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Life From Space? (Panspermia; Lithopanspermia)

Life's Building Blocks Are Common In Space

Life's Building Blocks Are Common In Space



A team of NASA exobiology researchers revealed today organic chemicals that play a crucial role in the chemistry of life are common in space.
"Our work shows a class of compounds that is critical to biochemistry is prevalent throughout the universe," said Douglas Hudgins, an astronomer at NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif. He is principal author of a study detailing the team's findings that appears in the Oct. 10 issue of the Astrophysical Journal.

Image: NASA Spitzer Space Telescope image of the spiral galaxy M81, located some 12 million light years from Earth. The infrared radiation emitted by polycyclic nitrogen-containing aromatic hydrocarbon (PANH) molecules is shown in red. This emission is excited by star (and planet) formation along the edges of the spiral arms.

"NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has shown complex organic molecules called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are found in every nook and cranny of our galaxy. While this is important to astronomers, it has been of little interest to astrobiologists, scientists who search for life beyond Earth. Normal PAHs aren't really important to biology," Hudgins said. "However, our work shows the lion's share of the PAHs in space also carry nitrogen in their structures. That changes everything."

"Much of the chemistry of life, including DNA, requires organic molecules that contain nitrogen," said team member Louis Allamandola, an astrochemist at Ames. "Chlorophyll, the substance that enables photosynthesis in plants, is a good example of this class of compounds, called polycyclic aromatic nitrogen heterocycles, or PANHs. Ironically, PANHs are formed in abundance around dying stars. So even in death, the seeds of life are sewn," Allamandola said.

The NASA team studied the infrared "fingerprint" of PANHs in laboratory experiments and with computer simulations to learn more about infrared radiation that astronomers have detected coming from space. They used data from the European Space Agency's Infrared Space Observatory satellite.

Source: NASA

http://www.physorg.com/news7159.html
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Lichen Survives In Space

Lichen Survives In Space

Electron microscopic image of lichen following post-flight analysis. The cells are complete and not broken.
Noordwijk, Holland (SPX) Nov 09, 2005
One of the main focuses in the search for living organisms on other planets and the possibilities for transfer of life between planets currently centres on bacteria, due to the organisms simplicity and the possibility of it surviving an interplanetary journey exposed to the harsh space environment.
This focus may develop to encompass more advanced organisms following the results of an ESA experiment on the recent Foton-M2 mission where it was discovered that lichens are very adept at surviving in open space.

Lichens are not actually single organisms but an association of millions of algal cells, which cooperate in the process of photosynthesis and are held in a fungal mesh. The algal cells and the fungus have a symbiotic relationship, with the algal cells providing the fungus with food and the fungus providing the alga with a suitable living environment for growth.

Lichens are well known extremophiles, being able to survive the harshest environments on Earth. The most striking element of the finding is the complexity of this organism: it is multicellular, it is macroscopic and it is a eukaryote, meaning that on the evolutionary scale it is a much more modern organism than bacteria. In fact lichens can be considered as very simple ecosystems.

The experiment which took place during the Foton mission was called ‘Lichens' and was one of the exobiology experiments that was located in the ESA Biopan facility. This exposure facility was located on the outer shell of the Foton return module and, once at the correct orbital altitude, opened to exposure the samples inside to open space, i.e. exposed to vacuum, wide fluctuations of temperature, the complete spectrum of solar UV light and bombarded with cosmic radiation.

During the Foton-M2 mission, which was launched into low-Earth orbit on 31 May 2005, the lichens, which came from two different species (Rhizocarpon geographicum and Xanthoria elegans) were exposed for a total 14.6 days before being returned to Earth. At the conclusion of the mission the lid of Biopan was closed to protect the lichens from the conditions of reentry. The Biopan was thereafter transported back to ESA ‘s research facility, ESTEC, in Noordwijk, the Netherlands to be opened.

The results of the experiment were presented by one of the experiment team members, Dr. Rosa de la Torre from the Spanish Aerospace Research Establishment (INTA) in Madrid, at a post-flight review in October at ESTEC. Initial conclusions of the experiment, which is under the scientific leadership of Prof.

Leopoldo Sancho from the Complutense University of Madrid, indicate that lichens have the capacity to resist full exposure to the harsh space conditions, especially high levels of UV radiation. Analysis post flight showed a full rate of survival and an unchanged ability for photosynthesis.

This experiment opens up many possibilities for future research into the possibility of transfer of life between planets. Follow up experiments could focus on questions such as to what extent lichen, if transported by a meteorite, can survive the reentry conditions into Earth's atmosphere, i.e. what degree of shielding would be needed for lichen samples to survive?

The outcome of this Biopan experiment also suggests that lichens might survive at the surface of Mars. Follow-up experiments on ground and in space are bound to provide further answers to these intriguing astrobiological questions.


http://www.spacedaily.com/news/life-05zzzzzzzr.html
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Skepticism greets claim of possible alien microbes

Jan. 5, 2006
Special to World Science

A paper to appear in a scientific journal claims a strange red rain might have dumped microbes from space onto Earth four years ago.

But the report is meeting with a shower of skepticism from scientists who say extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof—and this one hasn’t got it.

The scientists agree on two points, though. The things look like cells, at least superficially. And no one is sure what they are.

“These particles have much similarity with biological cells though they are devoid of DNA,” wrote Godfrey Louis and A. Santhosh Kumar of Mahatma Gandhi University in Kottayam, India, in the controversial paper.

“Are these cell-like particles a kind of alternate life from space?”

The mystery began when the scarlet showers containing the red specks hit parts of India in 2001. Researchers said the particles might be dust or a fungus, but it remained unclear.

The new paper includes a chemical analysis of the particles, a description of their appearance under microscopes and a survey of where they fell. It assesses various explanations for them and concludes that the specks, which vaguely resemble red blood cells, might have come from a meteor.

A peer-reviewed research journal, Astrophysics and Space Science, has agreed to publish the paper. The journal sometimes publishes unconventional findings, but rarely if ever ventures into generally acknowledged fringe science such as claims of extraterrestrial visitors.

If the particles do represent alien life forms, said Louis and Kumar, this would fit with a longstanding theory called panspermia, which holds that life forms could travel around the universe inside comets and meteors.

These rocky objects would thus “act as vehicles for spreading life in the universe,” they added. They posted the paper online this week on a database where astronomers often post research papers.

Louis and Kumar have previously posted other, unpublished papers saying the particles can grow if placed in extreme heat, and reproduce. But the Astrophysics and Space Science paper doesn’t include these claims. It mostly limits itself to arguing for the particles’ meteoric origin, citing newspaper reports that a meteor broke up in the atmosphere hours before the red rain.

John Dyson, managing editor of Astrophysics and Space Science, confirmed it has accepted the paper. But he said he hasn’t read it because his co-managing editor, the European Space Agency’s Willem Wamsteker, handled it. Wamsteker died several weeks ago at age 63.

A paper’s publication in a peer-reviewed journal is generally thought to give it some stamp of scientific seriousness, because scientists vet the findings in the process. Nonetheless, the red rain paper provoked disbelief.

“I really, really don’t think they are from a meteor!” wrote Harvard University biologist Jack Szostak of the particles, in an email. And this isn’t the first report of red rain of biological origin, Szostak wrote, though it seems to be the most detailed.

