of form over substance, and also avoid subjective and ultimately useless speculation about the researchers motives and intentions, which should never be of any relevance to the study of the merits of a published work.

Camilo Urbina

You've not focused on the article to this point - offering nothing but subjective defense presuming 10 authors must be right, "merit " of the group, cute phrases "all we can agree about is that we are in disagreement.", etc.

The entire article is subjective. i wonder if you've even bothered to read it. Suggest you finally do so and offer your objective defense of its substance - not peripheral elements of no relevance.

Phil Geis , I have read it thoroughly since I became aware of it, and also by now I have read other papers related to it.

I will insist, and this is something that I have already to some extent commented in the corresponding section of the page for the paper here at ResearchGate, that I think there are many aspects in the paper that are not exhaustively supported by the analysis presented and need considerable improvement to be able to agree with the conclusions. I am approaching it with the same spirit that I approach peer review when am invited to review papers considered for publication.

I will add here other things I think but are rather obvious and that probably anyone can agree with, so did not see important to mention:

- The paper has the focus in one specific kind of organism (Fungi) while not considering the possibility of life in general terms which would have been a more cautious approach. Reading past and recent work from the main author I understand he is a proponent of panspermia, and this is clearly skewing the analysis, he starts from a basis that life has a common origin and thus Fungi could have evolved in Mars. This is obviously a stretch.

- The paper is covering too much comparative observations at different scales of size and from and time. I would suggest them to separate in different papers at least the analysis by mission and type of optics.

- The paper needs to address and consider the possibility that the changes between images of the same area in different times is not an optical artifact, and provide evidence that this is not the case.

-In particular, from all the paper, what I think is the key observation, the one that requires more attention, and the one that has got me interested and has kept me interested in the issue, are the comparison of images from opportunity mission sols 1145 and 1148. I think the entire paper could have been focused on those images as by far the more relevant. I have asked the main author for some additional information about the images and he has so far ignored those requests, but this has not deterred my interest as one can get the images, that are publicly available, and see for oneself that is highly likely they are from the same area and that there have been significant changes in the lapse of three sols, of which the growth of the objects is the aspect that remains puzzling. One can argue that the new objects in the image were displaced there by the wind, or were already there and were dusted off by the wind. But one cant say that the notorious enlargement of the initially present objects has a wind related explanation, specially if one takes as correct the official explanation that these are mere hematite granules. Hematite granules aren’t expected to grow in the Martian surface conditions and in any case would be expected to loose size due to erosion, In sufficiently long spans of time, let alone three sols.

This remarkable observation of inexplicable growth of something already deemed as explained is what I have been trying to rescue from being lost and discarded with the rest of the less relevant observations, because this is what might strongly suggest that we are indeed in the presence of some sort of living organism.

There were also signs of thousands of black spider-like forms that grew up to 300 metres in the spring and disappeared by winter.

They said the pattern was “repeated each spring and ... may represent massive colonies of black fungi, mould, lichens, algae, methanogens and sulphur-reducing species. Black fungi-bacteria-like specimens also appeared atop the rovers.”

“Growth, movement, and changes in shape and location constitute behaviour and support the hypothesis there is life on Mars,” said the authors, who include scientists from the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics in the United States and Aston University in Britain.

Shubham Pritam , thanks for quoting from the paper, I assume all persons taking part in this discussion have read it.

I think these formations observed from orbit by the HiRISE and MRO are of great interest, but if I would have been the author, I would have done a separate analysis of them (as in another paper).

It can be at least proposed these are potential indications of life, but the exact nature of what kind of life, is a mere speculation at this point in the case of those images, and a paralell observation on Earth as reference could only serve as a comparation point.

In the case of the images taken directly on the surface by the rovers, there's more information to work with for making the comparative assesment in morphological terms.

I strongly recommend taking a look at this recently published document, it does basically the same argument than Rhawn Joseph but presented in a more comprehensive form. Experiment Findings Visual investigation of Mars rover images

Camilo and Subham

Suggest you are not in a position to insist in any regard. Your detailed pedantic tome misses the basic point as does Subham's quote.

The authors did not define life (or fungus) - they sneaked up on the claim by offering observations that looked like life.

One must define the objective by rational, testable and contextual criteria - then determine if observations satisfy. If not, they may offer additional testable criteria/questions would be appropriate for consideration.

