[meteorite-list] Red Rain From Comets?

From: Rob McCafferty <rob_mccafferty_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Mon Mar 6 04:44:53 2006
Message-ID: <20060306094451.7631.qmail_at_web50908.mail.yahoo.com>

I have a couple of problems with this article.

One is that the rain continued for a couple of months
in one area and I would expect significant dispersal
over this time from high altitude.
Secondly, I did some work trying to measure the
atmospheric absorption due to meteor showers (at
Sheffield University, it just so happens). After much
study of several years of nightly data from
observatories over the world and theoretical modelling
of particulate size distribution and their persistence
in the atmosphere we came up with a big fat zero.
Meteor showers (associated with comets, of course)
even the biggest ones, do not contribute in a
measurable amount to atmospheric absorption of
starlight.

If this is so, I wonder how it can rain down for a
couple of months producing red rain.

Rob McCafferty

--- Ron Baalke <baalke_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov> wrote:

>
>
http://www.guardian.co.uk/space/article/0,,1723936,00.html
>
> Red rain could prove that aliens have landed
> Amelia Gentleman and Robin McKie
> The Observer (United Kingdom)
> March 5, 2006
>
> 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.'
>
> ______________________________________________
> Meteorite-list mailing list
> Meteorite-list_at_meteoritecentral.com
>
http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
>


__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com
Received on Mon 06 Mar 2006 04:44:51 AM PST


Help support this free mailing list:



StumbleUpon
del.icio.us
reddit
Yahoo MyWeb