[meteorite-list] Red Rain

From: Sterling K. Webb <sterling_k_webb_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Wed, 1 Sep 2010 18:46:21 -0500
Message-ID: <C9A85545185842E18868714AC6E30B07_at_ATARIENGINE2>

Hi, George, List,

I hate to (red) rain on your parade, but this is
nonsense and wishful thinking. Now, I am a very
speculative individual and always willing to wander
down an attractive Odd Idea Road, but the Red
Rain Lane isn't one of them.

It's bats' blood.

The "Technology Review" is a popular science
magazine published by MIT and here they are
indulging in press release PopSci, triggered by
the appearance of Wickramasinge and G. Lewis
at a recent exobiology conference.

It's bats' blood.

Everything about it fits the case. First, you will
note that the only terrestrial explanation mentioned
in the article is blood. At the time many other
explanations were proposed, including (after a
while) bats' blood. (I might have been the first;
don't know)

The article says: "Instead, the rain water was filled
with red cells that look remarkably like conventional
bugs on Earth. What was strange was that Louis
found no evidence of DNA in these cells which would
rule out most kinds of known biological cells (red blood
cells are one possibility but ought to be destroyed
quickly by rain water)."

This statement is riddled with factual errors. The
cells do NOT "look remarkably like conventional bugs."
They look EXACTLY like mammalian red blood cells,
which is what they are. Mammalian red blood cells
do NOT contain DNA. Period. Not in any mammalian
species. Mammalian red blood cells have to be produced
continually as the lifetime of a denucleated cell is weeks
or months.

Wickramasinge/Louis released electron micrographs
of their cells. They do not merely resemble red blood
cells (instead of bugs); they are identical. The photos
would be accepted by any human pathologist as red
blood cells (which bat erythrocytes greatly resemble).

With dint of much Googling, I was able to find electron
micrographs of the red cells of a few bat species. (How
many specialists study bat red blood cells? Not very
many.) Bat cells contain all the specific detail and
structural oddities of the Red Rain cells. A PERFECT
match, at least morphologically.

The morphology of mammalian erythrocytes differ by
species. Mouse deer have tiny spheres; camels have
elongated ovals, and so on. Bat's blood is very strange
mammalian blood. While we humans have red cells that
take up a third to a half of the blood volume (20 or 30
trillion cells), bat blood is almost solid red cells with
just enough serum to make it flow. The bat red cell is
stiff, dense, and durable. they do not dissolve in water.

The state of Kerala has immense bat populations. Why
did they bleed out in the sky? Indian bats are plagued
with a variety of hemorrhagic fevers which often decimate
their populations. In an epidemic, tens of millions are
infected. Sick bats fly (to eat and live) until they are
too weak and erratic to fly any more.

Hemorrhagic fevers cause increasing hemorrhage. They
cause the victim to bleed from all parts of the body and through
the skin. You bleed out everywhere. It's a ghastly image that
most will never see, I hope. The afflicted bats would fly and
struggle and they would rain their blood from every pore
everywhere they went.

These ill, vast "flights" of bats can no longer avoid the
oncoming aircraft, which when healthy the radar-equipped
bats have no problem with. "Louis says there were reports
in the region of a sonic boom-type noise at the time, which
could have been caused by the disintegration of an object
in the upper atmosphere."

Sonic booms? Well, duh! "The state has three major
international airports at Thiruvananthapuram, Kochi,
and Kozhikode, and the Cochin International Airport
(COK) was the first Indian airport incorporated as a
public limited company [private venture]... A fourth
international airport is proposed at Kannur." This
airspace is very busy, filled with passenger jetliners.
Are we beginning to get the picture now?

The sick and bleeding bats were shredded, at night
(when they fly) by air traffic, violently, in addition to
the peak blood loss that accompanies the disease.
Dead bats in the jungle attract little notice, except
from insect and other small scavengers in a hurry
for a snack.

This was the rainy season, and the blood was washed
down by the frequent rains. There was not one Red Rain,
but 2-3 nights of it (it was always at night). Most of the
Red Rain samples were collected from rain barrels.

We do not need Sherlock Holmes here.

It's bats' blood.

But, the mysterious cells continue to divide in
raging hot oil (121 degrees C) under tremendous
pressure, they say. My first question would be why
Louis and Wickramasinghe thought the best primary
test of extraterrestrial life would be to deep-fry it in
a pressure cooker? (Aliens are advised to stay away
from fried chicken and seafood shacks. Stay out
of the kitchen.)

Under those conditions, the erythrocytes would
progressively disintegrate from within, splitting
along the longitudinal plane into two flat discs that
would look very much like the original single cell.
Count them all, and you can imagine "reproduction"
is slowly taking place.

It's pitiful that so many in the "science" community
are taken in by this sort of flim-flam without taking
any time or trouble to investigate the "extraordinary
claim" in the slightest. It is also illustrative of how far
wishful thinking and the intense desire for a result
can influence even a trained scientific mind.

We must really WANT the Aliens to come. Let's hope
that when (OK, if) They do, we don't change our minds.

Just to be clear. I am willing to spend my tax monies on
digging out evidence of extremophiles on Mars, to put a
robot submarine under the ice on Europa, to send more
Dawn-type missions to other asteroids, er, dwarf planets
(and moons), to put several long-lived rovers on (and an
orbital link around) Titan, to put a giant Reconnaissance
Orbiter in orbit around every spherical body in the solar
system bigger than 200 km (to map them at fine 10 cm
resolution), sooner or later. I wish someone was working
on a Venus rover that could take a 400 C 100-bar acid rain
lickin' --- and keep on tickin'!

But Red Rain? C'mon.


Sterling K. Webb
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
----- Original Message -----
From: "George Blahun" <ks1u at att.net>
To: "Adam" <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Wednesday, September 01, 2010 8:29 AM
Subject: [meteorite-list] Red Rain


> Here's an interesting, though not definitive, article about the red
> rain in India and Panspermia. It's not a tabloid, but published by
> MIT.
>
> George
>
> http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/25699/
>
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Received on Wed 01 Sep 2010 07:46:21 PM PDT