Please recall science works with the null hypothesis. Work is design to disprove ones hypothesis - not prove it. You as a scientist should be reading the work in the same context - not joining in the process. The paper is gee whiz science - very poor - ~ 1st year grad student stuff whoever published it.

Indeed - it may be a life form. This publication does not compel to that conclusion.

Phil Geis , you keep going back to the formal aspects of the scientific method, of which we should all be very aware, but you seem to think that any publication that doesn’t follow It strictly, or loosely, or at all, is unworthy of any consideration, to which I disagree in the sense that this attitude can lead to miss a very relevant observation, albeit I have already agreed that the formal aspects of this paper are poor (and to be more specific, it is very poor).

I will insist, in spite of your disqualification of my arguments, that I am more concerned with the relevance of one particular observation. That observation alone could have been the subject of the entire paper, as it stands out as by far the more intriguing one since the null hypothesis is that these are hematite spherules (Sols 1145 vs 1148 of the opportunity mission). I would have defined the hypothesis of the paper that the observation of apparent 2 dimensional growth (and inferred 3 dimensional growth, and apparent relatively positional shifts) corresponds to the potential finding of a previously unknown living organism. Then I would proceed to analyze the lack of potential mechanisms to explain the observation following the null hypothesis. I would also consider other potential alternative abiotic hypothesis, and this, in fact, is the part of the work more sorely missing. It is obvious that is difficult to conceive a mechanism that did not require a living organism to explain the observation, and I have some leads on that sense, but they are completely novel so I prefer to keep working on them until achieving a form that I could put forward. The most obvious arguments that the differences between both sols are due to wind have already been completely disproven.

Only when failing to find an alternative abiotic explanation, since the null hypothesis is discarded almost at the onset just by the observation itself, and just then, one could begin to propose that what we are observing is possibly a living organism. Once that possibility is accepted, and only then, I would proceed to establish a potential morphological comparison with terrestrial known life forms that could lead to identify the potential kind of life form we are observing.

Damn that science - it messes up such a fun discussion.

Agree it's not science - it's editorial.

Again, insist all you want (and stomp your feet). I care not for your pique.

Fungi on mars means one thing only: There is a ready source of carbon available to support growth and nitrogen to regulate or limit metabolic activities. This is an interesting piece.

Case in point - editorial (nonscientific) speculation of the article led Maurice Ekpenyong to extrapolate wildly - means only one thing! Now we "know" the chemical composition?

So much fun when we abandon science for a good story - everyone can add their own.

Maurice Ekpenyong , at roughly 19 grams of CO2 per cubic meter (95% of the average 20 grams per cubic meter of Martian Atmosphere), finding photosynthetic organisms would be much more likely than fungi, carbon source wise.

This is something really puzzling about the assertion that these might be Fungi, because, on considering the carbon source in the soil (or rocks) where the putative “hematite spherules” have been observed, one must consider that such Carbon source should be abundant. Dr. Gilbert Levin might have provided a clue about that in one short article ( http://gillevin.com/Mars/Partially_Pregnant_as_Submitted.pdf ) where he states: “The life conclusion is supported by Curiosity’s finding of organics on Mars using wet extraction of complex organics. The heat extraction method used in all prior organic analyses of Martian materials, including those by the analytical instrument, SAM, on Curiosity, can transform or destroy some organics. Even so, organics up to 300 molecular weight have been reported by this limited method. However, the wet method can extract more highly complex organics unharmed, including molecules possibly of biological complexity, that can then be identified by SAM. Using the wet extraction method, SAM has found long-chain carboxylic acids, long-chain alcohols and functionalized aromatic compounds. These groups could include compounds found in microbial membranes. Though tantalizing, pending identification of the specific molecules, this information has not been published in a scientific journal. It has been informally disclosed by PI Carol Freissinet (to G.V. Levin, 7/7/2016, GSFC). Freissinet also said her team would perform the detailed, specific analyses “in several months.” However, as of this writing, no such results have been published.”

These apparently abundant organics might be the Carbon Source that these organisms could be using as energy source.

Right - there are fungi and therefore we must look for carbon sources.

Phil Geis , I see from your sarcasm that you don’t like any Speculation over an unproven hypothesis. I think speculation is a useful tool of exploration of new research avenues and is an important part of the scientific method, some times referred as the more elegant denomination as “thought experiments”, so I think your sarcasm is rooted in a personal preference rather than a justified methodological objection.

