Free Astronomy Magazine March-April 2015

D etailed repre- sentation of the fossils struc- tures recognized by Noffke on Mars. These are mainly exfolia- tions and crum- ple-ups of the original biological matter, which would have then fossilized follow- ing the drying up of the planet. On the left, a comparison be- tween conforma- tions found on Mars and micro- bial mats that thrive at Bahar Alouane, Tunisia. [NASA/JPL-Cal- tech/MSSS, Nora Noffke] in terrestrial MISS that over time show specific changes. We are thus faced with what appear to be organized structures in spatial associations and in temporal suc- cessions, and finding them on the Martian surface exactly where they should be, along with a series of features that reproduce those of similar land formations, would make likely their biological origin. If this were not the case, it would be necessary to presume a sequence of curious coinci- dences, as the only alternative would be the one that sees water-based erosion proces- sufficiently convincing. And in fact there is more. The terrestrial MISS vary over time according to very specific modalities as the layers of bio-sediments gradually form, grow, dry up, crack and repeat the cycle as they re-grow, consistently with the envi- ronmental conditions. Besides, Nora Noffke has also found that, in addition to their similarities from the macroscopic morphological viewpoint, the substructures of the potential Martians MISS showed a non-random distribution pattern, corresponding to that observable