Szostak said the chemical tests the researchers employed aren’t very sensitive. The so-called cells are admittedly “weird,” he added, saying he would ask his microbiologist friends what they think they are.

“I don’t have an obvious explanation,” agreed prominent origins-of-life researcher David Deamer of the University of California Santa Cruz, in an email. They “look like real cells, but with a very thick cell wall. But the leap to an extraterrestrial form of life delivered to Earth must surely be the least likely hypothesis.”

A range of additional tests is needed, he added. Louis agreed: “There remains much to be studied,” he wrote in an email.

The researchers didn’t dispute the panspermia theory itself, which has a substantial scientific following. “Panspermia may well be possible,” wrote Lynn J. Rothschild of the NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., in an email. “I’m just not so sure that this is a case of it.”

Others viewed the study more favorably.

“I think more careful examination of the red rain material is needed, but so far there seems to be a strong prima facie [first-glance] case to suggest that this may be correct,” said Chandra Wickramasinghe, director of the Cardiff Centre for Astrobiology at Cardiff University, U.K., and a leading advocate of panspermia.

The story of the specks began on July 25, 2001, when residents of Kerala, a state in southwestern India, started seeing scarlet rain in some areas.

“Almost the entire state, except for two northern districts, have reported these unusual rains over the past week,” the BBC online reported on July 30. “Experts said the most likely reason was the presence of dust in the atmosphere which colours the water.”

The explanation didn’t satisfy everyone.

The rain “is eluding explanations as the days go by,” the newspaper Indian Express reported online a week later. The article said the Centre for Earth Science Studies, based in Thiruvananthapuram, India, had discarded an initial hypothesis that a streaking meteor triggered the rain, in favor of the view that the particles were spores from a fungus.

But “the exact species is yet to be identified. [And] how such a large quantity of spores could appear over a small region is as yet unknown,” the paper quoted center director M. Baba as saying. Baba didn’t return an email from World Science this week.

The red rain continued to appear sporadically for about two months, though most of it fell in the first 10 days, Louis and Kumar wrote. The “striking red colouration” turned out to come from microscopic, mixed-in red particles, they added, which had “no similarity with usual desert dust.”

At least 50,000 kg (55 tons) of the particles have fallen in all, they estimated. “An analysis of this strange phenomenon further shows that the conventional atmospheric transport processes like dust storms etc. cannot explain” it.

“The red particles were uniformly dispersed in the rainwater,” they wrote. “When the red rainwater was collected and kept for several hours in a vessel, the suspended particles have a tendency to settle to the bottom.”

“The red rain occurred in many places during a continuing normal rain,” the paper continued. “It was reported from a few places that people on the streets found their cloths stained by red raindrops. In a few places the concentration of particles were so great that the rainwater appeared almost like blood.”

The precipitation, the researchers added, had a “highly localized appearance. It usually occur[ed] over an area of less than a square kilometer to a few square kilometers. Many times it had a sharp boundary, which means while it was raining strongly red at a place a few meters away there were no red rain.” A typical red rain lasted from a few minutes to less than about 20 minutes, they added.

The scientists compiled charts of where and when the showers occurred based on local newspaper reports.

The particles look like one-celled organisms and are about 4 to 10 thousandths of a millimeter wide, the researchers wrote, somewhat larger than typical bacteria.

“Under low magnification the particles look like smooth, red coloured glass beads. Under high magnifications (1000x) their differences in size and shape can be seen,” they wrote.

“Shapes vary from spherical to ellipsoid and slightly elongated… These cell-like particles have a thick and coloured cell envelope, which can be well identified under the microscope.” A few had broken cell envelopes, they added.

The particles seem to lack a nucleus, the core DNA-containing compartment that animal and plant cells have, the researchers wrote. Chemical tests indicated they also lacked DNA, the gene-carrying molecule that most types of cells contain.

Nonetheless, Louis and Kumar wrote that the particles show “fine-structured membranes” under magnification, like normal cells.

The outer envelope seems to contain an “inner capsule,” they added, which in some places “appears to be detached from the outer wall to form an empty region inside the cell. Further, there appears to be a faintly visible mucus layer present on the outer side of the cell.”

“One characteristic feature is the inward depression of the spherical surface to form cup like structures giving a squeezed appearance,” which varies among particles, they added.

“The major constituents of the red particles are carbon and oxygen,” they wrote. Carbon is the key component of life on Earth. “Silicon is most prominent among the minor constituents” of the particles, Louis and Kumar added; other elements found were iron, sodium, aluminum and chlorine.

“The red rain started in the State during a period of normal rain, which indicate that the red particles are not something which accumulated in the atmosphere during a dry period and washed down on a first rain,” the pair wrote.

“Vessels kept in open space also collected red rain. Thus it is not something that is washed out from rooftops or tree leaves. Considering the huge quantity of red particles fallen over a wide geographic area, it is impossible to imagine that these are some pollen or fungal spores which have originated from trees,” they added.

“The nature of the red particles rules out the possibility that these are dust particles from a distant desert source,” they wrote, and such particles “are not found in Kerala or nearby place.”

One easy assumption is that they “got airlifted from a distant source on Earth by some wind system,” they added, but this leaves several puzzles.

“One characteristic of each red rain case is its highly localized appearance. If particles originate from distant desert source then why [was] there were no mixing and thinning out of the particle collection during transport”? they wrote.

“It is possible to explain this by assuming the meteoric origin of the red particles. The red rain phenomenon first started in Kerala after a meteor airburst event, which occurred on 25th July 2001 near Changanacherry in [the] Kottayam district. This meteor airburst is evidenced by the sonic boom experienced by several people during early morning of that day.

“The first case of red rain occurred in this area few hours after the airburst... This points to a possible link between the meteor and red rain. If particle clouds are created in the atmosphere by the fragmentation and disintegration of a special kind of fragile cometary meteor that presumably contain a dense collection of red particles, then clouds of such particles can mix with the rain clouds to cause red rain,” they wrote.

The pair proposed that while approaching Earth at low angle, the meteor traveled southeast above Kerala with a final airburst above the Kottayam district. “During its travel in the atmosphere it must have released several small fragments, which caused the deposition of cell clusters in the atmosphere.”

Alive or dead, the particles have some staying power, if the paper is correct. “Even after storage in the original rainwater at room temperature without any preservative for about four years, no decay or discolouration of the particles could be found.”
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www.world-science.net/exclusives/exclus ... specks.htm

And a comment:

Astrophysics, abstract
astro-ph/0601022

From: Godfrey Louis [view email]
Date: Mon, 2 Jan 2006 07:54:10 GMT (461kb)

The red rain phenomenon of Kerala and its possible extraterrestrial origin

Authors: Godfrey Louis, A. Santhosh Kumar (Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam, India)

Comments: 18 pages, 15 figures, accepted for publication in Astrophysics and Space Science

A red rain phenomenon occurred in Kerala, India starting from 25th July 2001, in which the rainwater appeared coloured in various localized places that are spread over a few hundred kilometers in Kerala. Maximum cases were reported during the first 10 days and isolated cases were found to occur for about 2 months. The striking red colouration of the rainwater was found to be due to the suspension of microscopic red particles having the appearance of biological cells. These particles have no similarity with usual desert dust. An estimated minimum quantity of 50,000 kg of red particles has fallen from the sky through red rain. An analysis of this strange phenomenon further shows that the conventional atmospheric transport processes like dust storms etc. cannot explain this phenomenon. The electron microscopic study of the red particles shows fine cell structure indicating their biological cell like nature. EDAX analysis shows that the major elements present in these cell like particles are carbon and oxygen. Strangely, a test for DNA using Ethidium Bromide dye fluorescence technique indicates absence of DNA in these cells. In the context of a suspected link between a meteor airburst event and the red rain, the possibility for the extraterrestrial origin of these particles from cometary fragments is discussed.
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Downloadable from:
http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0601022
 
Wow! An alien invasion. :shock:

Only the aliens are microscopic, and don't even demand "Take us to your leader!" :(
 
possible proof of life in red rain

SIGNS of alien life were found in mysterious blood-red rain that fell on Earth, claim scientists.
Brightly-coloured showers soaked parts of India when a passing meteor exploded after colliding with the planet’s atmosphere.