Dear Camilo Urbina , thank you for your weighted position. All hypotheses should be checked and I hope that it will be done.

Why is there zero spectral comparison to fungi or whatever terrestrial life form that they are claiming is also on Mars? There are also claims of extensive fungal biomass areas that can be seen from orbit. Again, where is the evidence that suggests these regions are biological vs the standard assumption of silicate/basaltic bedrocks, water ices, and dry ices that compose many of the geological regions on Mars. On Earth, we use remote sensing techniques and variables, like NDVI, to distinguish areas of obvious biomass, like vegetation, and geological outcrops. NDVI is based on the well-known observation of the so-called "red edge" observed in the spectra of chlorophyll in vegetation sources. I would anticipate a similar, but not identical, effect for any possible Martian life forms because the surface and geological chemistry is rather similar on Earth and Mars.

Image analysis alone is not convincing enough to lend credibility to the hypothesis of present-day Martian life forms. The only quantitative analysis of comparing particle sizes in the sections of "Growth of Martian mushrooms?" could easily have alternative physical scenarios. One such scenario is the smaller sediments in those image blowing across the Martian surface and re-covering the larger particles.

@ Michael Heslar Because of the Fe abundance, frequent dust storms with particles containing Fe, and high porosity of fungi, as we know them in Earth,  they are probably laden and coated with Fe2O3  (hematite). And that is why one gets the Fe spectral feature. In this case not informative. Again, the authors underline that they publish only a hypothesis. Also, there was a publication in Astrobiology about the refutation of the hematite hypothesis.

Thank you.

Camilo Urbina

Sorry if I hurt your feelings. No intention to spoil your fun, I understand scientific rigor gets in the way of wild speculation.

Carry on.

If the fungi are found on the Mars, it means that Carbon and Nitrogen are present there.

Frank T. Edelmann

Did you notice the Chinese "Advances in Microbiology" journal made up its own "impact factor" algorithm? Even that was only a little over 1.

Wonder if they'd also publish any of the above speculations.

Michael Heslar , I have wondered the same about the images taken from orbit, I haven’t delved deeper in to the subject but what Natalia S Duxbury suggests might be a defining reason. I have to check the specifics of the instruments of the MRO images and the HiRISE. I recall out of my mind that the MAVEN mission had specific spectrographic capabilities. In any case, for the orbital images your proposal is valid. To a certain extent I also think there has not been any attempt to analyze the images from that point of view, beyond the technical difficulties that the iron interference could generate, and this is because the baseline assumption is that Mars is a sterile planet. One basic methodological risk of making any assumption is that it might be precluding the observations needed to dispel the assumption, in other words, it can be a self fulfilling prophecy, or put in even other form, “you rarely find what you aren’t looking for”. I seem to recall that the MAVEN mission was able to detect Martian methane, if I Recall correctly, one of the controversial potential bio signatures found.

In the case of the direct surface images, and specifically of the images used to compose figure 8 and all related to it, I think you are overlooking that the “null hypothesis” was already set by the consensus that these are hematite granules. Figuring ways to accrete hematite in The Martian conditions is even more wild than thinking in a biological explanation. If anything, the granules could loose mass by erosion but in long time scales.

Other abiotic processes that could be imagined need also to be contrasted with the observations. So far I have trouble to find any potential mechanism that could work in the Martian predominant conditions and that could explain the observed behavior. I am thinking about some kind of process involving sequential sublimation/condensation steps involving CO2 and water vapor that could form some kind of crystalline accretion, possibly as a clathrate, but the dynamics involved would be complex and hard to assess, however one should not stop looking for an alternative abiotic mechanism, and failure to find one strengthens the case for a biological solution.

Michael Heslar , there is still a controversy raised in 2002 from spectral analysis of the Pathfinder mission, Carol Stokes from NASA Ames RC found chlorophyll signatures. There’s an abstract that attest to this fact (page 162 on the following document) and there is, also, unfortunately, a long standing rumor that a publication submitted of this work was forced to be withdrawn (controversy started by no other than Dr. Gilbert Levin).

