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Alien Rain Over India 241

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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Alien Rain Over India

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  • Or it could be (Score:3, Interesting)

    by The_Mr_Flibble ( 738358 ) on Monday March 06, 2006 @08:52AM (#14857018)
    An Invasion force ?
    • by TangoCharlie ( 113383 ) on Monday March 06, 2006 @09:25AM (#14857173) Homepage Journal
      More likely to be some kind of alien biological weapon. Obviously, the aliens have
      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.
      • "More likely to be some kind of alien biological weapon."

        I think a simpler explanation would be that...all those Indian's have been sweating. And the evaporating perspiration has carried parts of the red dots off their foreheads, and finally collected in the clouds enough, to precipitate down.

        I suspect the same would happen to an area with a decade long motorcycle rally...all those tatoos melting into the air, tho when it came back down, wouldn't be red...much darker and meaner looking...

    • Spaghetti Sauce. Proves existence of noodly appendages once and for all.
  • If you've read the book, you'd know that the movie version of 2001 uses Jupiter rather than Saturn as described in the book. The more I watch it, the more it makes sense that Jupiter is the correct planet and Saturn just doesn't quite fit. If you look at the space ship (the one with HAL and Dave), it looks like a single sperm and it's flying towards the giant egg Jupiter. We humans are performing panspermia right in our own solar system!

    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.
    • by meringuoid ( 568297 ) on Monday March 06, 2006 @09:01AM (#14857072)
      The question is whether something like that could survive in the harsh radiation of space.

      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.

      • similarly (Score:2, Informative)

        by grumpyjack ( 958081 )
        And also, on the same mission, before take-off someone who was preparing the craft for launch sneezed on the camera. When the craft returned the bacteria from the sneeze was found to be alive and well having survived the voyage.
      • If this [com.com] is what you're referring to, they were very small worms, not bacteria. I'm sure there was some bacteria in there, though.
      • 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.

        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" (
        • by Anonymous Coward
          In practice small objects don't tend to do reentry like larger objects. The differance is mainly in that they don't resist deceleration so much having a much larger surface area then mass, this leads to them gently floating down the atmosphere. If I remember correctly very fine dust enters the planet constantly, never burning up cause it just isn't heavy enough to suffer that fate.

      • I think sea monkeys are pretty amazing. Why couldn't some life form like that just hitch a ride on/in a rock until it hits water?
        Doesn't matter what planet, when the conditions are right, it'll hatch.

        • 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!

          • Those look pretty cool. Thanks for the link.

            I am being naively serious about that type of life form.
            Our returning spacecraft only have heat sheilds on the gravity side to pretect the rest of the craft. I'm sure that some meteors hit ground. What is to stop some spore from hitching a ride on a meteor or even breaking off in the upper atmosphere where it can gently rain down?
    • by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 06, 2006 @09:10AM (#14857101)
      "if you're on mushrooms, the hour long warp scene makes total sense"

      ...and if you're not on mushrooms, it's only 5 minutes long!
    • 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.

      I am sure there are ways for the right spore or something else to survive space conditions for a long time, and I suppose it is theoretically possible that a lttle bit of it could hitch a ride on a rock, surviving the cataclysmmic impact tha
      • Panspermia offers the possiblility that if we ever DID find a way to prove that live could not possibly have spontaneously arisen on the early earth - then there is a scientifically plausible way for some other set of initial conditions (or perhaps a much longer timescale) to provide the necessary kick-start.

        However, as things look now, it seems that the conditions on early Earth were EXTREMELY good for spontaneous assembly of the necessary building block - which means that panspermia is out the door (by Oc
    • Paul Davies published a book [amazon.com] on this a couple of years ago. He believes that Earth may well have been seeded with life from Mars, and we are the last surviving Martians. He's got a reasonable amount of data to support it, too.
  • by endrue ( 927487 ) on Monday March 06, 2006 @08:55AM (#14857037)
    There is a small bottle containing a red fluid on a shelf in Sheffield University's microbiology laboratory.

    Is that like a ship in a bottle?
  • by meringuoid ( 568297 ) on Monday March 06, 2006 @08:56AM (#14857047)
    ... this may actually be blood. The particles do look quite like red blood cells, and that would explain the lack of DNA found in them.