Scientists who spent years analysing samples of the rain have now concluded the water contained red particles of a “biological cell-like nature”.

They said: “They are possibly not of terrestrial origin. Are they a kind of alternate life from space?”

At least FIVE TONS of the particles, which contained carbon and oxygen, fell in the red rain.

And researchers Dr Godfrey Louis and Dr Santhosh Kumarat, of Mahatma Gandhi University in Kottayam, India, said they could not have come from a desert dust storm.

Their theory is strikingly similar to new C4 drama Invasion, in which aliens use extreme weather as a smokescreen for their infiltration of Florida.

Red showers fell over two months across hundreds of miles of countryside in 2001.

The discovery of the particles is a boost for a view championed by some scientists that life was brought to Earth by comets.

No DNA was found in the red rain. But Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe, of Cardiff University’s astrobiology centre, said there seemed to a “a strong case at first glance” for the link with alien life
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http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2006010710,00.html

I read about this in the Sun Newspaper today and thought I would post the article to see whether anybody thinks that this is possible evidence of life in the cosmo.
 
Blasts from the past could have kick-started life


Image copyright: Smithsonian Institution
Chemical reactions in space could have triggered life on Earth, University of Leeds chemists have discovered. Evidence suggests exotic phosphorus molecules falling to Earth in meteorites may have been used in our early chemistry - giving a whole new angle on the origin of life studies - and could even lead scientists to the building blocks of life elsewhere in the universe.

Phosphorus is found in all living cells, but many scientists believe that the most common source found on Earth - phosphate - may not have been the first source used in pre-biotic chemistry. Drs Terry Kee and Dave Bryant believe the answer may lie further afield, in a more reactive type of phosphorus not found on Earth called phosphinate: “During the early stages of solar system development, our planet was bombarded with billions of tons of meteorites and cometary impacts – these impacts will certainly have brought much organic material to Earth,” said Dr Kee.

Their first challenge was to understand how these phosphinates were formed by reproducing them under ‘extraterrestrial’ conditions in a lab. They discovered creating them was much easier than expected, suggesting these ‘exotic’ molecules could actually be very common in space. Significantly, they found phosphinates in a fragment of the Nantan meteorite, which hit Earth in Guangxi, China, in 1516.

“I’m convinced the chemicals we’re seeing could be available in other places in the universe,” said Dr Kee. “If someone looking for life on other planets was to search for phosphides and water - the conditions under which other forms of phosphate can develop - it would be a very good place to start looking for other life forms.”

When these phosphinates are placed in conditions similar to those imagined on early Earth they produce organophosphorus compounds, an important step in the process towards the biological phosphates found in life on Earth. “If these phosphinates can be converted into RNA-type molecules this could provide a major link in the evolutionary chain,” Dr Kee added.

Source: University of Leeds


http://www.physorg.com/printnews.php?newsid=10371
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Red rain...from SPACE?

I'm surprised that this hasn't come up on the board so far. (Or if it has, I can't find it.)

New Scientist this week has a cover story on the contents of red rain that fell on Kerala in India in 2001.
Leader here, but you need to subscribe to get the whole text.

I haven't had a chance to read the article as yet, but I heard the precis on the New Scientist podcast, and they've basically determined, somehow, that the red part of the rain was biological in nature, but contained no DNA. Some similarities to mammallian red blood cells were mentioned.

The other odd thing about it is the claim that the first event was accompanied by a possible meteor exploding high up. So they think that something like mammallian blood cells came from outer space. They seem to be more dismissive of earlier falls of red rain - something that turns up a lot in Fort, so I don't know if anyone's looking at any earlier falls that might be related.
 
very interesting ! If you go click >>> here you can read a draft Godfrey Louis’ paper. (view in pfd at 125% inlarged)


Also, wasn't it not long ago India did some high altitude baloon research and scooped up some high altitude "organisums, life forms" ? I don't remember any follow ups. :?:
 
An Alien Rain

There is a small bottle containing a red fluid on a shelf in Sheffield University's microbiology laboratory. The liquid looks cloudy and uninteresting. Yet, if one group of scientists is correct, the phial contains the first samples of extraterrestrial life isolated by researchers.



Inside the bottle are samples left over from one of the strangest incidents in recent meteorological history. On 25 July, 2001, blood-red rain fell over the Kerala district of western India. And these rain bursts continued for the next two months. All along the coast it rained crimson, turning local people's clothes pink, burning leaves on trees and falling as scarlet sheets at some points.

Investigations suggested the rain was red because winds had swept up dust from Arabia and dumped it on Kerala. But Godfrey Louis, a physicist at Mahatma Gandhi University in Kottayam, after gathering samples left over from the rains, concluded this was nonsense. 'If you look at these particles under a microscope, you can see they are not dust, they have a clear biological appearance.' Instead Louis decided that the rain was made up of bacteria-like material that had been swept to Earth from a passing comet. In short, it rained aliens over India during the summer of 2001.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/st ... 13,00.html
 
Red Rain and alien life

Red rain could prove that aliens have landed

Amelia Gentleman and Robin McKie
Sunday March 5, 2006
The Observer


There is a small bottle containing a red fluid on a shelf in Sheffield University's microbiology laboratory. The liquid looks cloudy and uninteresting. Yet, if one group of scientists is correct, the phial contains the first samples of extraterrestrial life isolated by researchers.
Inside the bottle are samples left over from one of the strangest incidents in recent meteorological history. On 25 July, 2001, blood-red rain fell over the Kerala district of western India. And these rain bursts continued for the next two months. All along the coast it rained crimson, turning local people's clothes pink, burning leaves on trees and falling as scarlet sheets at some points.

Investigations suggested the rain was red because winds had swept up dust from Arabia and dumped it on Kerala. But Godfrey Louis, a physicist at Mahatma Gandhi University in Kottayam, after gathering samples left over from the rains, concluded this was nonsense. 'If you look at these particles under a microscope, you can see they are not dust, they have a clear biological appearance.' Instead Louis decided that the rain was made up of bacteria-like material that had been swept to Earth from a passing comet. In short, it rained aliens over India during the summer of 2001.

Not everyone is convinced by the idea, of course. Indeed most researchers think it is highly dubious. One scientist who posted a message on Louis's website described it as 'bullshit'.

But a few researchers believe Louis may be on to something and are following up his work. Milton Wainwright, a microbiologist at Sheffield, is now testing samples of Kerala's red rain. 'It is too early to say what's in the phial,' he said. 'But it is certainly not dust. Nor is there any DNA there, but then alien bacteria would not necessarily contain DNA.'

