Glassy Martian Rock Fungus
The following pictures represents a "Colony of Martians" that I removed from
the Frass Meteorite. This colony
is
representative of colonies that I have found in almost every crack and cranny of
the rock. Even when I took a core sample and removed material from the very most
interior, these creatures were there. They appear to live without light or
liquid water. The picture was taken with a toy microscope so the quality
is not very good. This picture was probably taken in 1996 or 1997.
Look on the left side at the "rock" in the photograph and then at the density
of the fibers in the right side of the picture. Since there is evidence that
Mars hasn't had much water for a while, I decided to add some water to the
"rock" above. The rock melted!
The picture below was taken more recently and represents the "growth" that has
occurred after about two years
Also note that the "rock" melted into what looks like silicon glue. This is the
exact same "rock" as in the picture above. It has been stuck to the Petri disk
every since the day I put four drops of water on it.
When I first placed the water on this colony, I carefully examined the ring of
material you see attached to the Petri dish. There were none of the little
"glassies" on it at that time. Now the entire surface shows indications that the
glassies are growing and doing OK here on planet Earth.
This next picture was taken January 5th, 1999. If you look carefully at the
"lines" that go across the clear bottom
part, you can see that these things have grown since the picture above, which
was taken a number of months before. I don't have enough Petri dishes and so I
have had to store other particles in the same dish and now they have stuck to
the glassies, because they are "sticky " little creatures.
In August of 2000, I sent this colony to Daryl Adams, after he requested
material to evaluate. This colony is the
same
one mentioned above and was in a Petri dish. I sealed the dish by placing
scotch tape around the edges. After finally threatening a lawsuit, I got this
sample back yesterday (January 8, 2001). I carefully examined the Petri dish, I
don't think this one was ever opened. So this colony has sat in his office for
almost a year and a half. The colony seems to be about double the size it was
when I sent it to him. On the left side, you can see a whole glob of material
that wasn't there before. These things are clearly growing, and apparently
without liquid water or light.
The colony is currently very dense. Here is a microscopic view of the same colony taken at about 45 power. I will try to take another overview of the entire colony in the next few days and post it here.
Below are additional pictures of the glassies, although not the same colony as above.
