Raining Extraterrestrial Microbes in Kerala? 255
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 The authors' last two papers on the subject were unpublished: this published paper is more cautious.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."
Red particles... (Score:3, Interesting)
Mike.
Interesting conclusion... (Score:2, Interesting)
You should read this one (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Iron Oxide Chrondules (Score:5, Interesting)
Would have to be a bloody big bird (Score:3, Interesting)
Anyway you would expect other things, like hail of McNuggets in a meteroid vs bird incident.
It is a weird incident in anycase. If it is a life form then the fact that so much of it fell down could this mean the entire meteroid was made of it?
The previous theories suggested that small microbes might hide among the rocky part of the asteroid. Not the entire asteroid being made of it.
Also why is this taking so long? India is a tech nation isn't it? In 4 years they should have been able to analyze this down the individual atoms.
Re:Iron Oxide Chrondules (Score:3, Interesting)
bad paper (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The Reds are coming! (Score:3, Interesting)
"Kerala boasts the highest literacy rate in the country (70%), a low infant mortality rate, and is the only state in which females outnumber males. Land distribution is among the most equitable in India, at least partly due to the progressive land ownership policies instituted more than a century ago in what was then the princely state of Travancore. Further extensive land reforms in the 1960's and 70's were carried out by a state government which gained the distinction, in 1957, of being the first democratically elected communist government in the world. Kerala's industrial sector is almost non-existent, however, potential investors from outside being reluctant to engage a highly politicized labour force."
Huh-oohhh, communism that *does* work? Funny how things go when there's no embargo impeding on people's will.
Re:Common occurance (Score:5, Interesting)
The authors clearly have no understanding of biology beyone "it has DNA in it and is carbon-based". Their methods, in particular their "study" of the DNA content, are laughably off-base and reveal a total lack of understanding of how to handle microorganisms which have a thick cell wall.
Trivial test - stain them for bloody cellulose! This is such an obvious damn thing to do that the only excuse for not doing it is (a) they don't know enough to try, or (b) they did and didn't like the results so they didn't mention them, which is probably more likely.
This is a stupid paper.
Re:Iron Oxide Chrondules (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't see anything clearly biological here, and even if there was, the connection to something extraterrestrial rather than terrestrial is tenuous. Don't get me wrong -- it's interesting, but A) there's already a long history of such hunts in ordinary meteorites, and B) that hunt has been pretty unsatisfying, with loads of examples of probable or demonstrated terrestrial contamination, and loads of examples of things that "look like" biological structures, but aren't upon more detailed examination.
People are *way* too interested in seeing something exotic here rather than looking at all the possibilities, including ordinary mineralogical ones, and ordinary terrestrial ones. The authors have done a poor job of eliminating some of these others. Where is the extraordinary evidence for the extraordinary claims? I mean, that analysis is really poor in some ways. Using EDAX on an SEM rather than a dedicated microprobe is a poor way to do it for such small structures, and where's the X-ray diffraction in case there is anything crystalline here? Not even attempted.
At least the DNA/RNA tests do look decent, because they included a positive test of the technique and were apparently thorough about breaking the structures up, but there is no guarantee there would be DNA or RNA present if there has been sufficient degradation (in either hypothesis!). What if these are highly degraded fungal spores? Their cell walls are extremely durable (they survive for geological eons). That hypothesis could explain the composition, the morphology, and the absence of DNA or RNA. Why didn't they test for the presence of typical fungal spore wall materials?
Finally, I find the arguments regarding the connection to the supposed meteor airburst rather ridiculous. The evidence for the event itself is poor in the first place -- sonic boom? That's it? I'm sorry, I need a little more than that. How do we know there weren't supersonic military aircraft in the area the time, or that people were mistaking something else for a sonic boom? Worse, most of the arguments they use to dispute the possibility of a terrestrial source contributing to the location of the fallout for 2 months would also apply to a meteor. What, there aren't any high-altitude winds here? The plume just lingered for that long? Is there something about meteor plumes that allow them to linger but not the terrestrial possibilities? High-altitude volcanic ash can spread across a whole continent in just a few days!
No, I think a regional terrestrial source is much more likely for whatever these things are, and they've done a poor job eliminating that possibility. Given all the weird stuff that sometimes gets sucked up into rainstorms and later found falling to the ground (e.g., frogs, fish), you've got to be skeptical, unless we're going to claim those could be extraterrestrial too.
Life != DNA and ET Microbes != Panspermia (Score:3, Interesting)
DNA is not a requirement for life, as many commenters here have written. DNA (and/or RNA) is at the core of all life on Earth because all present life forms appear to have a common ancestor that used these molecules for it's genetics. The fundamental mechanism used to replicate oneself is the most likely of traits to be highly conserved in evolutionary biology and this is exactly what we are seeing. However, this does not imply that DNA (or RNA) is the only such mechanism possible, especially when the environment that fostered the transition from inorganic to organic is in a different temperature/pressure regime (300 degrees C!). Just as DNA would be useless as a genetic mechanism in the kinds of environments the paper's authors say they see replication in, a molecule that is useful in that environment would not likely be chemically functional in our relatively frigid and low pressure Earth surface environment.
Therefore, absence of DNA is not unexpected.
If this does turn out to be extraterrestrial life, then the possibility that life could drift from world to world becomes a fact. This does not, however, mean that the origin of life here on Earth is due to such transport. Just because it is possible doesn't mean it has happened, let alone is responsible for the modern biosphere.
The people that make the instant leap from the possibility of interplanetary spores surviving to the assumption that this must be how life began here have always puzzled me. After all, the life in such a scenario had to develop somewhere before traveling to Earth. Why is it so difficult to believe that the life we see today is truly indigenous?
I think I now realize why these people are so ardent that life came from somewhere else: they continue to be mired in the historical notion that the beginning of life required some unique event to get started. In this way, they have much in common with creationists and the general public. The lesson to take from this if it is real is not that life came from space, but that life springs out of non-life with relative ease.