Skepticism greets claim of possible alien microbes
antima...@yahoo.com
a strange red rain may have recently brought cells from space to Earth.
(Article in World Science)
http://www.world-science.net
jacob navia
Is this new?
I did a Google search for "Red rain" and I stumbled into this.
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Red Rain
Scientific Analysis
Some red rains have been analyzed scientifically. On March 14, 1818,
there was a red rain in Naples, Italy, and dry powder was collected
after the shower. The powder was analyzed and was shown to be composed
of silex (33%), alumina (15.5%), chrome (1.0%), carbonic acid (9.0%),
and a "combustible substance of a carbonaceous nature." It was thought
to be of "volcanic origin, and that the presence of chrome assimilates
it with meteoric stones" (The American Journal of Science and Arts, 1:
309, 1819).
In 1819 at Blankenburg, Mssrs. M. M. Meyer and Stopp took samples of red
rain that fell and found it to contain a solution of chloride of cobalt.
Samples taken from the Sienna case referred to previously were taken by
Professor Campari who, together with Professor Gabrielli, analyzed it
and found that it did not contain chloride of cobalt. They also found
that the water deposited no sediment, so the color must have been due to
a solution of some sort (Philip Henry Gosse, The Romance of Natural
History, London: James Nisbet and Co., 1866; vol. II, p. 102-103).
In William A. Corliss's compilation Strange Phenomena: A Sourcebook of
Unusual Natural Phenomena (The Sourcebook Project, Glen Arm, MD: 1974,
pp. G1-10) there is an analysis of a blood rain by O. Silvestri that
originally appeared in Chemical News, (25:300, June 21, 1872). The
chemical analysis of the rain, which fell in Sicily on March 9th, 10th,
and 11th, 1872; "was found to consist of 100 parts of red iron ochre,
75.1; carbonate of lime, 11.7; organic matter, 13.2." In this case--as
in a number of others--the red rain was accompanied by meteoric dust,
and this meteoric connection may be significant.
The source is
http://www.strangemag.com/scient.analys.redrain.html
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This one points to the original event in India, in 2001:
Dust settles over Kerala's `red rain'
Vinson Kurian
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, July 31
IT'S official. The coloured rain in some parts of Kerala was caused by
the fine dust thrown up by a disintegrating meteorite. The celestial
body, passing at great speed, deposited the dust in the monsoon clouds,
causing the downpour of colour.
Tracing the origin to meteorite dust -- and not the ``washing of dirty
linen by Marxists beaten blue and black in the Assembly elections'' as
joked by an intrepid Congress Member to the collective amusement of
Parliament -- scientists S. Sampath and V. Sasi Kumar, however, said
they were still at a loss to explain the loud bang which reportedly
accompanied the rain.
According to a Centre for Earth Sciences Studies (CESS) statement, a
eastward-bound meteor exploded over Changanassery town in central Kerala
around 5.30 a.m. on July 25. The burning meteorite is estimated to have
spewed out some 1,000 kg of fine dust into the atmosphere. This
triggered a chain of events, involving yellow, green and even black rain
in Palakkad, Kottayam, Ernakulam and Pathanamthitta districts. Yellow
rain was reported from Chittar in Pathanamthitta district.
The CESS Director, M. Baba, said the initial findings were based on the
physical analysis of the sediments found in the rain water sample
obtained from Changanassery and information culled from the residents.
The chemical analysis, expected to shed more light into the quirky
episode, is in progress.
According to available information, the rain was normal on the previous
day. But residents were jolted out of their sleep by ``a very loud
noise'' in the wee hours of July 25. A few of them also saw a flash of
light.
The red showers started three hours later, fading towards the end of the
15-minute spell. The subsequent spell was normal though. According to
Baba, the sound of thunder was unusual as thunderstorms do not accompany
rains during this time of the year.
Coming as it did after a series of quake-related rumble, collapsing
wells, swirls in well waters, cracking walls, fuming hills, sinking
earth, floods, landslides and what not, the oddities that befell the
verdant greens were such that the State risked being mistaken for the
``odds on country'' over the past seven months.
Scientist teams from leading institutions have been virtually scouring
the earth trying to explain the strange happenings by proffering what
seem to be largely credible but discomfortingly divergent findings.
The fear of the ground slipping away from under their feet, if not the
skies falling on the heads, have rendered the people circumspect and
seeking far more reassuring words from the people concerned. The freak
developments are a sign of much worse things to come, they fear.
After having heaved a collective sigh of relief that no more such
incidents have been reported, the authorities are buying time before
they find themselves faced with a truant Nature yet again.
The source is:
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/businessline/2001/08/01/stories/180125rn.htm
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This one is interesting too:
Astrophysics, abstract
astro-ph/0310120
From: Godfrey Louis [view email]
Date: Sun, 5 Oct 2003 19:31:15 GMT (228kb)
Cometary panspermia explains the red rain of Kerala
Authors: Godfrey Louis, A. Santhosh Kumar
Comments: 20 pages, 5 figures, paper to be submitted to Nature
Red coloured rain occurred in many places of Kerala in India during
July to September 2001 due to the mixing of huge quantity of microscopic
red cells in the rainwater. Considering its correlation with a meteor
airbust event, this phenomenon raised an extraordinary question whether
the cells are extraterrestrial. Here we show how the observed features
of the red rain phenomenon can be explained by considering the
fragmentation and atmospheric disintegration of a fragile cometary body
that presumably contains a dense collection of red cells. Slow settling
of cells in the stratosphere explains the continuation of the phenomenon
for two months. The red cells under study appear to be the resting
spores of an extremophilic microorganism. Possible presence of these
cells in the interstellar clouds is speculated from its similarity in UV
absorption with the 217.5 nm UV extinction feature of interstellar clouds.
