A self-proclaimed astrobiologist has filed a petition for a writ of mandamus against NASA and NASA Chief Administrator Charles Bolden, seeking to compel it to investigate possible alien life on Mars (h/t). If you have access to the PACER online database, you can access the court file here, but the complaint is also available on Scribd.

Remember when a mysterious rock appeared in front of Opportunity, the rover that has been tooling around Mars for over a decade? It led to a bit of wild speculation as to how it might have gotten there, but scientists tend to take a cautious approach when forming hypotheses.

For one Rhawn Joseph, Ph.D., however, NASA scientists are not speculating nearly wildly enough. He saw the picture of the rock and thought it looked familiar, since (begin sarcasm) an object on Mars will obviously have immediate analogues here on Earth. He claims that he:

immediately recognized that bowl-shaped structure…as resembling a mushroom-like fungus, a composite organism consisting of colonies of lichen and cyanobacteria, and which on Earth is known as Apothecium.

Then he magnified an earlier picture of the same area, saw what he claims are spores, which would grow into an apothecium, and so on. NASA apparently did not come to the same conclusion right away, so he filed a pro se lawsuit seeking a writ of mandamus, by which a court would compel NASA to, um, investigate or something. It would involve “close up photos from various angles” and “microscopic images of the specimen,” for a start. Continue reading →