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Alien Rain Over India
Posted by
Hemos
on Mon Mar 06, 2006 07:47 AM
from the like-purple-rain-over-minnesota? dept.
from the like-purple-rain-over-minnesota? dept.
tintinaujapon writes "The Observer is reporting that scientists may have found the first evidence of panspermia, the idea promoted by Hoyle (among others) that life on earth was seeded from space, in samples of a strange rain which fell over India for two months in 2001. To quote the article: "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."" This is a continuation of a story two months back or so.
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Raining Extraterrestrial Microbes in Kerala? 255 comments
jdfox writes "World Science is reporting on a controversial paper to be published shortly in the peer-reviewed research journal Astrophysics and Space Science, describing a strange red rain that fell in India in 2001, shortly after a meteor airburst event in the area. The authors posit that the red particles found in the raindrops may be extraterrestrial microbes. The authors' last two papers on the subject were unpublished: this published paper is more cautious. The paper can be viewed online, and should obviously be considered in context. More info on the 'panspermia' hypothesis can be found at Wikipedia."
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Or it could be (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Or it could be (Score:5, Funny)
read HG Wells' War of the Worlds and are making sure we get wiped out first. Of course,
it's the Chickens they should be after. H5N1 is much bigger threat to alien life forms
than the common cold.
Parent
Re:Or it could be (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Or it could be (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course, although the theory is good, in practice it is not working that good. On the other hand, we are being very good at improving this CO_2 emissions don't you think?
Re:Or it could be (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Jupiter a better choice than Saturn in 2001 (Score:5, Funny)
It's pretty fucking deep, and if you're on mushrooms, the hour long warp scene makes total sense.
But realistically, if we can pollinate other planets with our germs, then it seems more than likely that other planets could eject matter which eventually cross pollinates with us. The question is whether something like that could survive in the harsh radiation of space. There are obviously some bacteria that could make the trip, but how common are these extremophiles? Probably not as extreme as sending up a sperm ship to penetrate Jupiter's Big Red Dot and impregnate it with our space baby.
Re:Jupiter a better choice than Saturn in 2001 (Score:5, Interesting)
Apollo 12 landed near the Surveyor probe, which had landed a few years previously. The astronauts broke off a section and returned it to Earth. It was then found that bacteria had survived on Surveyor, on the Moon, in spore form - and once returned, came back to life and started replicating again.
I've also read lately (I believe it was in the current New Scientist) that an experiment on bacteria was sent up on Columbia. On being recovered, it turned out that the three cultures that were intended to be in there had all been killed off by the heat of reentry - but that a contaminant strain had survived and thrived inside the unbroken sealed container.
Bacteria are tough, and we can assume that anything leaving Earth is infested with them.
Parent
similarly (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Jupiter a better choice than Saturn in 2001 (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Jupiter a better choice than Saturn in 2001 (Score:3, Interesting)
That's an important point, though. In both of those cases, whatever lived was shielded during re-entry. A spore on an asteroid or other "natural" projectile would experience similar (worse, probably) extremes and it seems less and less likely they could survive "re-entry" (
Re:Jupiter a better choice than Saturn in 2001 (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Jupiter a better choice than Saturn in 2001 (Score:3, Informative)
I like Triops [triops.com] better. I'm growing some right now. I've got a webcam on them do I can watch them swim about. They grow fast - they can double in size in a day!
Re:Jupiter a better choice than Saturn in 2001 (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:Jupiter a better choice than Saturn in 2001 (Score:3, Informative)
Very impressive (Score:5, Funny)
Is that like a ship in a bottle?
According to the current New Scientist... (Score:5, Interesting)
It's almost as outlandish as 'the meteor was full of alien bugs', though; what we seem to have with this hypothesis was 'the meteor burst in the middle of a flock of bats and liquidised them'...
No link, the website article is subscription-only. Sorry.
Re:According to the current New Scientist... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:According to the current New Scientist... (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe God did it (Score:5, Funny)
-Eric
Parent
Link to Louis' original paper (Score:4, Informative)
link [arxiv.org]
Parent
Re:According to the current New Scientist... (Score:3, Insightful)
It couldn't possibly be the rain was red because the traces of iron were simply iron oxide (AKA rust) which also turns water red.
Alien rain? Riiiiiiight. (Score:3, Funny)
One big problem (Score:5, Insightful)
But Godfrey Louis, a physicist at Mahatma Gandhi University in Kottayam, after gathering samples left over from the rains, concluded this was nonsense.
