Astrobiology and Extremophiles in Rain
Joe Snod
Red Rain, Red Rectangle
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/25699/
For years, claims have circulated that red rain which fell in India in
2001, contained cells unlike any found on Earth. Now new evidence that
these cells can reproduce is about to set the debate alive
["Growth And Replication Of Red Rain Cells At 121 degrees C And Their
Red Fluorescence" (arxiv.org/abs/1008.4960)]
Panspermia is the idea that life exists throughout the universe in
comets, asteroids and interstellar dust clouds and that life of Earth
was seeded from one or more of these sources. Panspermia holds that we
are all extraterrestrials.
While this is certainly not a mainstream idea in science, a growing
body of evidence suggests that it should be carefully studied rather
than casually disregarded.
For example, various bugs have been shown to survive for months or
even years in the harsh conditions of space. And one of the more
interesting but lesser known facts about the Mars meteorite that some
scientists believe holds evidence of life on Mars, is that its
interior never rose above 50 degrees centigrade, despite being blasted
from the Martian surface by an meteor impact and surviving a fiery a
descent through Earth's thick atmosphere.
If there is life up there, this evidence suggests that it could
survive the trip to Earth.
All that seems well established. Now for the really controversial
stuff.
In 2001, numerous people observed red rain falling over Kerala in the
southern tip of India during a two month period. One of them was
Godfrey Louis, a physicist at nearby Cochin University of Science and
Technology. Intrigued by this phenomena, Louis collected numerous
samples of red rain, determined to find out what was causing the
contamination, perhaps sand or dust from some distant desert.
Under a microscope, however, he found no evidence of sand or dust.
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).
Louis published his results in the peer-reviewed journal Astrophysics
and Space in 2006, along with the tentative suggestion that the cells
could be extraterrestrial, perhaps from a comet that had disintegrated
in the upper atmosphere and then seeded clouds as the cells floated
down to Earth. In fact, 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.
Since then, Louis has continued to study the cells with an
international team including Chandra Wickramasinghe from the
University of Cardiff in the UK and one of the leading proponents of
the panspermia theory, which he developed in the latter half of the
20th century with the remarkable physicist Fred Hoyle.
Today Louis, Wickramasinghe and others publish some extraordinary
claims about these red cells. They say that the cells clearly
reproduce at a temperature of 121 degrees C. "Under these conditions
daughter cells appear within the original mother cells and the number
of cells in the samples increases with length of exposure to 121
degrees C," they say. By contrast, the cells are inert at room
temperature.
That makes them highly unusual, to say the least. The spores of some
extremophiles can survive these kinds of temperatures and then
reproduce at lower temperatures but nothing behaves like this at these
temperatures, as far as we know.
This is an extraordinary claim that will need to be independently
verified before it will be more broadly accepted.
And of course, this behaviour does not suggest an extraterrestrial
origin for these cells, by any means.
However, Wickramasinghe and co can't resist hinting at such an exotic
explanation. They've examined the way these fluoresce when bombarded
with light and say it is remarkably similar to various unexplained
emission spectra seen in various parts of the galaxy. One such place
is the Red Rectangle, a cloud of dust and gas around a young star in
the Monocerous constellation.
It would be fair to say that more evidence will be required before
Kerala's red rain can be satisfactorily explained. In the meantime, it
looks a fascinating mystery.
John Curtis
> Red Rain, Red Rectangle
>
> Panspermia is the idea that life exists throughout the universe in
> comets, asteroids and interstellar dust clouds and that life of Earth
> was seeded from one or more of these sources. Panspermia holds that we
> are all extraterrestrials.
>
Sun's
elements with water. Helium, hydrogen, neon, methane demonstrate
solar isotopic compositions as they exit black smokers.
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/vents/chemistry/images/vents2.gif
http://scrippsnews.ucsd.edu/Releases/?releaseID=550
Abiogenesis is a daily occurrence at the seafloor volcanoes as the
seafloor is sporadically sterilized. Abiogenesis does not require
prior seeding. Complicated explanations are often used to
circumvent abiogenesis. Larvae are required to travel 350
kilometers in less than 31 days to seed a new black smoker.
http://www.physorg.com/news190294239.html
The atmospheres of K and M giants are awash with water.
http://www.aanda.org/index.php?option=com_article&access=standard&Itemid=129&url=/articles/aa/full/2001/34/aade292/aade292.html
Sufficient metallicity of the evolved stars should produce
the same abiogenesis (panspermia) as a black smoker.