This are the same two scientist of the new paper. This one is less
detailed than the new one.
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Two months later they published this:
Astrophysics, abstract
astro-ph/0312639
From: Godfrey Louis [view email]
Date: Mon, 29 Dec 2003 19:32:57 GMT (244kb)
New biology of red rain extremophiles prove cometary panspermia
Authors: Godfrey Louis, A. Santhosh Kumar (Mahatma Gandhi University,
Kottayam, India)
Comments: 17 pages, 6 figures, see related paper astro-ph/0310120
This paper reports the extraordinary biology of the microorganisms
from the mysterious red rain of Kerala, India. These chemosynthetic
organisms grow optimally at an extreme high temperature of 300 degrees C
in hydrothermal conditions and can metabolize inorganic and organic
compounds including hydrocarbons. Stages found in their life cycle show
reproduction by a special multiple fission process and the red cells
found in the red rain are identified as the resting spores of these
microbes. While these extreme hyperthermophiles contain proteins, our
study shows the absence of DNA in these organisms, indicating a new
primitive domain of life with alternate thermostable genetics. This new
biology proves our earlier hypothesis that these microbes are of
extraterrestrial origin and also supports our earlier argument that the
mysterious red rain of Kerala is due to the cometary delivery of the red
spores into the stratosphere above Kerala.
In the latest articles they do not mention that they managed to
make those organisms grow.
jacob
Jonathan Silverlight
<ja...@jacob.remcomp.fr> writes
>antima...@yahoo.com a écrit :
>
>> A paper to appear in a scientific journal is raising eyebrows, claiming
>> a strange red rain may have recently brought cells from space to Earth.
>> (Article in World Science)
>> http://www.world-science.net
>
>Is this new?
>
>I did a Google search for "Red rain" and I stumbled into this.
the World Science article, but it hasn't shown up yet. The fact that the
objects contain very little nitrogen probably explains both the lack of
DNA and protein.
Reading the article at <http://uk.arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0312639> I just
don't think they are seeing any sort of reproduction. They describe
using a mixture of cedar wood oil and water and I think they are just
getting an emulsion. I'd want to see evidence such as incorporation of
labelled compounds into the structure.
The UV absorption peak at 200 nm could be due to almost anything, and
saying that "if this peak is shifted to 217.5 nm it can account for the
interstellar UV absorption" is purest nonsense. Obviously, _any_ peak
can be shifted. I notice that their spectrum at 200 degrees shows a bump
at about 250 nm, which could be due to biologically interesting
molecules such as aromatics, but it disappears at 300 nm.
And the fact that the paper is described as "to be submitted to Nature"
but is over two years old makes me think it has encountered major
opposition!
This topic is being multiple posted (not cross posted) to
sci.astro.research and uk.sci.astronomy, which makes it very difficult
to follow the discussions.
Ian Goddard
>Is this new?
>
>I did a Google search for "Red rain" and I stumbled into this.
>http://www.strangemag.com/scient.analys.redrain.html
The red-rain paper by Louis and Kumar [1] does not mention the
historical context for "red rain" outlined in Strange Magazine, [2]
which could facilitate inquiry into the nature of red rain. I did a
journal search at jstor.org and found two more historic reports.
The first report I found (in "Science, New Series," Vol. 10, No. 257,
1899) cites an 1896 report of red rain from the Australian Association
for the Advancement of Science. In that case "red rain" reportedly
"fell over Melbourne and much of Victoria on December 27, 1896." It
notes that while the red content appeared to be volcanic-rock soil,
"Under the microscope the presence of diatoms, scales of lepidoptera,
quartz and granet were detected." The second report (in "Past and
Present," No. 166. Feb 2000) incidentally mentions: "[...] on one
occasion in 1914 he comments on a report of a shower of red rain in
the Jiangsu town of Songjiang." That's all the second says about it.
It seems unwarranted for Louis and Kumar to jump to a hypothesis of
extraterrestrial origin. After all, we know that structures similar in
appearance (biological cells) are produced on the Earth, but there's
no known case from elsewhere. As such, the default hypothesis would be
that they came from the place where similar structures are produced
(Earth) and should not be abandoned for such a far-fetched hypothesis
until it was absolutely falsified, which is hardly the case.
Moreover, the fact that the red rain fell periodically in a fixed
region of India *over three months* defies the theory of being derived
from an interstellar body, the trajectory of which should coincide
with the Earth at a discrete time (or discrete times separated by long
intervals if Solar orbits come close). If there were a series of
interstellar bodies (like Shoemaker Levey [4]), then they would
deposit their debris along a path over a steady time interval, not
fall in one region over three months. As such, there does not even
appear to be prima-facie evidence of extraterrestrial origin, yet
there does appear to be prima-facie evidence of local origin.
My off-the-cuff hypothesis for the red cell-like structures in rain
examined in [1] is that they may originate from the ocean where they
collected on or near the surface and were drawn up into the clouds by
waterspouts. [3] I believe that might explain several curious features
of the distribution of red rain. Supporting such an ocean-origin
hypothesis is that many (if not all) historic cases of red rain were
close to an ocean. For example, the documented cases in [1] were all
next to the Arabian Sea (see Figure 3). Furthermore, in the historic
cases I cite above, both Melbourne and Victoria are along the Indian
Ocean, while Jiangsu runs right along the Yellow Sea. ~Ian
_____________________________________________________
[1] http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0601022
[2] http://www.strangemag.com/redrain.html
[3] http://www.photolib.noaa.gov/historic/nws/wea00312.htm
http://www.cimms.ou.edu/~schultz/c-k/waterspouts/
[4] http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/sl9/
"Without philosophy thoughts are, as it were, cloudy and indistinct;
its task is to make them clear and to give them sharp boundaries."
Ludwig Wittgenstein