He didn't collect uncontaminated samples. He collected samples that had, apparently, collected in puddles. Depending on where those puddles were, ground, steel barrel, rooftop, squeezed from a soaked shirt, etc, they were not the same as putting out a clean jar and collecting the rain as it fell.
It would be nice if these samples had been collected in the correct manner then a more convincing argument could be made that what was found came from space and was not of terrestrial origins.
This is like people who have cancer, undergo treatment for a while then stop. Then they resort to prayer to cure them. If they're cured they claim it was the prayer that did the work. However, since they had already undergone treatment, we can't say for sure which helped the person. The results are contaminated by their original treatment.
Same thing in this instance.
Re:One big problem (Score:5, Funny)
You see people, this is why I've set up a petition to fund an army of scientists which will be deployed at one-meter intervals to cover the entire earth! In case anything interresting ever happens, we'll have qualified people with the right equipment right there to take samples and measurments.
And they said I was being unrealistic... the FOOLS!
Parent
Re:One big problem (Score:3, Informative)
Your mistake is that you are assuming each person needs only 1 square meter of land to survive. I think you should look up the actual minimum footprint of land necessary to feed/clothe/house a person, then recalculate.
Questions (Score:5, Interesting)
2. Why the crys of "bullshit" from other researchers? There is a piece of evidence, not just a claim. It seems easy to figure out what's going on by analyzing the contents of that bottle.
LS
Re:Questions (Score:2)
That begs the question: Are the contents of the bottle guaranteed to be sterile, uncontaminated by their trip from space (theoretically) to the bottle? From reports of the collection methods, chances are slim.
Thus, bullshit I cry.
Re:Questions (Score:3, Informative)
That begs the question: Are the contents of the bottle guaranteed to be sterile, uncontaminated by their trip from space (theoretically) to the bottle? From reports of the collection methods, chances are slim.
"That begs the question" ... No it doesn't. That does not mean what you think it means.
Actually, I beg to differ. He's using it correctly (or at least, it can be read that way). Begging the question is assuming what you are claiming to prove; in this case, they are assuming that the bio-goo in
Re:Questions (Score:3, Insightful)
All in the same place? (More appropriately, only reported in one place?)
Come on, /. When I want to waste my time on crap like this, I turn to digg.
Alien? (Score:5, Funny)
First Fortean post (Score:2)
Sounds impressive (Score:5, Funny)
Replay (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.nbc5.com/news/5884173/detail.html [nbc5.com]
Bullshit. (Score:4, Interesting)
My favourite quote from the article is
The slashdot posting would almost have you believe that Aliens had actually landed. Sheesh!
Peter Gabriel is an alien (Score:4, Interesting)
Peter Gabriel -- "Red Rain"
Red rain is coming down
Red rain, Red rain is pouring down
Pouring down all over me
I am standing up at the water's edge in my dream
I cannot make a single sound as you scream
It can't be that cold, the ground is still warm to touch
This place is so quiet, sensing that storm
Red rain is coming down
Red rain, Red rain is pouring down
Pouring down all over me
Well I've seen them buried in a sheltered place in this town
They tell you that this rain can sting, and look down
The aliens have created life for us
Hay ay ay no pain, Seeing no red at all, see no rain
Red rain is coming down
Red rain, Red rain is pouring down
Pouring down all over me
Red rain-
There sprouts a human, o'er there a puppy
To return again and again
Just let the red rain splash you
Let the rain fall on your skin
It's like fertilizer, oh yeah
To create a new child
Red rain is coming down
Red rain, Red rain is pouring down
Pouring down all over me
And I can't watch it yet
No eye formed yet
It's so hard to lay down in all of this
Red rain is coming down
Red rain is pouring down
Red rain is coming down all over me
I see it, Red rain is coming down
Red rain is pouring down
Red rain is coming down all over me
I'm bathing in it, Red rain coming down
Red rain is coming down
Red rain is coming down all over me
I'm begging you, Red rain coming down
Red rain coming down
Red rain coming down
Red rain coming down
Over me in the red red sea, Over me, Over me, Red rain
(apologies to Mr. Gabriel)
Too bad the facts are so humdrum. (Score:5, Insightful)
One might surmise that the stuff is something more placid, like common earth dust, pollen, bee-poop, grasshopper-poop, or any number of other things of-this-Earth.
A real scientist would have gone out of his way to compare the funny stuff to various earth items, in a good-faith effort to identify the stuff. Not just do batch analyses of the constituent elements. There's 1000's of things that might have that mix of elements and NOT be from off-planetary sources.