This would be an example that when you look for something specific, you risk finding it.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/2FAC575C495D5304E634BBDE1795FFAE/S147355040200112Xa.pdf/abstracts_from_the_second_astrobiology_science_conference.pdf

Albeit I am not particularly fond of accepting without further review the possibility that the potential life forms identified in the work of Joseph et al are indeed Fungi (tough they present strong evidence for making the case that many of the observations are indications of some, yet to be determined, life forms), I think this paper published in "Mycologia" Article Beyond the extremes: Rocks as ultimate refuge for fungi in drylands

Camilo Urbina

Observations of fungal extemophiles on Earth does not provide very convincing evidence for their existence on Mars. Why do you think extremophiles 'adapted" to the relevant environment?

Try think as a scientist would. What protocol would directly substantiate the hypothesis. No pile of tangential information (from another planet) will satisfy.

Phil Geis , before answering your last comment, can I ask you what is your position regarding the origin of life on Earth? I need to understand this in order to be able to assess your comment.

From my perspective, the idea that life originated on Earth is still theory. It is the most widespread assumption that it did, but even Darwin discussed the possibility of an extraterrestrial origin ( https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/history-of-geology/charles-darwin-and-the-early-search-for-extraterrestrial-life/ ). Even if we accept as an underlying assumption that the origin of life is intrinsic to Earth, the possibility of Interplanetary seeding of life within the solar system is also an active field of research. Astrobiologist Charles Cockell from Edinburg University has collected and produced experimental evidence to support that microbial life could survive in space and survive an atmospheric re entry. His proposal of the idea of Lithopanspermia is well documented, so the possibility that, by means of meteoric impacts, some of Earth‘s early life may have seeded Mars and survived and continued to adapt to those conditions, and thus be phylogenetically related, is a valid hypothesis.

Panspermia is but one of the concept. Whether that, deep earth, hydrothermal vent, some version of Miller-Urey, etc., none rises to the level of a scientific theory and each struggles to define life. Tho' dated - I like Hazen's reviews/discussions on the subject.

You certainly fail to understand the concept of validation. A conceptual "possibility" that "may have" done anything is just an educated fantasy.

But enough of your pedantic red herring. My concern is the eager stretch to extremophiles as supporting the mold on mars (non-scientific) theory. Critical thinking that demands support for new concepts is the substance of science. Eager enlistment extrapolating to additional fantasy may be fun, but retards understanding. Thiunk you can see this looking back at thre Miller-Urey record.

After being called pedantic (first time in my life) while at the same time the person making that statement is applying the derogative qualification of “educated fantasies”’ to the work of many respectable researchers, I think we have learnt enough of certain positions to insist in trying to get any useful insight from those interactions.

Coming back to the issue of the proposal by Vadym Slyusar of finding ways of applying AI to the analysis of the images from Mars, and as one of the main contentions about any assessment based solely on morphology is that it needs to provide a compositional (chemical / molecular) analysis of the features being identified as of biological origin, and considering that IMHO the images that offer the most potential for the identification of life forms are monochromatic, I wonder if it would be possible to reconstruct with the help of AI, starting from the monochromatic images available from the opportunity mission, enough spectroscopic data to be able to identify the main elemental components of the objects visible in the images.

A few tens of minutes spent on browsing for any prior art did not give me the impression of this being something thoroughly researched beyond the colorization of black and white movies, or having even been attempted for identifying elemental or molecular compositions, but I think such a method could help shed much more light on the nature of the observed objects. I am curious, tough, to know if such spectroscopic analysis has been performed by the authors of the paper ”Fungi on Mars” in the color images already available, specially thinking on the fact that NASA already attempted, and succeeded, albeit did not persist into it, nor retracted the finding, to identify chlorophyll in some of the images of Pathfinder mission, as already discussed some posts ago in this space.

Reviewing the literature around spectroscopy of the “blueberries” I have found a very interesting reference that might explain the appearance of new blueberries between images. As I have said before in pr comments, one has to strive to find alternative hypothesis to explain the observations and this is an abiotic explanation of the appearance of newer blueberries is satisfactory from an abiotic point of view. It also disagrees with the consensus that the blueberries are concretions formed in presence of water. This abiotic explanation of the blueberries can be read here:

Chapter Hematite Spherules on Mars

I will let you see it.

As interesting as I find this abiotic explanation, it still fails to meet one of the aspects observed in the changes between images of sols 1145 and 1148: the apparent growth of the blueberries. It also fails to address the observation of blueberries with “stems“, or “peduncle“. Any alternative hypothesis needs to explain all the observed phenomena and not a subset of it. This alternative model also challenges the null hypothesis stablished by consensus.