Critical to Louis's theory is the length of time the red rain fell on Kerala. Two months is too long for it to have been wind-borne dust, he says. In addition, one analysis showed the particles were 50 per cent carbon, 45 per cent oxygen with traces of sodium and iron: consistent with biological material. Louis also discovered that, hours before the first red rain fell, there was a loud sonic boom that shook houses in Kerala. Only an incoming meteorite could have triggered such a blast, he claims. This had broken from a passing comet and shot towards the coast, shedding microbes as it travelled. These then mixed with clouds and fell with the rain. Many scientists accept that comets may be rich in organic chemicals and a few, such as the late Fred Hoyle, the UK theorist, argued that life on Earth evolved from microbes that had been brought here on comets. But most researchers say that Louis is making too great a leap in connecting his rain with microbes from a comet.

For his part, Louis is unrepentant. 'If anybody hears a theory like this, that it is from a comet, they dismiss it as an unbelievable kind of conclusion. Unless people understand our arguments - people will just rule it out as an impossible thing, that extra-terrestrial biology is responsible for this red rain.'
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http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/st ... 13,00.html
 
And there have been many other instances of this read rain, like the one fort writes about in 1888.
 
Re: Red rain...from SPACE?

Anome_ said:
I'm surprised that this hasn't come up on the board so far. (Or if it has, I can't find it.)

New Scientist this week has a cover story on the contents of red rain that fell on Kerala in India in 2001.
Leader here, but you need to subscribe to get the whole text.
Click to expand...

Full text (as far as I can tell):

[March 03, 2006]

It's raining aliens

(New Scientist Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)I'VE heard plenty of tales about freak weather that are strange, but nonetheless true. In August 2000, a shower of sprats, dead but conveniently still fresh, fell from the skies onto the English port of Great Yarmouth just after a thunderstorm. A torrent of live toads pelted a Mexican town in June 1997. And in 2001, 50 tonnes of alien life forms rained down from the clouds over India.


Actually, I'm not sure that the alien story is true. But it is surprisingly persistent. I first saw it in 2003 in a scientific paper written by Godfrey Louis, a physicist working in the Indian state of Kerala, on the country's southern tip. He described how, during two months in 2001, red rain fell sporadically right across the state. No one could explain it, but after lengthy studies of red particles in the rainwater, Louis came to the extraordinary conclusion that they were alien microbes that hitched a ride to Earth on a comet.

To most people, that would sound eccentric at the very least. It looked as if the idea would quietly wither on the vine. Then in January this year, it turned out that Louis's theory is still alive and kicking, and soon to roll off the press in a reputable peer-reviewed journal. I sent a preprint to several researchers, who despite voicing mixed opinions almost all agreed about one thing: the red particles Louis describes look biological.

"If they're not living cells, I don't know what they are," said Milton Wainwright, a microbiologist at the University of Sheffield, UK. "Maybe this is the beginning of something amazing." Another scientist simply commented: "Sounds like bullshit to me." That was it I could resist this weird and controversial story no longer.

The saga dates back to 25 July 2001, when red rain fell in a district of Kerala called Kottayam. Over the following two months, red rain fell sporadically there and in other Kerala districts, gradually tailing off over time. The local newspapers buzzed with eyewitness reports. People found their clothes stained by red raindrops. Although these usually had a mild red tint, sometimes the colour was so strong that witnesses compared it to blood. Usually, the red rain would fall for less than 20 minutes.

Louis, a solid-state physicist at Mahatma Gandhi University in Kottayam, was intrigued and decided to study the rain with his student Santhosh Kumar. The pair compiled more than 120 reports of the rain from local newspapers and other sources, and gathered samples of the red rain from spots more than 100 kilometres apart .

Under the microscope, they could see red particles 4 to 10 micrometres wide with an average density of about 9 million particles per millilitre. When they dried the samples they found that each cubic metre of rainwater contained about 100 grams of the red stuff. Louis suggests 5 millimetres of red rain would typically have fallen over a square-kilometre area during each of about 100 downpours. That would make 500,000 cubic metres of water in total, containing a staggering 50 tonnes of red particles.

What could they be? One possibility was that fine red sand had blown over Kerala from some distant desert. Sand can travel amazingly far. In July 1968, for instance, fine grit in raindrops left parts of southern England coloured rusty red. The sand had blown from the Sahara inside a massive high-pressure system before falling in a rain shower.

But under the microscope, the red particles that rained on Kerala were clearly not sand. Electron micrographs show that they are shaped like biological cells. "They don't look anything like sand, they look biological," says Monica Grady, a meteorite expert at the UK's Open University in Milton Keynes. The cells, if that's what they are, are mostly cup-shaped and have a thick wall.

One type of analysis shows their chemical make-up is about 50 per cent carbon and 45 per cent oxygen by weight, along with traces of other elements such as sodium and iron. That's consistent with the components of a biological cell, according to Jeffrey Walker, a molecular biologist from the University of Colorado in Boulder. But although many of the cells have some kind of detached inner capsule, there is no visible cell nucleus, and tests for DNA that Louis carried out came back negative.

Louis rules out a distant terrestrial source for the mysterious particles, because the red rain was concentrated over Kerala for two months despite changes in climate and wind patterns. Could the cells instead be local pollen or fungal spores washed off trees and houses by the rain? Louis says no, because red rain was collected in buckets placed in wide-open spaces. Equally, he says, the red particles can't be pollen or spores from the ground that accumulated in the atmosphere, because the rain would then have been red at the start of a shower; often the colour came later.

Instead, he links the coloured rain to a meteor airburst. During the early hours of 25 July 2001, just hours before the first red rain fell, several people in the Kottayam district heard a loud sonic boom that made their houses rattle. Louis has interviewed some of those who heard it, and concluded that it was too loud to have been an ordinary thunderclap. It's possible that an incoming meteor exploded in the atmosphere.

Louis then takes a large leap and suggests the meteor was a fragment of a comet harbouring microbes from space. He thinks that is the only explanation for the red rain pattern. The meteor flew over Kerala from north to south, he suggests, shedding fragments and alien microbes in the upper atmosphere, before finally exploding over Kottayam district. There, some of the red microbes mixed with rain clouds and fell fairly quickly, while the rest gradually settled into the clouds and fell in rain over the following weeks.

"Yes, it is an extraordinary claim, but I have to report what I observe," says Louis. "We are not able to explain it by assuming a terrestrial object." The red particles look like biological cells, he stresses, but contain no DNA. They could therefore be exotic, alien life forms unknown to science.

Far-fetched? Certainly sounds it. But the idea would undoubtedly have appealed to the late University of Cambridge astronomer Fred Hoyle, champion of the "panspermia" theory. With Chandra Wickramasinghe of Cardiff University, UK, Hoyle developed the idea that life on Earth evolved from microbes that fell to its surface on a comet. In this picture, primitive life forms could be ubiquitous throughout the universe, peppered among the planets and the stars.

Philosophically, panspermia has a certain appeal. It could resolve the genuine puzzle about why life arose on Earth so fast. The solar system began its life some 4.5 billion years ago as a hostile interplanetary war zone, with rocky missiles pelting everything in sight. Around 3.9 billion years ago, the Earth suffered a particularly violent bombardment that pulverised its crust. Yet carbon isotopes in ancient rocks hint that primitive microbes were thriving just 50,000 years later a blink of an eye in evolutionary terms. Panspermia allows off-the-shelf microbes to arrive on the newly hospitable Earth. This waves away the apparent paradox that the Earth is the only place in the entire cosmos where we've found signs of life. From experience, astronomers assume that if something has occurred once in the universe, it's probably occurred many more times we just haven't seen it yet.

