[meteorite-list] Something Weird Fell in the Red Rain

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Jun 8 14:54:05 2006
Message-ID: <200606081628.JAA24512_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.canada.com/reginaleaderpost/news/arts_life/story.html?id=c1627bd9-334a-428a-8d5f-a7c532c44ec2

Something weird fell in the red rain
Ed Willett
The Leader-Post (Canada)
June 08, 2006

In 1968, a red-tinted rain dropped fine grit from the Sahara over
southern England in 1968. It's not all that uncommon a phenomenon, and
so in 2001, when red rain -- as red as blood, in some cases -- fell over
the southwestern Indian state of Kerala sporadically from July 25 to
Sept. 23, the first assumption was that the rainwater had been
contaminated by dust.

A report commissioned by the Indian government, however, ruled out dust,
and instead put the colour down to the presence of spores from a
lichen-forming algae common to the region.

That might have been the end of the matter if not for Godfrey Louis, a
solid-state physicist at Mahatma Gandhi University in Kottayam, where
more of the red rains fell than anywhere else. He and student Santhosh
Kuma compiled more than 120 reports, and collected numerous samples, of
the showers, which were short-lived (20 minutes or less), localized
(never covering more than a few square kilometres), and had fairly sharp
boundaries.

An optical microscope revealed red particles four to 10 micrometres wide
(a bit larger than a typical bacteria) with an average density of nine
million particles per millilitre. Based on that density, Louis and Kuma
calculated that in total at least 50 tonnes of the red particles dropped
from the sky.

An electron microscope showed that the particles clearly looked like
biological cells. They have thick walls and are cup-shaped -- which
makes them look a lot like red blood cells. Which is exactly what
Charles Cockell at the Open University in the U.K. thinks they probably
are. He hypothesized that a meteor smashed through a migrating flock of
bats, pulverizing them.

It's true that many people reported hearing a loud, house-rattling sonic
boom in the Kottayam district early on July 25, 2001, just hours before
the first red rain. After interviewing ear-witnesses, Louis concluded it
was too loud to be a thunderclap, and may indeed have been a meteor
exploding in the atmosphere.

But while Louis accepts the meteor, he doesn't believe in splattered bat
blood as an explanation. He thinks the meteor arrived carrying the red
particles, and scattered them through the clouds when it exploded. He
believes the red particles are, in fact, extraterrestrial life.

Chemical analysis revealed they're 50 per cent carbon and 45 per cent
oxygen with traces of sodium and iron, consistent with biological
material. But Louis's tests didn't turn up any sign of the DNA you'd
expect to find in any living thing that originated on this planet.

In January, Louis's and Kuma's paper, " The Red Rain Phenomenon of
Kerala and Its Possible Extraterrestrial Origin," was published in the
peer-reviewed scientific journal Astrophysics and Space Science.

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" is a famous saying
in science. Louis sent samples to two other labs for analysis: Cardiff
University's Centre for Astrobiology, where a team of microbiologists is
conducting tests under the guidance of famed astronomer Chandra
Wickramasinghe, and the lab of Milton Wainwright, a microbiologist at
Sheffield University.

The Cardiff University team has posted high-resolution electron
micrographs of the red particles that reveal "internal structures as
well as evidence of a replication cycle not commonly found in either
bacteria or yeasts" -- specifically, the images seem to show daughter
cells budding inside the thick-walled parent cells. The Cardiff team
also report that one study has turned up DNA in the cells after all, but
they're continuing to work to try to confirm that result, which they
term "equivocal."

With or without DNA, the cells may have other bizarre traits. Louis
claims (though not in his January paper) that he has seen the cells
reproducing in water superheated to more than 300 degrees C. Nothing on
Earth that we know of can live in water above about 120 degrees.

Cells able to live in such extreme conditions just might be cells
adapted to life in the unbelievably harsh environment of outer space.

Terrestrial or extraterrestrial, something weird fell in the red rain of
Kerala.

With any luck, we'll know more in a few weeks.
 
Received on Thu 08 Jun 2006 12:28:37 PM PDT