I had overlooked a very relevant fact for the topic of this discussion that is found in the reference

Stoker, R. A., and P. Ashwanden(2002), Search for spectral signatures of life at the Pathfinder landing site, paper presented at Second Astrobiology Science Conference, NASA Ames Res. Cent., Moffett Field, Calif., 7 – 11 April .

That search was performed by automated methods!

As the Superpan instrument cam of the Pathfinder mission had no software for search of biological signatures, but had multispectral capabilities, the images were downloaded and processed by software given certain criteria and only after that first filter the analysis was done in more detail.

“We have performed an automated search of the Superpan image cubes for the spectral signature associated with chlorophyll. First, images were calibrated to radiance values and then the multispectral images were co-registered to subpixel accuracy. An automated pixel-to-pixel search was performed on a three-filter set of images (530, 670, 980 nm) to identify pixels where the following condition was met : 530 nm 􏰂 670 nm and 980 nm􏰂670 nm.”

This is how they found the signature of Chlorophyll around the landing area of the Pathfinder mission.

Thank you, Camilo Urbina , your information regarding the conference paper (2002) about the spectral signature associated with chlorophyll is very important.

I think that the capabilities of such automated methods can be expanded on the basis of new results in Neural network practices. In any case, such Neural network should be has a multi-channels structure with a combination of original pictures and of the multi-spectral images of them as input data. Unfortunately , I found only abstract of Stoker, R. A., and P. Ashwanden(2002) conference paper:

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/2FAC575C495D5304E634BBDE1795FFAE/S147355040200112Xa.pdf/abstracts_from_the_second_astrobiology_science_conference.pdf

I would very much like to find this paper.

Vadym Slyusar , that makes two of us, I am seriously considering that the only way to get it will be filing a FOIA request. I am also querying the main author of a paper that quoted it in hopes he might be able to share a copy.

I agree that the computational methods and the use of neural networks and AI could greatly enhance and expand the survey of the images. That’s why I think this paper is very relevant, and is puzzling that is so hard to find.

Dear Camilo Urbina it is a good idea! But I think that querying the main authors of a paper will be a more effective way.

I also queried her, hope she responds.

Dear Camilo Urbina , Unfortunately, Carol R. Stoker has removed this abstract from her publication list: https://www.nasa.gov/content/carol-stoker

https://spacescience.arc.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/CV-full-2009.pdf

I found on the few Internet forums that the information about abstract 2002 was withdrawn authors. In any case, we should wait for her answer.

Dear Vadym Slyusar , I haven’t heard back from Dr. Stoker, but did hear back from the researcher that quoted her, and she had used the same abstract you found. About the idea that the paper was withdrawn, I think of it that it wasn‘t really withdrawn but is simply not acknowledged, as the abstract is still available. The reasons for the lack of endorsement may be many, Dr. Levin thinks it was on purpose to conceal it from the public but I am not so sure, and in anyway it’s sad that is not available because the methods employed are of great interest for our discussion here.

Thank you, Camilo Urbina !

Camilo Urbina

Dear Camilo, where can I find the abstract by Dr. Stoker?

Both upper links are her Resume.

Thank you,

Natalia S Duxbury here is the link https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/2FAC575C495D5304E634BBDE1795FFAE/S147355040200112Xa.pdf/abstracts_from_the_second_astrobiology_science_conference.pdf

it’s at the bottom of page 162.

"Spectral signatures of life" are not life and this is irrelevant to the article addressed in this discussion.

I'll remind folks this is an abstract - not a peer-reviewed document.

Suggest folks think like scientists - not excited adolescents. In this, you might consider the challenge offered by the Benson abstract from the same link - Generalized and universalized definition of life

I found the paper linked at the end of this comment a couple of days ago when looking for citations of Dr. Stoker‘s 2002 conference paper. But I quickly realized this paper is very relevant to our conversation as it deals with the issue of how research teams using a rover approached the remote search of life in the Atacama desert. I live in the city of Arica, which is in the septentrional part of the Atacama desert, and which is a natural laboratory of adaptation of life to extreme conditions, as this area is considered hyper arid, and some parts of the desert are considered some of the most Mars like analog environments on Earth (along with Antartica).