Panspermia developed a touch of giggle-factor when Hoyle and Wickramasinghe blamed extraterrestrial viruses for flu epidemics. But it has come back into fashion of late, and proponents argue there's plenty of evidence for it. Experiments have shown that some tough bacteria can survive for years in space, despite the extreme cold and high levels of radiation. Others have proved that some of these bugs could survive the high-speed collisions that they would experience if they slammed into the Earth on a comet.

The idea of primitive microbes flying around the solar system in its early days is not as wild as it seems. "Most of the rocks near the surface of the Earth are shot through with microbial life. It would be a fairly simple thing for a little piece of the crust to be ejected and life survive and land somewhere else," says Walker. On balance, he says, he'd bet that life began here on Earth. But he wouldn't be that surprised if evidence emerged that life started somewhere else and was delivered to Earth by a hunk of space rock.

Extraordinary claimsIn 1996, Martian meteorite ALH 84001 caused a furore when some scientists claimed that it harboured fossil bugs. The case was never proved. "But the most interesting information that we gathered from that meteorite was that when the rock was ejected from Mars and travelled to the Earth, the temperature of the interior never exceeded something like 50 C," says Walker. "Plenty of microbes can survive that, especially spores."

All in all, it seems that panspermia could work. Now Louis thinks the red rain of Kerala provides evidence that it actually does. His new report on the subject, which will appear in Astrophysics and Space Science
in the next few months, is impressive in its detail, according to Wainwright. "Everything in the paper is done correctly, there's nothing wacky about it," he says. Grady says it is "very, very thorough indeed".

However, if scientists have a favourite quote, it's this one, popularised by Carl Sagan: "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". I'm hearing it a lot in discussions about the red rain of Kerala. Grady thinks Louis and Kumar have jumped to the extraterrestrial conclusion far too quickly. "They seem to prefer the most bizarre explanation they could find," agrees Charles Cockell at the Open University, who studies the microbiology of extreme rocky environments.

What other explanations are there? Wainwright likens the red cells to spores from a rust fungus, or possibly pollen or algae. With Wickramasinghe and others, Wainwright has shown in balloon experiments that winds can carry microbes from the ground to high altitudes. Particles the size of those in the red rain could soar several kilometres above the Earth's surface. The dimpled shape could easily have arisen when the cells collapsed in the microscopy process. If that were true, he says, then the only mystery concerns the lack of DNA. "You wouldn't expect spores, microbes or algae not to have any DNA," he says. The simplest explanation is that Louis's experiments missed it, so Wainwright wants to repeat the tests. If the cells do turn out to contain DNA, then there is no great mystery. "I'd kind of relax if there was DNA there," says Wainwright.

If there is no DNA, Wainwright argues, the cells might be something extraordinary. He speculates, like Louis, that the lack of DNA might point to some kind of exotic life form, although he admits it would be paradoxical for cells without DNA to be classed as "living".

Cockell argues that there could be a simpler explanation the red particles are actually blood. "They look like red blood cells to me," he says. The size fits just right; red blood cells are normally about 6 to 8 micrometres wide. They are naturally dimpled just like the red rain particles. What's more, mammalian red blood cells contain no DNA because they don't have a cell nucleus.

It's tough to explain, however, how 50 tonnes of mammal blood could have ended up in rain clouds. Cockell takes a wild guess that maybe a meteor explosion massacred a flock of bats, splattering their blood in all directions. India is home to around 100 species of bats, which sometimes fly to altitudes of 3 kilometres or more. "A giant flock of bats is actually a possibility maybe a meteor airburst occurred during a bat migration," he says. "But one would have to wonder where the bat wings are."

Walker agrees that the particles in the red rain look uncannily like red blood cells. He says a simple test for haemoglobin could resolve this quickly. "If they believe they aren't red blood cells, then they need to explain how they've managed to eliminate that possibility," says Cockell. "I would have thought some more basic biochemical analysis of these cells would be worthwhile, and that should identify it, whatever it is."

"It's a pity that they don't realise this is interesting without all the extraterrestrial hype," Cockell adds. "How might you get blood into rain? I don't think anyone has observed an event where they've seen an animal ripped apart and its blood distributed in clouds. In some ways, that whole process is far more interesting than what Louis is trying to prove." For blood cells to survive would be astonishing: normally they would be destroyed within minutes if kept in rainwater, unless the salinity was the same as inside the blood cell.

In the next few weeks, the mystery of Kerala's red rain may finally be solved. Louis sent samples to Wickramasinghe's lab in Cardiff last month. As New Scientist
went to press, he and Wainwright were still analysing them.

If they can't explain the origin of the samples, then the suggestion that they are alien life will gain credence. In that case, someone will have to verify an observation that Louis made which even he finds astonishing: that the cells replicate. In earlier unpublished papers, Louis says he cultured the red rain cells in unconventional nutrients, such as cedar wood oil, and showed that these DNA-devoid microbes divide happily at a temperature of 300 C. Louis admits he left these claims out of his latest paper because he thought they would be considered "too extraordinary".

Extraordinary is an understatement: if the cells really do replicate we'll have found the first evidence of extraterrestrial life. In the end, though, I didn't find any scientist willing to bet that the red rain of Kerala contained aliens. But everyone agreed it's a cracking good story that's crying out for a proper explanation. "I think you've got to be intrigued," said Wainwright. "If you're not intrigued, then what are you doing in science?"

A preprint of Godfrey Louis's paper can be found at www.arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0601022
The results of the latest tests will be published on www.newscientist.com
Click to expand...

www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2006/03/03/1427866.htm

-------
3 new threads merged into this one - we'll keep an eye on things and if this story develops a life of its own we'll split it off en masse.
 
To me, the idea that these cells came from space is far less weird than the idea that a flock of bats got zapped by a meteor! 8)
 
Asteroid and comet impacts led to primitive life

Australian National University scientists have observed a link between asteroid and comet bombardment of the Earth and the emergence of primitive bacterial life forms in the ancient oceans billions of years ago.

Studying ancient iron-rich sediments in Western Australia and South Africa, Dr Andrew Glikson and colleague Mr John Vickers, from the Department of Earth and Marine Sciences at ANU discovered that the formation of banded iron formations, jasper and iron-rich shale coincided closely with asteroid and comet impacts.

The impacts of the asteroids and comets caused volcanic and hydrothermal activity including eruption of iron-rich basalt, according to Dr Glickson. This created an environment which suited primitive bacteria that lived on the floor of the early oceans, and which derived their energy by oxidising water-soluble (ferrous) iron into insoluble (ferric) iron.

This bacterial activity is thought to have precipitated iron and silica-rich sediments, known as banded iron formations, in areas such as the Pilbara in Western Australia. These banded iron formations host the huge Hamersley and Yarrie iron ore deposits of the Pilbara region.

Dr Glikson made the link when studying whether extraterrestrial impacts could be one of the underlying factors in the appearance of these banded iron formations, spanning ages of 3.5 to 2.4 billion years, which extend over distances of hundreds of kilometres in Western Australia, South Africa, Brazil and Canada.