    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.

  • by Stephen H-B ( 771203 ) <sjholmesbrown@NosPaM.gmail.com> on Monday March 06, 2006 @08:57AM (#14857050) Homepage
    Good thing my tinfoil hat is waterproof. Let's see those alien rain bugs infest my brain now!
    • I hope you aren't relying on that tinfoil hat to keep your thoughts secure. In the March 2006 issue of Popular Science on page 80 there is a great article on research done with tinfoil hats and different radio frequencies. It seems that the tinfoil can actually amplify (by 20-30 dB) 1.2 and 2.6Ghz waves, two frequencies used by the government and some other applications. Just so ya know.
      • Any word on how the considerably heavier lead hats hold up to those test freqencies? I'd rather not have some freak accident literally cook my brain becuase I was trying to protect "my" thoughts.
    • Good thing my tinfoil hat is waterproof. Let's see those alien rain bugs infest my brain now!

      So ... they land on your shoulders and swim up.

      You're not nearly paranoid enough. When it's raining, stay indoors, or wear your hermetically sealed suit.

      Sheesh! Amateurs!
    • EVE Online does not run on Macs ;D

      Nor on Linux ....

      Offtopic, yepp ...

      angel'o'sphere
  • One big problem (Score:5, Insightful)

    by smooth wombat ( 796938 ) on Monday March 06, 2006 @09:00AM (#14857068) Journal
    From the article:

    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.

    • by Scrameustache ( 459504 ) * on Monday March 06, 2006 @09:51AM (#14857299) Homepage Journal
      It would be nice if these samples had been collected in the correct manner

      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!
      • petition to fund an army of scientists which will be deployed at one-meter intervals to cover the entire earth!

        I know you're joking, but consider this: the earth's surface area is approx. 500 million square kilometers, or over 500 trillion sq. meters. There are over 6 billion people.

        Evenly spread at 1 person per sq. meter, we could only cover about 0.0012 percent of the surface area.

        And I used to worry about the population explosion.

        • Re:One big problem (Score:3, Informative)

          by Jeremi ( 14640 )
          Evenly spread at 1 person per sq. meter, we could only cover about 0.0012 percent of the surface area.


          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.

    • 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.

      I'm sure that, with a little persuasion, you'd be able to get them to conduct the experiment properly.

      Yep.
    • A newer paper shows that they've determined a metabolism and life-cycle for these things.

      That's right, they grow and reproduce:

      http://arxiv.org/ftp/astro-ph/papers/0312/0312639. pdf [arxiv.org]

      Even if the original samples had Earth organisms in them, it's pretty amazing that they found something (whether it's Earth-made or not) that grows and reproduces at 300 deg. C boiling oil.

      Read it, really. I'd like to hear from someone what else this could be, other than a really remarkable life form of some kind, alien or otherw
  • Questions (Score:5, Interesting)

    by LS ( 57954 ) on Monday March 06, 2006 @09:03AM (#14857081) Homepage
    1. How could a single meteor/comet cause _two months_ of red rain?
    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
    • 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.

      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, Insightful)

      by RetiredMidn ( 441788 ) *
      1. How could a single meteor/comet cause _two months_ of red rain?

      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.

    • While we're at it, what makes them think that "only a meteorite" could have triggered a sonic boom in the area?

      Not that meteorites are uncommon, it's just that I tend to see red flags anytime someone pops up with "X is the only explanation for Y" rather than "X appears to explain Y."
  • Alien? (Score:5, Funny)

    by jav1231 ( 539129 ) on Monday March 06, 2006 @09:03AM (#14857083)
    We know this because we've discovered everything on Earth already. We ran this through our big database of shit on Earth thingy and it came up negative.
  • Maybe it's time to re-read the works of one Charles Hoy Fort [sacred-texts.com]?
  • by Centurix ( 249778 ) <{centurix} {at} {gmail.com}> on Monday March 06, 2006 @09:07AM (#14857095) Homepage
    But I keep 'vials' of amber fluid in my fridge that came down from the sky on a plane. Truly a gift from the Carlton United Brewery gods.
  • Replay (Score:2, Informative)

    by Kangburra ( 911213 )
    In case you missed the first article about this, they had a similar powder in Chicago, pictures too

    http://www.nbc5.com/news/5884173/detail.html [nbc5.com]
  • Bullshit. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by TangoCharlie ( 113383 ) on Monday March 06, 2006 @09:30AM (#14857196) Homepage Journal

    My favourite quote from the article is

    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'.