The paper analyses cases where the rovers used in the Atacama desert actually detected life (either current or past), with the same kind of tools that the Mars rovers have, and the same decision making protocols for remote exploration. Some of the findings were even serendipitous, which is interesting as the human decision making of the exploration team is revealed to be a very significant part of the process. The difference is that all these findings were confirmed by going to the site afterwards of the remote exploration and retrieving samples, which is what we can’t do in Mars.

edit to add: This paper also provides corroborating references for the finding of chlorophyll by spectroscopic methods by Dr. Stoker in the Atacama desert, also later confirmed by sampling the site initially found remotely.

Article Life in the Atacama: Searching for life with rovers (science overview)

Relevant? In fact - it is not. Search for life on Earth is confirmatory and the article discussed here re. fungi on Mars did not use this approach but relied on authors' interpretation of images.

“Previous rover field experiments in Mars analogue terrains focused on the methods and payloads to characterize past geology and climate as precursors to the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) mission as the goal of the MER mission was to understand if past environmental conditions on Mars were suitable for life [e.g., Squyres et al., 2003]. Neither previous terrestrial rover field experiments [e.g., Wettergreen et al., 1997; Stoker et al., 2001; Cabrol et al., 2001a, 2001b; Arvidson et al., 2002; Jolliff et al., 2002; Moersch et al., 2002; Stoker et al., 2002; Stoker and Ashwanden, 2002] nor the MER mission [Crisp et al., 2003; Squyres et al., 2003, 2004a, 2004b] were designed to search for life directly. However in a few instances, during experiments in terrestrial analogues to Mars, remote science teams stumbled onto life. In 1997, the science team using the rover Nomad in the Atacama Desert remotely detected a putative fossil [Cabrol et al., 2001a], although the rover had visible imaging but no multispectral or microscopic capabilities. The remote scientists proposed three hypotheses that could explain the origin of the rock, one of them being a biogenic hypothesis which was based solely on morphological evidence from visible imagery and was not conclusive. The rock was manually collected and returned to the laboratory where fossils were found during the microscopic analysis of thin sections [Cabrol et al., 2001b]. This finding was not entirely serendipitous since the remote science team directed the rover to a specific outcrop following a scientific rationale built upon previous observations. However the rock was sampled under an inaccurate assumption and the discovery was essentially the result of a speculative process not a deliberate life-seeking strategy.”

Vadym Slyusar , Got feedback from Dr. Stoker, she confirms the abstract corresponds to a poster presentation, and that there’s no paper as such, and that it was found at the time that the apparent identification of the chlorophyll was an artifact. I don’t feel free to share her entire answer here but I followed up her answer with the clarification that we are more interested in the automation of the process for use with the existing database and implementation through AI/ML.

As Mars is very similar to earth. Also discussed by astrologer that earth and mars are twins. Earth and Mars both have similar climatic condition, this might have gave rise to develop fungi on mars.

Thank you Camilo Urbina ! Your contribution to this discussion is very productive.

Dear Dr. Mohit Agarwal , I agree with your opinion. Proof that Mars is very similar to Earth is a successful flight helicopter on Mars.

Thanks to you Vadym Slyusar for asking the question that has allowed this discussion. It’s a deeply fascinating topic. It has led me to find much more relevant and related information, also.

It also motivated me to find the original sources for the widely held consensus about the composition of the so called “blueberries”, and I discovered, not without surprise, that this consensus is much more an interpretation than a fact, and that the original sources did not analyze specifically the blueberries but areas where they were present. I also learnt that the instrument used for the analysis that detected hematite (Mossbauer effect spectroscopy) is specific for mineralogical and geologic studies hence the interpretation of the readings is from that perspective, if they had analyze something alive with these instruments, the data still was analyzed with the underlying assumption that all that was being analyzed was minerals. Other instruments used for analysis of the sites with abundant blueberries also did not specifically target the blueberries in isolation, but areas where they were present so the composition is averaged with the context substrate that is known to be rich in iron oxides, and the Alpha particle X ray spectrometer did detect consistently FeO in levels above 10%, up to 17%, but hematite is Fe2O3 so I wonder why the conclusion that it was indeed hematite. Carbon was not reported by the APXS analysis, tho, but as the instruments in the rovers that undertook these tasks were specifically designed to look for evidence of past life and not current life, I wonder If Carbon was even looked for, certainly the APXS technique can detect carbon as element, but I still don’t know if the analysis was performed in a way that it could have detected it or if even was part of the protocol by which the data was analyzed. These questions are not addressed in The original sources from which the hematite consensus arose, so I still don’t know why everyone assumed that the blueberries were simply hematite concretions.