He found that deposition of iron-rich sediments closely followed massive collisions between asteroids and the Earth at several points in Earth history, including at 3.47, 3.26, 3.24 and 2.63 billion years ago.

“In the majority of cases, the ejected materials left behind from the impact of the asteroids and comets are directly overlain by iron-rich sediments, suggesting a possible cause and effect link between the large impacts, iron-rich volcanic activity and microbial oxidation of iron,” Dr Glikson said.

“It is likely that the asteroid impacts could have triggered faulting, uplift and erosion of iron-rich submarine volcanics.

“The oldest known banded iron formations occur in south-western Greenland, where they are dated as 3.85 billion years old. The age of these banded iron formations coincides with a period of heavy asteroid bombardment on the moon and on Earth, thus marking the earliest known impacts, volcanism and the emergence of microbial colonies at the sea floor,” Dr Glikson said.

To test the significance of these relationships, the scientists are searching for further evidence of asteroid impact units beneath banded iron formations in the Pilbara region of Western Australia.

-------------
Source: Australian National University

This news is brought to you by PhysOrg.com
Click to expand...

http://physorg.com/news64678130.html
 
While this is plausible, does not panspermia merely remove the problem of the emergence of life 'back one level'. It has to evolve somewhere...
 
GadaffiDuck said:
While this is plausible, does not panspermia merely remove the problem of the emergence of life 'back one level'. It has to evolve somewhere...
Click to expand...
Yes, but as Hoyle and Wicky suggested decades ago, there's a lot more stuff in space than there is on Earth, so the probability is that the reactions that led to the first prebiotic molecules, and then 'life' itself, took place in space (probably in molecular clouds rather than on other planets).
 
Thanks Ryn, I was aware of that argument, but I don't think it answers the question at a more fundamental level. To whit, what are the processes that allow a collection of molecules to be able to transend their 'state' and become 'motile' in a relatively macroscopic manner? If you see where I'm a comin' from... :D
 
GadaffiDuck said:
Thanks Ryn, I was aware of that argument, but I don't think it answers the question at a more fundamental level. To whit, what are the processes that allow a collection of molecules to be able to transend their 'state' and become 'motile' in a relatively macroscopic manner? If you see where I'm a comin' from... :D
Click to expand...
As with all questions about evolution, the answer is probably to do with environmental change. If stuff from space lands on a planet, it is suddenly in a new environment, which provides pressure via natural selection for evolution into different forms.

But there are many kinds of planets, and probably many other environments in the universe that we haven't yet seriously looked at as habitats for life.

I tend to think that if it's possible, it has happened somewhere already.

And as life becomes more complex, the possible lines of development become even less predictable.
 
Agree. Although, one wonders about the start of natural selection...
 
UK TEAMS OFFER NEW INSIGHT INTO RED RAIN MYSTERY

Category: Science & Technology

Cardiff, Wales, UK - 27 April 2006

Scientists at Cardiff University say they can confirm that DNA, the genetic blueprint for life, did exist in the mysterious red rain which fell over India in 2001.This may be a key to learning about possible lifeforms in outer space.

BSN: 0617D
STORY: RED RAIN RESEARCH
LOCATION: CARDIFF, WALES, UK
DATE SHOT: APRIL 13, 2006
TXN DATE: APRIL 27, 2006
AUDIO: NATURAL SOUND AND ENGLISH SPEECH
DURATION: 3.59

SHOT LIST:
(Cardiff University, 13 April 2006 + BSN ESA file)
1. Microscope shots of red rain objects (used with permission, copyright/credit Cardiff University)
2. WS researcher operates microscope
3. CU researcher operates microscope
4. CU researcher’s eye at microscope
5. Microscope shot of red rain object (used with permission, copyright/credit Cardiff University)
6. SOT (English speech) super: Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe, Cardiff Centre for Astrobiology
“If there was an explosion … “
7. WS research assistant enters Prof Wickramasinghe’s office with envelope
8. WS Prof Wickramasinghe opens it
9. CU vials of red rain in plastic bag
10. Shot of sky at night with stars (European Space Agency pix, copyright free, BSN library)
11. Shot of comet in space (European Space Agency pix, copyright free, BSN library)
12. Animation of big bang (European Space Agency pix, copyright free, BSN library)
13. SOT (English speech) super: Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe, Cardiff Centre for Astrobiology
“Whether this particular red rain … “
14. WS researcher testing red rain samples
15. CU researcher testing red rain samples
16. CU vial containing red rain sample
17. MS researcher syringes liquid into test tubes
18. CU researcher syringes liquid into test tubes
19. SOT (English speech) super: Professor David Lloyd, Microbiology Unit, Cardiff University
“The samples have been kept very … “
20. WS researcher testing samples
21. SOT (English speech) super: Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe, Cardiff Centre for Astrobiology
“Our genetic cousins … “
22. Various shots of microscopic particles of cosmic dust collected in the upper atmosphere

SUGGESTED INTRO:

Scientists in Britain say they have confirmed that DNA, the genetic blueprint for life, does exist in the mysterious red rain which fell over the Kerala region of India, in 2001.
This could prove to be a key development in the work to find out whether there is any life form in outer space.
The blood-coloured rain caused a storm of controversy among the world’s scientists. When first analysed by Indian laboratories, it was suggested it contained unidentifiable biological cells that could have come from outer space.
Since, then, many theories have been put forward to explain the strange phenomenon, but the latest results, from studies carried out at Cardiff University in Britain, seem to confirm that the red colour does come from living cells, although where they came remains a mystery.


SCRIPT:

Seen with a powerful microscope, these are the first pictures of the strange cells which fell as red rain for six weeks, across the Kerala region of south-west India in 2001, following reports of an explosion in the sky.

Indian scientists who first analysed the rain expected to see grains of dust or sand, perhaps blown from the Sahara by freak winds. Instead, they found themselves looking at complex cell-like structures, that have many of the characteristics of living organisms. They were even more surprised to find the cells could be made to come to life and reproduce, under laboratory conditions.

SOT (English speech) super: Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe, Cardiff Centre for Astrobiology
“If there was an explosion of a small piece of a comet over Kerala, and an explosion was in fact heard just minutes before the first rainfall, those particles would have drifted along a belt of latitude, but when you look at a map of the world, the latitudes west of Kerala run into the Indian Ocean and then into the Sahara. So if it fell all over that area it wouldn’t have been noticed, and in the Sahara there is not much rainfall, so the particles could have drifted a long way away and not be noticed.”

Sri Lanka-born Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe is head of the astrobiology unit of Cardiff University, in Wales. He is an internationally-renowned theoretical scientist who has been a champion of the theory of “panspermia” for over thirty years.

Developed with the late Sir Fred Hoyle, his theory proposes that life on Earth could have been seeded from outer space by wandering comets containing organisms from other worlds.

Ridiculed for many years, the theory is now slowly being accepted by an increasing number of scientists around the world, as more evidence comes to light.

SOT (English speech) super: Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe, Cardiff Centre for Astrobiology
“Whether this particular red rain came from space or not wouldn’t determine the validity of panspermia. I think that there are many other lines of evidence that are all converging on the idea that life came from space.”

