- #1
- 558
- 0
EL said:
The red rain phenomenon of Kerala and its possible extraterrestrial origin
A paper (arxiv.org) to appear in a scientific journal claims a strange red rain might have dumped microbes from space onto Earth four years ago. But the report is meeting with a shower of skepticism from scientists who say extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof—and this one hasn’t got it. The scientists agree on two points, though. The things look like cells, at least superficially. And no one is sure what they are.
“These particles have much similarity with biological cells though they are devoid of DNA,” wrote Godfrey Louis and A. Santhosh Kumar of Mahatma Gandhi University in Kottayam, India, in the controversial paper. “Are these cell-like particles a kind of alternate life from space?”.
http://www.world-science.net/exclusives/060104_specksfrm1.htm
PIT2 said:In the newsstory one researcher say they could be spores.
But do spores contain DNA?
At first glance, I thought red blood cells too, but when I looked more closely, they were too irregularly shaped (they really don't all look the same shape at all when you look at them in the higher magnification images), and too small. The article is saying these things are 4-10 micrometers in diameter, but looking at the scales on the figures shown, they look more consistently to be about 2 micrometers in diameter. The scale bars in the last three figures are 20, 10 and 5 micrometers, respectively. You can easily see from the last figure that they are all smaller than 5 micrometers, about half the length of that scale bar.matthyaouw said:Yes, they should do.
I was going to say some of the shots remind me of red blood cells, espescially with the lack of DNA, but Moonbear knows better than me I'm sure.
I hope any apocolypse-predicting nutjobs don't pick up on that. Rain of blood would probably be quit high on their list of things to look for.
Moonbear said:It's possible that it's fine dust from sand...it could have been the shell of some organisms broken down and worn smooth over time that formed the dust.
These are all larger sand grains, but you can see the variety of shapes and sizes in just these examples. The silicon is really leading me to think sand or silica tests of microorganisms (they wouldn't be any sort of cell or have any membrane...it's like a shell).
The trouble with your sand suggestion is that they are overwhelmingly made of carbon and oxygen. Silicon is only a "minor constituent". Shell dust can't be right either since shells are primarily calcium carbonate and there's no calcium in these things.“The major constituents of the red particles are carbon and oxygen,” they wrote. Carbon is the key component of life on Earth. “Silicon is most prominent among the minor constituents” of the particles, Louis and Kumar added; other elements found were iron, sodium, aluminum and chlorine.
Moonbear said:It's possible that it's fine dust from sand...it could have been the shell of some organisms broken down and worn smooth over time that formed the dust.
your right, it is lengthy! anyway the pictures were interesting. i didn't know it myself (i live in india!)BeerBaron said:I was just in a discussion about this on another forum weeks earlier. I dug this pdf up that offers one scenario. A bit lengthy but it has pics of the "cells" :) .
http://arxiv.org/ftp/astro-ph/papers/0310/0310120.pdf
ashmanovski said:And it definitely isn't a red blood cell, at least not one from earth, because our red blood cells have DNA.
Cockell argues that there could be a simpler explanation the red particles are actually blood. "They look like red blood cells to me," he says. The size fits just right; red blood cells are normally about 6 to 8 micrometres wide. They are naturally dimpled just like the red rain particles. What's more, mammalian red blood cells contain no DNA because they don't have a cell nucleus.
It's tough to explain, however, how 50 tonnes of mammal blood could have ended up in rain clouds. Cockell takes a wild guess that maybe a meteor explosion massacred a flock of bats, splattering their blood in all directions. India is home to around 100 species of bats, which sometimes fly to altitudes of 3 kilometres or more. "A giant flock of bats is actually a possibility maybe a meteor airburst occurred during a bat migration," he says. "But one would have to wonder where the bat wings are."
http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2006/03/03/1427866.htm
CNN said:As bizarre as it may seem, the sample jars brimming with cloudy, reddish rainwater in Godfrey Louis's laboratory in southern India may hold, well, aliens.
In April, Louis, a solid-state physicist at Mahatma Gandhi University, published a paper in the prestigious peer-reviewed journal Astrophysics and Space Science in which he hypothesizes that the samples -- water taken from the mysterious blood-colored showers that fell sporadically across Louis's home state of Kerala in the summer of 2001 -- contain microbes from outer space.
Specifically, Louis has isolated strange, thick-walled, red-tinted cell-like structures about 10 microns in size. Stranger still, dozens of his experiments suggest that the particles may lack DNA yet still reproduce plentifully, even in water superheated to nearly 600 degrees Fahrenheit . (The known upper limit for life in water is about 250 degrees Fahrenheit .)
So far, one preliminary DNA test has come back positive.