There are other facts that have led to question the idea of the granules being even concretions as the consensus dictates,

as the hypothesis I mentioned in one of the comments to the article, that proposes the idea that the granules are of meteoritic origin, or said in other words, that they are melted and reformed drops of iron that survive re entry on a much less dense atmosphere, hypothesis based on the observation that the blueberries are mostly found within 1.5 cm of the surface and not deeper, and also in the observation that new “blueberries” appear in images of the same surface area separated by a few sols, but even the proposers of this interesting hypothesis are quoting the original sources for the assumption of the iron rich composition of the blueberries, so we again get back to be drawing conclusions based on an original work that has been interpreted in a manner rather than confirmed to be true.

Thanks a lot for your complement respected sir @ Vadym Slyusar

Dear Camilo Urbina , your question regarding Carbon is very interesting.

Vadym Slyusar , I was really intrigued and decided to get to the source of the hematite claims, 2 papers published on Science in 2004, and read them with detail, so I was amazed that Carbon was absent in the analyses.

Now, I think everyone reading this will be interested in this recent article :

Article Tracing a modern biosphere on Mars

I think this is very encouraging!!!

Natalia S Duxbury , you might enjoy taking a look at the paper posted by Nathalie Cabriol (pasted link in previous comment) in Nature Astronomy, she is advocating for the idea that if life was ever present in Mars‘s past is highly likely it never ceased to be, as what they have learnt from life in extreme environments on Earth is that is found everywhere it can be. She is urging for a final push to confirm life on Mars before crews arrive there. I think is very relevant and Rhawn Joseph and other of your co authors might gain more visibility due to this new almost admission of certainty of life on Mars.

There is a hypothesis about mushroom/blueberries/haematite, and the process of the growth of mushrooms (appearance and disappearance) in the Gale crater is questionable. Finally, we need to consider the objective classification of the AI shot images by Curiosity and Opportunity.

Another thought is, are they even anything Earth-like growth or totally Martian. There can be a high possibility that this is totally an inorganic Martian phenomenon or possibly a wonderous Martian life indeed. Unless we further investigate the objectively with improved techniques of computer vision. Any conclusion as to how comparable it is to Earth-based growth or phenomena is not ideal. The idea of finding life is indeed exciting, but the evidence is equally significant. Earth and Mars are informational twins, yet even twins have their own unique nature due to their possible orbits.

Thank you for your question. The discussion is interesting!

Thank you, Raksha Kammandore Ravi . I know that your country has a big potential for Mars investigation and in the area of AI classification of any images.

Thank you to Vadym Slyusar for starting this interesting discussion on the Martian fungi hypothesis. I believe my counties, India and Australia, and all the other world nations can grow to be technically strong nation and explore the cosmos better. However, we also need to focus on now not limiting ourselves to understanding life as what we see on Earth but rather reaching a perspective that life could thrive on non-Earth like conditions and be totally alienish.

Raksha Kammandore Ravi , thanks for joining the discussion. You bring an interesting perspective. I agree that the authors of “Fungi on Mars? “ took a biased approach when focusing the discussion of the potential identification of a living organism on Mars, while loosing of sight the relevance of determining if its indeed life on the first place. The comparative morphology presented is not without base, tho, but I would have preferred presented as a point of comparison instead of making the morphology a basis for speculative Classification attempt.

I also agree that is a major bias to attempt to find life “as we know it”. However, I want to point out that the origin of life is still an open question mark, and the idea that life has started abiogenically wherever it could, remains an hypothesis. On the other hand, the much less known hypothesis that life has a cosmic origin is also an open question mark and the evidence gathered in its favor has been highly questioned. I have analyzed some of the most controversial findings of unambiguous diatom remains in meteorite samples, a subject in which Dr. Richard Hoover has published extensively, and also have analyzed the assumptions made to dispel this evidence as simple contamination of the samples with terrestrial organisms. I have come out with the certainty that the attempts of discredit this evidence are entirely based in the assumption that “is impossible that these diatoms are not from Earth”, but a total failure to explain how these became embedded deeply in the mineral matrix of a solid non porous and well known chondriaceous meteorite, where they only could have arrived by some kind of “teleportation”. These diatoms have been found in fresh fractures of the samples, not in already exposed surfaces, and are also found deeply embedded, not loosely attached,

hence the contamination in the lab, which is the last resort of the deniers, is also easy to rule out.