The first samples of Kerala’s red rain arrived at Cardiff University’s labs last month. Intensive investigation under high-powered microscopes confirmed the cell-like structures are biological and that they do contain DNA, the blue print of all life forms on Earth. What’s not yet known is whether it is terrestrial life or alien DNA, but investigators believe they will know soon.

SOT (English speech) super: Professor David Lloyd, Microbiology Unit, Cardiff University

“The samples have been kept very carefully in aseptic conditions, so the likelihood of contamination isn’t very great. But the question of where the organisms have come from is an open one.”

The Cardiff team is now comparing DNA from the red rain with that of all known terrestrial species. It’s a long and painstaking study, but if no known DNA from Earth matches, the only remaining possibility would be that it is an alien life form from outer space.

SOT (English speech) super: Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe, Cardiff Centre for Astrobiology

“Our genetic cousins are everywhere in the universe and all that happened on the Earth is that these bits and pieces of genes got together and made the entire spectrum of life that we see here on our planet“

Kerala’s red rain could yet provide conclusive evidence that the theory of panspermia is not only possible, but almost certainly was the way life started on Earth, 4 billion years ago.
Click to expand...

www.bsn.org.uk/view_all.php?id=11615

Skepticism Greets Claim

Of Possible Alien Microbes
Special to World Science
1-8-6

A paper to appear in a scientific journal claims a strange red rain might have dumped microbes from space onto Earth four years ago.
But the report is meeting with a shower of skepticism from scientists who say extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof-and this one hasn't got it.).

The scientists agree on two points, though. The things look like cells, at least superficially. And no one is sure what they are.

"These particles have much similarity with biological cells though they are devoid of DNA," wrote Godfrey Louis and A. Santhosh Kumar of Mahatma Gandhi University in Kottayam, India, in the controversial paper.

"Are these cell-like particles a kind of alternate life from space?"

The mystery began when the scarlet showers containing the red specks hit parts of India in 2001. Researchers said the particles might be dust or a fungus, but it remained unclear.

The new paper includes a chemical analysis of the particles, a description of their appearance under microscopes and a survey of where they fell. It assesses various explanations for them and concludes that the specks, which vaguely resemble red blood cells, might have come from a meteor.

A peer-reviewed research journal, Astrophysics and Space Science, has agreed to publish the paper. The journal sometimes publishes unconventional findings, but rarely if ever ventures into generally acknowledged fringe science such as claims of extraterrestrial visitors.

If the particles do represent alien life forms, said Louis and Kumar, this would fit with a longstanding theory called panspermia, which holds that life forms could travel around the universe inside comets and meteors.

These rocky objects would thus "act as vehicles for spreading life in the universe," they added. They posted the paper online this week on a database where astronomers often post research papers.

Louis and Kumar have previously posted other, unpublished papers saying the particles can grow if placed in extreme heat, and reproduce. But the Astrophysics and Space Science paper doesn't include these claims. It mostly limits itself to arguing for the particles' meteoric origin, citing newspaper reports that a meteor broke up in the atmosphere hours before the red rain.

John Dyson, managing editor of Astrophysics and Space Science, confirmed it has accepted the paper. But he said he hasn't read it because his co-managing editor, the European Space Agency's Willem Wamsteker, handled it. Wamsteker died several weeks ago at age 63.

A paper's publication in a peer-reviewed journal is generally thought to give it some stamp of scientific seriousness, because scientists vet the findings in the process. Nonetheless, the red rain paper provoked disbelief.

"I really, really don't think they are from a meteor!" wrote Harvard University biologist Jack Szostak of the particles, in an email. And this isn't the first report of red rain of biological origin, Szostak wrote, though it seems to be the most detailed.

Szostak said the chemical tests the researchers employed aren't very sensitive. The so-called cells are admittedly "weird," he added, saying he would ask his microbiologist friends what they think they are.

"I don't have an obvious explanation," agreed prominent origins-of-life researcher David Deamer of the University of California Santa Cruz, in an email. They "look like real cells, but with a very thick cell wall. But the leap to an extraterrestrial form of life delivered to Earth must surely be the least likely hypothesis."

A range of additional tests is needed, he added. Louis agreed: "There remains much to be studied," he wrote in an email.

The researchers didn't dispute the panspermia theory itself, which has a substantial scientific following. "Panspermia may well be possible," wrote Lynn J. Rothschild of the NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., in an email. "I'm just not so sure that this is a case of it."

Others viewed the study more favorably.

"I think more careful examination of the red rain material is needed, but so far there seems to be a strong prima facie [first-glance] case to suggest that this may be correct," said Chandra Wickramasinghe, director of the Cardiff Centre for Astrobiology at Cardiff University, U.K., and a leading advocate of panspermia.

The story of the specks began on July 25, 2001, when residents of Kerala, a state in southwestern India, started seeing scarlet rain in some areas.

"Almost the entire state, except for two northern districts, have reported these unusual rains over the past week," the BBC online reported on July 30. "Experts said the most likely reason was the presence of dust in the atmosphere which colours the water."

The explanation didn't satisfy everyone.

The rain "is eluding explanations as the days go by," the newspaper Indian Express reported online a week later. The article said the Centre for Earth Science Studies, based in Thiruvananthapuram, India, had discarded an initial hypothesis that a streaking meteor triggered the rain, in favor of the view that the particles were spores from a fungus.

But "the exact species is yet to be identified. [And] how such a large quantity of spores could appear over a small region is as yet unknown," the paper quoted center director M. Baba as saying. Baba didn't return an email from World Science this week.

The red rain continued to appear sporadically for about two months, though most of it fell in the first 10 days, Louis and Kumar wrote. The "striking red colouration" turned out to come from microscopic, mixed-in red particles, they added, which had "no similarity with usual desert dust."

At least 50,000 kg (55 tons) of the particles have fallen in all, they estimated. "An analysis of this strange phenomenon further shows that the conventional atmospheric transport processes like dust storms etc. cannot explain" it.

"The red particles were uniformly dispersed in the rainwater," they wrote. "When the red rainwater was collected and kept for several hours in a vessel, the suspended particles have a tendency to settle to the bottom."

"The red rain occurred in many places during a continuing normal rain," the paper continued. "It was reported from a few places that people on the streets found their cloths stained by red raindrops. In a few places the concentration of particles were so great that the rainwater appeared almost like blood."

The precipitation, the researchers added, had a "highly localized appearance. It usually occur[ed] over an area of less than a square kilometer to a few square kilometers. Many times it had a sharp boundary, which means while it was raining strongly red at a place a few meters away there were no red rain." A typical red rain lasted from a few minutes to less than about 20 minutes, they added.

The scientists compiled charts of where and when the showers occurred based on local newspaper reports.

The particles look like one-celled organisms and are about 4 to 10 thousandths of a millimeter wide, the researchers wrote, somewhat larger than typical bacteria.

"Under low magnification the particles look like smooth, red coloured glass beads. Under high magnifications (1000x) their differences in size and shape can be seen," they wrote.

"Shapes vary from spherical to ellipsoid and slightly elongated These cell-like particles have a thick and coloured cell envelope, which can be well identified under the microscope." A few had broken cell envelopes, they added.

The particles seem to lack a nucleus, the core DNA-containing compartment that animal and plant cells have, the researchers wrote. Chemical tests indicated they also lacked DNA, the gene-carrying molecule that most types of cells contain.

Nonetheless, Louis and Kumar wrote that the particles show "fine-structured membranes" under magnification, like normal cells.