Now that Milton Wainwright and his colleagues have confirmed that the Indian "red rain" cells contain DNA, it seems most likely that they are algae, and as he suggests in his letter, are not in the least mysterious, despite the date it was published (1 April, p 12 and p 25).
Researchers in Kerala suggest that the red rain could be cells of a red-pigmented green alga, Trentepohlia, but there are other likely candidates. The green algal genus Haematococcus is a member of the motile order Volvocales which forms spores and resting-stage "palmella" structures, both enclosed by thick cell walls, and very similar to the pictures that you published. The cells are strongly red-coloured by the carotenoid pigment astaxanthin, formerly called haematochrome.
One species, Haematococcus pluvialis, occurs in ephemeral rain pools and its specific name means "of rain". In arid environments, water or dust containing the cells may be picked ...
There appears to be an increasing tendency among scientists to come up with wild explanations when asked by the press to comment on unusual, novel phenomena. A good example is provided by comments about the recent Indian red rain phenomenon (4 March, p 34).
Red rain is morphologically similar to fungal spores or algae, as I have recently been able to confirm by microscope analysis of samples. There is no evidence that I am aware of to support suggestions that red rain is dust, sand, fat globules or blood.
Researchers in Kerala suggest that the red rain could be cells of a red-pigmented green alga, Trentepohlia, but there are other likely candidates. The green algal genus Haematococcus is a member of the motile order Volvocales which forms spores and resting-stage "palmella" structures, both enclosed by thick cell walls, and very similar to the pictures that you published. The cells are strongly red-coloured by the carotenoid pigment astaxanthin, formerly called haematochrome.
One species, Haematococcus pluvialis, occurs in ephemeral rain pools and its specific name means "of rain". In arid environments, water or dust containing the cells may be picked up by mini-tornadoes, the usually acknowledged source of bizarre objects such as the froglets, snails, small fish and other creatures deposited in storm showers.
From Guy Cox, University of Sydney
Hazel Muir presents an electron micrograph and asks, "Does it look alien to you?" Having spent quite a lot of time over the past 30 years working on cyanobacteria, the answer has to be, "No, not at all."
It looks very like a cyanobacterium (blue-green alga) of the genus Gloeocapsa or Gloeothece. In this case the red colour would come from c-phycoerythrin and there would also be absorption from chlorophyll. These both absorb strongly at wavelengths reasonably close to the reported figures. The "unusual" cell wall (or sheath) is quite typical of these genera and gives them amazing tolerance to drying: they can live just about anywhere. I have not, however, found any previous references to them living in clouds.
Sydney, Australia
Weather modification is also commonly known as cloud seeding, cloud modification, atmospheric resource management, and precipitation management. Weather Modification, Inc. specializes and excels in all aspects of this water management technology.
Specifically, we offer a complete range of services from turn-key operational programs for rainfall increase (rain enhancement), snow pack augmentation, hail damage mitigation (hail suppression), and fog clearing (fog dissipation), to technical assistance and/or technology transfer for all of these.
In addition, we can provide complete weather radar services, including interfaces with TITAN full-sky radar data archival software, a complete line of proven and FAA-approved seeding equipment, seeding aircraft, atmospheric research instrumentation, and aircraft modification for these purposes.We have been conducting weather operations and research since 1961, and constantly strive to improve all aspects of these atmospheric water management tools. We invite visitors to our Fargo, North Dakota facilities. Just e-mail us at info@weathermod.com, and we will be pleased to answer any questions you may have.
The red rain phenomenon of Kerala, also known as alien rain, refers to a series of rainfall events that occurred in the Indian state of Kerala in 2001. The rain was reported to have a reddish hue and was accompanied by strange particles that were later found to be biological in nature.
The cause of the red rain in Kerala is still a subject of debate and research. Some theories suggest that it may be due to a meteor explosion or a comet entering the Earth's atmosphere. Others believe that it could be a result of a microorganism called spores of a local lichen species, which were found in the rainwater.
There is no evidence to suggest that the red rain is harmful to humans. In fact, the red rainwater was found to have a lower pH level than normal rainwater, indicating that it is less acidic and therefore less harmful. However, it is always recommended to avoid direct contact with any unknown substance.
No, the red rain phenomenon has only been reported in Kerala, India. However, there have been reports of similar events in Sri Lanka and other nearby regions, but they have not been confirmed to be the same phenomenon.
Research on the red rain phenomenon is ongoing, with scientists trying to determine the exact cause of the red rain and the nature of the particles found in it. Some studies have suggested that the particles may be extraterrestrial in origin, but this has not been confirmed. Further research is needed to fully understand this mysterious phenomenon.