By David Kittredge
By David Kittredge
Recent faulty analysis of a scientific paper and photographs sent back to Earth by the Curiosity Rover from the planet Mars by media organizations have falsely speculated that pictured spherical objects were fungi which resemble the puff ball mushrooms that are found on our planet.
Some earthly puffball mushrooms are edible and, when fully matured, are an old remedy for stopping up nosebleeds when the spore is inhaled. If these existed, I would not suggest that any future astronauts try these other worldly shrooms in efforts to cure any ailments due to the fact that their brains could be turned into a soupy undulating mush, or some such reaction.
Martian soil is considered to be toxic, and thus incapable of supporting life, which contains high levels of chorine like substance. Another drawback for life existing on the Red Planet is due to high levels of radiation from solar flares with its thin atmosphere which provides little protection from Sun’s radiational bombardments. Dust storms on Mars are frequent, pushed by seventy miles an hour winds, which are negligible as compared to the windspeeds on other planets, even ours, but factored in with the Martian gravity, which is about twenty five percent of that on Earth, objects are moved much more easily. These particles considered to be mushrooms could merely be just rounded off stones that have been flung about and eroded by the Martian dust storms over the eons of time.
Meanwhile, back at our earthly oasis, there is another quandary being pondered which concerns equipment that has been launched and landed on Mars. It seems that no matter how deftly our instruments were cleansed by NASA, the possibility of microbial stowaways on said equipment to Mars is likely. So, in essence, if there is life on Mars, we humans may have introduced it there ourselves through an act of panspermia.
Hopefully, while our camera was shooting snaps of the Martian environment, no earthly microbes jumped ship.
If there are lifeforms in our galaxy, lower or otherwise, it was likely sprinkled there or landed there by us, unintentionally or not. Remember the tardigrades that crash landed on the moon, that I wrote of in an earlier column? Harkening back to the old television show, “To Tell the Truth,” I ask, “Will the real alien please stand up?”
We started building the large arrays of radio telescopes back in the early 1970s, to scan the universe for sounds and signs for alien life. And guess what? No one or no thing has ever sent us so much as a peep, a garbled syllable of any communication. Yes, sounds have been heard, probably from young evolving stars with indigestion, burping emissions of gaseous substances or perhaps the sounds of distant galaxies crashing against one another. But no, E.T. has yet to drop us a line, even on our dime.
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