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Updated May 23rd, 2021 at 20:18 IST

Mars mushrooms? Here are unexplainable incidents that could be signs of alien existence

The latest study on extraterrestrial life has found evidence for mushroom-like life forms on the surface of Mars. Here are four other signs of aliens.

Reported by: Aanchal Nigam
alien life
IMAGE: Pixabay/NASA | Image:self
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The latest study on extraterrestrial life has found evidence for mushroom-like life forms on the surface of Mars. As per The Conversation article, the peculiar features of the Red Planet are ‘well known’ and have been discovered by cameras aboard NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity, shortly after it landed back in 2004. Even though the  “haematite concretions” are non-living creatures and their origin is debatable, they are not the first claim of alien life. The research stated, “although similarities in morphology are not proof of life, growth, movement, and changes in shape and location constitute behaviour and support the hypothesis there is life on Mars.”

Mushroom-like structures on Mars. (Credits: NASA)

Four unproven claims that support existence of aliens

Fossiled worms

The “mushrooms” on Mars are not the first indication of life in a planet other than Earth. Back on August 7, 1996, the US President at the time, Bill Clinton had announced the possibility of scientists discovering the ancient, fossils remains of micro-organisms in a meteorite that had been recovered from Antarctica in 1984. He made the declaration about the meteorite, ALH 84001, from the White House.

ALH 84001 is one of the handfuls of rocks that humans have received from Mars as they were blasted off the surface of the Red Planet due to volcanic eruptions or meteorite impacts and drifted through space for millions of years and eventually ending up on Earth. The tiny ‘worm-like’ structures inside the otherworldly mass, even though debatable, are likely to be billions of years old. Even now, their origin is not known to the researchers but several experts have noted that inorganic processes are quite capable of producing structures that resemble living organisms.

High resolution image of those structures (Credits: NASA)

Peculiar gases

In addition to the fossiled worms, in the 1970s, NASA’s Viking robotic landers carried a range of experiments that were designed to test the Martian soil for the presence of microorganisms. In the study,  small samples of the Martian soil were chemically treated as the scientists added nutrients containing radioactive carbon-14. In theory, this move should be absorbed by any growing organism and then leading to their multiplication. Hence, carbon-14 should be “breathed out” with time indicating a rise in concentration.

Following the chemical analyses, each soil sample was steadily heated to destroy any microbes. Notably, that particular experiment did show a steady increase in carbon-14 over time which was indeed terminated after heating to above the boiling point of water. Most recently, tiny amounts of methane have been found in the Martian atmosphere.

US detected an unexplainable radio signal

In 1977, the Ohio State University's Big Ear radio telescope in the United States detected an unexplainable radio signal while scanning the sky. However, the signal only lasted for a few minutes but it was high-powered and detected over a narrow range of frequencies. Since then, the exact signal, as The Conversation, has not been detected again despite the frequent surveys of the same portion of the sky. The event has been registered in history as ‘Wow! Signal’ received on August 15, 1977.

 

The Wow! signal from 1977, as discovered by astronomer Jerry R. Ehman (Credits:  Big Ear Radio Observatory and North American AstroPhysical Observatory (NAAPO)

Tabby’s Star

Located 1,480 light-years away from earth, the star officially called ‘Tabetha “Tabby” Boyajian’ showed irregular dimming prompting analysts to mull the possibility of an alien structure. Just last year, astronomers in the US have resolved the mystery of bizarrely dimming Boyajian’s star saying that the alien megastructure was not alone. In the study published in the Astrophysical Journal, researchers led by Logan Pearce revealed that “Tabby” was not alone when it came to mysterious fluctuations but there were other stars that showed similar behaviour.

Analyzing the data from NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope, researchers had many times found the star dimming up by up to 22 per cent. Several researchers argued that it was due to an alien megastructure that was built to capture light. While there were multiple explanations, there was no solid evidence to support any of them. A new study author Edward Schmidt, an astrophysicist at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, suggests that there are more than a dozen stars like Boyajian's star.

Artists representation of Tabby's star (Credits: NASA)

IMAGE: Pixabay/NASA

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Published May 23rd, 2021 at 20:18 IST

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