The outer envelope seems to contain an "inner capsule," they added, which in some places "appears to be detached from the outer wall to form an empty region inside the cell. Further, there appears to be a faintly visible mucus layer present on the outer side of the cell."

"One characteristic feature is the inward depression of the spherical surface to form cup like structures giving a squeezed appearance," which varies among particles, they added.

"The major constituents of the red particles are carbon and oxygen," they wrote. Carbon is the key component of life on Earth. "Silicon is most prominent among the minor constituents" of the particles, Louis and Kumar added; other elements found were iron, sodium, aluminum and chlorine.

"The red rain started in the State during a period of normal rain, which indicate that the red particles are not something which accumulated in the atmosphere during a dry period and washed down on a first rain," the pair wrote.

"Vessels kept in open space also collected red rain. Thus it is not something that is washed out from rooftops or tree leaves. Considering the huge quantity of red particles fallen over a wide geographic area, it is impossible to imagine that these are some pollen or fungal spores which have originated from trees," they added.

"The nature of the red particles rules out the possibility that these are dust particles from a distant desert source," they wrote, and such particles "are not found in Kerala or nearby place."

One easy assumption is that they "got airlifted from a distant source on Earth by some wind system," they added, but this leaves several puzzles.

"One characteristic of each red rain case is its highly localized appearance. If particles originate from distant desert source then why [was] there were no mixing and thinning out of the particle collection during transport"? they wrote.

"It is possible to explain this by assuming the meteoric origin of the red particles. The red rain phenomenon first started in Kerala after a meteor airburst event, which occurred on 25th July 2001 near Changanacherry in [the] Kottayam district. This meteor airburst is evidenced by the sonic boom experienced by several people during early morning of that day.

"The first case of red rain occurred in this area few hours after the airburst... This points to a possible link between the meteor and red rain. If particle clouds are created in the atmosphere by the fragmentation and disintegration of a special kind of fragile cometary meteor that presumably contain a dense collection of red particles, then clouds of such particles can mix with the rain clouds to cause red rain," they wrote.

The pair proposed that while approaching Earth at low angle, the meteor traveled southeast above Kerala with a final airburst above the Kottayam district. "During its travel in the atmosphere it must have released several small fragments, which caused the deposition of cell clusters in the atmosphere."

Alive or dead, the particles have some staying power, if the paper is correct. "Even after storage in the original rainwater at room temperature without any preservative for about four years, no decay or discolouration of the particles could be found."
Click to expand...

www.rense.com/general69/microbe.htm
 
Last edited by a moderator:
From this article it looks promising for the et hypothesis. :D

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/science/06 ... index.html


Friday, June 2, 2006; Posted: 12:36 p.m. EDT (16:36 GMT)


(PopSci.comexternal link) -- As bizarre as it may seem, the sample jars brimming with cloudy, reddish rainwater in Godfrey Louis's laboratory in southern India may hold, well, aliens.

In April, Louis, a solid-state physicist at Mahatma Gandhi University, published a paper in the prestigious peer-reviewed journal Astrophysics and Space Science in which he hypothesizes that the samples -- water taken from the mysterious blood-colored showers that fell sporadically across Louis's home state of Kerala in the summer of 2001 -- contain microbes from outer space.

Specifically, Louis has isolated strange, thick-walled, red-tinted cell-like structures about 10 microns in size. Stranger still, dozens of his experiments suggest that the particles may lack DNA yet still reproduce plentifully, even in water superheated to nearly 600 degrees Fahrenheit . (The known upper limit for life in water is about 250 degrees Fahrenheit .)

So how to explain them? Louis speculates that the particles could be extraterrestrial bacteria adapted to the harsh conditions of space and that the microbes hitched a ride on a comet or meteorite that later broke apart in the upper atmosphere and mixed with rain clouds above India.

If his theory proves correct, the cells would be the first confirmed evidence of alien life and, as such, could yield tantalizing new clues to the origins of life on Earth.

Last winter, Louis sent some of his samples to astronomer Chandra Wickramasinghe and his colleagues at Cardiff University in Wales, who are now attempting to replicate his experiments; Wickramasinghe expects to publish his initial findings later this year.

Meanwhile, more down-to-earth theories abound. One Indian government investigation conducted in 2001 lays blame for what some have called the "blood rains" on algae.

Other theories have implicated fungal spores, red dust swept up from the Arabian peninsula, even a fine mist of blood cells produced by a meteor striking a high-flying flock of bats.

Louis and his colleagues dismiss all these theories, pointing to the fact that both algae and fungus possess DNA and that blood cells have thin walls and die quickly when exposed to water and air.

More important, they argue, blood cells don't replicate. "We've already got some stunning pictures -- transmission electron micrographs -- of these cells sliced in the middle," Wickramasinghe says. "We see them budding, with little daughter cells inside the big cells."

Louis's theory holds special appeal for Wickramasinghe. A quarter of a century ago, he co-authored the modern theory of panspermia, which posits that bacteria-riddled space rocks seeded life on Earth.

"If it's true that life was introduced by comets four billion years ago," the astronomer says, "one would expect that microorganisms are still injected into our environment from time to time. This could be one of those events."

The next significant step, explains University of Sheffield microbiologist Milton Wainwright, who is part of another British team now studying Louis's samples, is to confirm whether the cells truly lack DNA. So far, one preliminary DNA test has come back positive.

"Life as we know it must contain DNA, or it's not life," he says. "But even if this organism proves to be an anomaly, the absence of DNA wouldn't necessarily mean it's extraterrestrial."

Louis and Wickramasinghe are planning further experiments to test the cells for specific carbon isotopes. If the results fall outside the norms for life on Earth, it would be powerful new evidence for Louis's idea, of which even Louis himself remains skeptical
Click to expand...
 
May as well give this old thread a bump (as other threads are encroaching on the territory!)

TV Reminder: Tonight:
Horizon, BBC2, 2100 on Panspermia.

(Can't seem to get the beeb page for this to work, though.)
 
rynner said:
May as well give this old thread a bump (as other threads are encroaching on the territory!)

TV Reminder: Tonight:
Horizon, BBC2, 2100 on Panspermia.

(Can't seem to get the beeb page for this to work, though.)
Click to expand...

Anyone watch it? An interesting subject, but the conclusion was basically "We don't know" and the presentation was patronising in the extreme. A bit of a waste of time.
 
It was okay - I'm not sure of the tongue-in-cheek approach worked all that well, but the graphics were entertaining. IMHO, both sets of arguments worked well, so I was also wondering if a third possibility was a blending of the two in some way.
 
Sad to say, the prog did not discuss anything I'd not already read about elsewhere (I had hoped for some new ideas, as much of this stuff I had discussed, or even lectured on, years ago!)

At least I suppose it shows that these ideas are slowly creeping in from the fringes, to become part of mainstream science.

One point they didn't make (unless I missed it) was the statistical probability that life evolved elsewhere, since the Earth is such a tiny speck of of dust in a vast universe, far smaller (mass-wise) than any of the millions of molecular clouds that we know exist out there.
 
Interesting program, and first time I'd seen the red rain on TV. Shockingly done though, with all the Sci-Fi music and stuff tho. I thought since the discovery of extra-solar planets, recent discoveries about microbes on Earth and environments elsewhere in out solar system, then the possibility of (basic) extra-terrestrial life could be presented more maturely...
 
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