John Curtis
.
Brad Guth
Every 19 months we get a lineup with a very nearby Venus, and solar
winds of typically 400+ km/sec are in fact capable of transferring
microbes and spores from those upper clouds of Venus.
At 100 LD or roughly 40e6 km, it takes only 28 hours for Venus
panspermia to get here.
~ BG
Brad Guth
nearby Venus, and typically solar winds of 400+ km/sec are in fact
capable of transferring microbes and spores from those upper clouds of
Venus.
At 100 LD or roughly 40e6 km, at 400 km/sec it takes only 28 hours for
Venus panspermia to get here. Even at 40 km/s is just 280 hours or
less than 12 days.
~ BG
On Sep 6, 12:12 pm, Joe Snod <joe.s...@yahoo.com> wrote:
Chris.B
> Every 19 months and within +/- a few days we get a lineup with a very
> nearby Venus, and typically solar winds of 400+ km/sec are in fact
> capable of transferring microbes and spores from those upper clouds of
> Venus.
>
> At 100 LD or roughly 40e6 km, at 400 km/sec it takes only 28 hours for
> Venus panspermia to get here. Even at 40 km/s is just 280 hours or
> less than 12 days.
>
> ~ BG
Now-now, Brenda! You're reaching again! Burp! 12 days is about the
average period of a cheap, package holiday. Though they may breed like
flies, and always return bright red, no sign of intelligent life has
ever been found there.
Brad Guth
That's only because you are a certified blind bigot by reasons of
incest, that can't stand being dead wrong about anything. You also
can not even accomplish the most basic photo enlargements. Are you
also colorblind like most everyone associated with our NASA/Apollo
fiasco?
Are you saying decades of independent atmospheric obtained microbe
research is entirely bogus, as were all of those Muslim WMD?
Brad Guth / Blog and my Google document pages:
http://bradguth.blogspot.com/
http://docs.google.com/View?id=ddsdxhv_0hrm5bdfj
Joe Snod
> On Mon, 6 Sep 2010 12:12:18 -0700 (PDT), Joe Snod <joe.s...@yahoo.com>
> wrote:
>
>
>
> >Red Rain, Red Rectangle
>
> >http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/25699/
>
> page:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_rain_in_Kerala
>
> The new paper presents two pieces of evidence that their cells are
> growing at 121 C.
>
> 1. Increase in cell number. Given the change in gross morphology that
> they point out, cell number determination by the method they use is
> very questionable. Basically, the method is almost impossible with
> aggregated cells. It would take a much fuller presentation of results
> to convince a biologist that there is any change in cell number.
>
> 2. Daughter cells. Maybe, maybe not. It is not at all obvious that
> they are seeing daughter cells. Certainly, if this were conventional
> biology, the strong suggestion would be that they are not. Since this
> is supposed to be novel, we'll keep an open mind. But to suggest that
> they have any clear evidence for any biology going on here is silly.
>
> Since there is a clear candidate for what the red cells are, they
> should get some, and see how they behave in the same tests. That would
> be interesting -- either way. But they just ignore the other
> candidate.
I wish Usenet would let us take down our own posts like this after we
make them, like Twitter. I looked closely at the two spectra they're
comparing in that article, and they're nothing like the usual spectra
we're familiar with, from classroom astronomy. They're VERY wide, a
few housand Angstroms, and would include many, many of the familiar
narrow lines we might use to, say, identify trace elements in the
sun.
These spectra only show two or three peaks, with corresponding
linewidths (lineshapes?), and without knowing specifically which
chemicals in the red rain produces them, and why the ratios of the
heights of the peaks has it's observed value, in red rain, there's
just too much random probability that disparate combinations of
chemicals might simply produce similar spectra, acccidentally,
especially if you search the whole universe.
You gotta watch out for Indians, who are often extremely accomplished
con artists. There are probably more kooky religious cults in 400 sq.
mi. of India than in the entire history of Europe and the US.