    The slashdot posting would almost have you believe that Aliens had actually landed. Sheesh!

  • by bjb ( 3050 ) * on Monday March 06, 2006 @09:37AM (#14857236) Homepage Journal
    Hmm.. after seeing images of the guy during his "makeup years" (1972-early 80's), this now make sense:

    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)

    • The White Stripes also sing about the Red Rain, on their recent Get Behind Me Satan album. But I don't think it's the same idea.

      John Tesh, on the other hand, has a rather alien-sounding track called "Red Rain" on his 1997 horror-show entitled (shudder) Sax All Night.

  • by Ancient_Hacker ( 751168 ) on Monday March 06, 2006 @09:42AM (#14857258)
    I *see*--- there's stuff that if his claims are true, would be the biggest news since I don't know when. But it's been sitting around for FIVE YEARS and not confirmed by anybody else. And apparently he hasnt given samples to other scientists. And it hasnt appeared on the front page of the NYT.

    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.

    • I *see*--- there's stuff that if his claims are true, would be the biggest news since I don't know when. But it's been sitting around for FIVE YEARS and not confirmed by anybody else. And apparently he hasnt given samples to other scientists. And it hasnt appeared on the front page of the NYT.

      "Life on Earth Spawned from Extraterrestials" just doesn't seem like it would fit on the Times front page next to "Parliamentry Procedures Revisited in Istanbul" and "US Farmers Denounce Cutbacks in Fed Agricultural

    • by Becquerel ( 645675 ) on Monday March 06, 2006 @11:49AM (#14858188) Journal
      The story has got the front page of the NewScientist this week (no doubt where the origional interest started), a publication i trust far more than and newspaper. In that article the scientist makes the (previously unpublished) claim that:

      ...[if noone can prove what it is] someone will have to verify the observation that Louis [the scientist] made whicheven 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 mcrobes divide happily at a temperature of 300oC. Louis admits he left these claims out of his latest paper because he thought they would be considered "too exaordinary"(NewScientist 4th March 2006)

      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]

      • >published in "Astrophysics and Space Science"

        Astrophysicists and space scientists don't necessarily know boo about life forms on Earth. I'd be more impressed if he got it published in "Microbiology".

        Just doing a quick google image search turns up several microphotographs of pollen grains that look very similar to the pics in the paper.

      • An elemental analyis (two, actually) of the red rain cells found that along with Carbon, Oxygen, and Hydrogen there were significant amounts of Nitrogen, Silicon, Iron, and a few other metals. Somehow these microbes were able to grow on cedar oil (containing mostly C, H, and a little O). Did they transmute the lighter elements into heavier elements? Does the biochemistry of these red rain microbes only involve C, O, and H? I find this hard to believe.
  • by Slashdolt ( 166321 ) on Monday March 06, 2006 @09:44AM (#14857271)
    Someone had to say it...
  • Blood Storm (Score:4, Funny)

    by LS ( 57954 ) on Monday March 06, 2006 @09:45AM (#14857277) Homepage
    It appears that something similar occurred over Florida mid-December.

    Here's the article [theonion.com]

    LS
  • Chalk one up for Charles Forte.
  • by woodlouse_man ( 903301 ) on Monday March 06, 2006 @10:02AM (#14857354)
    Read this in New Scientist over the weekend. Link here (but you need to be a subscriber)

    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?

    • if they are mamallian red blood cells, how did the clouds get seeded with them int he first place?

      When they triggered the improbability drive, a houseplant was converted into a whale...
    • by bcmm ( 768152 )
      Two other points made in the NS article:
      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?).
  • by Lord_Dweomer ( 648696 ) on Monday March 06, 2006 @10:16AM (#14857442) Homepage
    Can anybody here suggest some plausible alternatative explanations? Is it at all possible that minerals or "organic soup" or something was reabsorbed enmasse into the atmosphere and rained down? I mean....I am DEFINITELY not religious...but this is a little creepy (read:cool) even for me. Raining blood? Isn't that one of the signs of the apocolypse or something?