All this is to weight your argument about not attempting to find similarities between life on Earth and Mars, which could be also a misplaced assumption if one considers the possibility that life has a cosmic origin hence it adapts an evolves specifically to each place where it finds proper conditions, but therefore all life could be related by that common ancestry.

a be

Dear Colleagues!

Many thanks for this discussion and Vadym Slyusar for creating it. I would like to speak about the prospects for using AI in this topic, but I will write about it in another comment.

Since you are mostly talking about a recent article, I would like to say a few words about it. In fact, this study is controversial. At first sight, the arguments presented by the authors of this work seem convincing to us. In my opinion, we are still far from the discovery. First of all, with almost 100% probability it cannot be fungi. The fact is that the ecological role of fungi is in the processing of organic matter - they are decomposers, so their existence is impossible without high organic matter. Of course, there are also parasitic fungi, for example, "black fungi", which were discussed in one of the articles sent by Camilo Urbina, but we again stumble upon the fact that other organic matter is needed for their life, even if it is life organism 😉. As we do not observe the organisms necessary for the vital activity of fungi on Mars, it is too loud to assert that it is fungi.

It is quite nice, including for me, to hear suggestions that these may be lichens. In fact, lichens are stress tolerant organisms. As stated in the works of the Russian lichenologist Byazrov, lichens can be indicators of radioactive contamination, so, they can stand high levels of radiation. Also, lichens are perfectly adapted to exist on inorganic substrates. One of the facts that destroys the hypothesis that it could be lichens is the growth that researchers observe (talking ‘bout pictures of 1145 and 1148 sols). Lichens grow very slowly (the average rate is 1-2 mm per month), and in arid regions, in conditions of an almost complete absence of moisture, it may not exist at all (by the way, which is also true for fungi). Therefore, the rapid growth, which is allegedly observed by researchers, in Martian conditions can in no way occur with lichens, and even more so with fungi. I think there is a quite simple explanation for this growth - it can be a simple wind activity that “exposes” any rocks or minerals.

I look at this situation as a lichen researcher and in the beginning I was really happy with this article, but after reading it I realized that it is not yet convincing enough. I believe we need more experimental data. Partially we are doing this at the Institute of Geochemistry and Analytical Chemistry of the Russian Academy of Sciences and at the Faculty of Ecology of the RUDN University, but so far the short time of accumulation of experimental data, rather unclear results due to the complexity of the experiment and difficult conditions do not allow us to present these results, but I am sure that soon we will be able to publish them and make any conclusions about the feasibility of the hypothesis presented in this work.

Many thanks for reading my message!

Thank you Daniil Mironov ! Your input to this discussion gives a new and interesting point of view. We will wait for your results.

According to Shubham Pritam

They said the pattern was “repeated each spring and ... may represent massive colonies of black fungi, mould, lichens, algae, methanogens and sulphur-reducing species. Black fungi-bacteria-like specimens also appeared atop the rovers.”

“Growth, movement, and changes in shape and location constitute behaviour and support the hypothesis there is life on Mars,” said the authors, who include scientists from the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics in the United States and Aston University in Britain.

Here is my new commentary on the subject for your knowledge:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/353116997_Fossils_on_Mars_A_Brief_Review_of_the_Evidence

and it's been largely dismissed as BS

https://www.cnet.com/science/sorry-nasa-photos-are-not-evidence-of-fungus-growing-on-mars/

Phil Geis , The opinion of a scientific journalist is hardly proof of anything.

@Camilo Urbina

Let me help you. "Proof" is required for the phenomenon - not its absence. Science works with the null hypothesis - assuming the phenomenon does NOT exist and that compelling data are required to change that presumption. The article correctly notes the failure of proof.

If you were a scientist - you would know this.

So PROVE it Camilo.

Same author and in the same questionable journal from "cosmology.com", comes more BS - Article A High Probability of Life Mars: The Consensus of 70 Experts...

Tells us a at length bunch of unidentified "experts" said there's very probably life on mars.

All this fantasy is from Rhawn Gabriel Joseph, a "neuroscientist" who's had other fantasies articles about life on other planets retracted https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10509-019-3678-x.pdf

Think he's working around the solar system seeing if anything sticks.

and we have this - Preprint Sterilization Failure and Fungal Contamination of Mars and N...