Re:Too bad the facts are so humdrum. (Score:4, Interesting)
Non DNA based replication would seem like pretty good evidence for alien life.... if you believe him.
His latest paper to be published in the respectable Astrophysics and Space Science Can be found here [arxiv.org]. Dr Godfrey Louis website, with a pic of the particles and mirrors to this paper and links to other papers, here [vsnl.com]
Parent
Chubby rain? (Score:3, Funny)
Blood Storm (Score:4, Funny)
Here's the article [theonion.com]
LS
Chalk one up (Score:2)
New Scientist article (Score:4, Interesting)
http://www.newscientistspace.com/article/mg1892541 1.100 [newscientistspace.com]
Very interesting article, with several possible explanations.
The most plausible, to my mind, is the mammalian red blood cells. They seem to be the right shape, and have no DNA (like the particles).
As they said in the NS article, the question really remains is - if they are mamallian red blood cells, how did the clouds get seeded with them int he first place?
Re:New Scientist article (Score:3, Funny)
When they triggered the improbability drive, a houseplant was converted into a whale...
Re:New Scientist article (Score:3, Interesting)
50 TONS of mammal RBCs? That's a lot of blood. I don't know the proportion of RBC in blood by weight, but it works out as a lot of blood.
More importantly, red blood cells would swell by osmosis and burst in rain water, probably before reaching the ground.
And then there were the "unofficial" claims he didn't want to publish yet, such as the claim that they can divide, and the claims about conditions under which they can divide (300C in ceder oil? WTF?).
Alternative Explanations? (Score:3, Interesting)
Occam's Razor (Score:3, Insightful)
Look, that there's lots of stuff from off-planet in rain is well known and trivially documented; a couple of tons a day comes down. Heck, run a magnet over the gunk in a rainwater drain and a fair proportion of what gets pulled up will be extra-terrestrial in origin. This is one of those classic easy Science Fair projects.
There's even a popular theory of raindrop formation that requires these high altitude extra-terrestrial fines as the nucleus for starting droplet cascades.
However, 2 months of material entering the Earth's atmosphere over a limited geographical area - there's no mechanism that would permit this. The Earth rotates every 24 hours as it revolves around our Sun: What could be impacting our planet on a schedule that has it ingressing at distinct 24 hour intervals over 2 months/a series of 60, to a non-equatorial location?
Someone really needs to get this guy a globe, or better yet an orrery [wikipedia.org].
Sure it's possible that the rain contaminant isn't upwind mineralogical fines - sure it could be biological fines. Pollen is the obvious source, they had a huge bloom of something odd upwind that year. I know my house gets covered in yellow 'dust' every spring from all the nearby trees, red is just as possible.
But "it's alien life from ooouter spaaace!..." - no. Not saying that couldn't happen, hasn't happened, isn't happening, but this wouldn't be the pattern and there are too many much more prosaic explanations than these extraordinary claims.
Possible Strange Earthlife More the Point (Score:4, Interesting)
More interesting is the idea that "alien" life might originate on Earth. Modern techniques involve culturing and DNA analysis that assume standard DNA in an organism: adenine, thymine, guanine, and cytosine. Viruses can have RNA, but they're not considered alive (that's another argument for another day).
There are other nucleic acids and other nucleic acid pairs. There might even be molecules that could polymerize and act as hereditary subunits. Such life wouldn't have to come from space. Standard theory taught that several kinds of life might have come from the prebiotic soup, but only one survived.
We now know that's not exactly true. There are a few organisms that don't use the exact standard DNA code. The mitochondria in your cells are a perfect example, although they're no longer free-living independent organisms.
What else is out there? The possibility that there is a parallel and intertwined ecosystem is becoming a hot topic in biology.
Rains of frogs, seaweed, sand, and other things aren't uncommon. A rain of non-standard bacteria isn't beyond possibility. Of course, neither is a government experiment on deploying biological weapons, although 50 tons is a lot, whether English or Metric. A foul-up in the biochemistry or some weird damage to the DNA is still more likely. But wouldn't it be fun if it turned out to be Earthlife that's alien?
related story (Score:3, Informative)
Re:In Soviet (Score:4, Funny)
In Soviet Russia aliens reign over you!
Parent
Re:Uh.. (Score:2)
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.
It can't possibly have been raining blood from birds or bats for two months either.
Re:Ancient Semitic religions (Score:2, Interesting)