    • Yeah, it's called massive POLLUTION. Having been to India, there is a permanent layer of dark brown haze that blankets the country at roughly 5,000 feet or so. In fact, most of SE Asia is covered by this perma-smog. While this certainly would be interesting to have alien babies dropped in India, my guess it's just the result of pollution.
    • Isn't that one of the signs of the apocolypse or something?

      No but I do find it interesting it was mentioned to have happened before. The closest thing in the apocolypse is a bright star falling and contaminating 1/3 (or was it 2/3) of the worlds water supply. Keep in mind, the end of days aren't like Hollywood portrays them. After the worst passes there is 1,000 years of peace (which would obviously mean lots and lots of dead people). The world doesn't just explode. It's the end of an age.

      As for alter

  • Occam's Razor (Score:3, Insightful)

    by maggard ( 5579 ) <michael@michaelmaggard.com> on Monday March 06, 2006 @10:28AM (#14857516) Homepage Journal
    Wow - Hemos posted this & not ScuttleMonkey? Usually SM is the one who falls for the "I read it on the Intarweb so it must be true!" psuedo-science...

    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.

  • by Rob Carr ( 780861 ) on Monday March 06, 2006 @10:49AM (#14857636) Homepage Journal
    New Scientist has a more extensive article titled Alien rain over India [newscientistspace.com]. The possible causes for 50 tons of the red gunk range from panspermia to sand to high flying bats killed by an exploding meteor. Somehow, I think panspermia is more likely than the bats, although that's not saying much.

    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?

  • Obligatory (Score:2, Funny)

    by cciRRus ( 889392 )
    All your tandoori chicken are belong to us.
  • For two months? If it were coming from space wouldn't it fall in a ring around the globe as the earth rotates?
  • It it "came from space" over the course of two months then we would expect this substance to have rained down all around the globe at that lattitude.

    The more likely explanation is that it is some industrial airborn effluent generated in the region that was kept hushed for some reason.
  • All life can pretty much be traced back to the Big Bang.
  • Q: Where did life on Earth come from?
    A: Life came from outer space.
    Q: Where did life in outer space come from?

    likewise
    Q: Where did life on Earth come from?
    A: God created life on Earth.
    Q: Where did God come from?
    • likewise
      A: God created life on Earth.
      Q: Where did God come from?

      This is like asking "What happened 1 second before the start of time".

      If you think about it, neither existence ("Where did matter/energy come from?") nor non-existence make any sense. Can anybody truly imagine the universe as being completely void of matter and/or energy? I cannot reconcile either one of these positions, but I know that we do exist.

      So to answer your question, God didn't come from anywhere. God is Alpha and Omega, meaning G

  • First, thanks for quoting Peter Gabriel - that song was the first that came to my mind when I read (red) this story.

    Second, my first guess is industrial pollution. India isn't very good at such things as industrial hygene (part of the reason why they can underprice Europe & N. America). But this, supposedly, has been disproved. I'd look again.

    Unlike many people however. I think that panspermia is possible, perhaps even ikely. But that doesn't mean it happens a lot, and it doesn't mean I believe that pa
  • related story (Score:3, Informative)

    by solferino ( 100959 ) <<moc.liamg> <ta> <mehczah>> on Monday March 06, 2006 @03:00PM (#14860174) Homepage
    related story [news.com.au]
    SCIENTISTS examining the first dust samples collected from a comet have found complex carbon molecules, supporting the theory that ingredients for life on Earth originated in space.
  • What really annoys me about believers in panspermia is that the promoters won't admit that they are simply complicating the puzzle of how life originated on earth.

    Why couldn't life start on earth ... The fact that we are here is pretty strong evidence.

    Do these people have any idea just how huge space is and how unlikely it is that material from another established planetary system with life could have come to earth intact?

    It's as rediculous as the Intelligent Design dumbasses ... dont understand how somethi

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