Alien Rain Over India

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.

Comments

Or it could be

[The_Mr_Flibble]

An Invasion force ?

Re:Or it could be

[TangoCharlie]

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.

Re:Or it could be

[Colourspace]

brilliant in its inefficiency!

Re:Or it could be

[xtracto]

But kind of interesting on principle. As we humans make something similar (in a smaller scale) trying to plant trees in the earth as they get CO_2 and and release O_2...

Of course, although the theory is good, in practice it is not working that good. On the other hand, we are being very good at improving this CO_2 emissions don't you think?

Re:Or it could be

[bri2000]

Another similar theory (which I found quite amusing - while hastening to add that I am quite aware it is basically BS, has no evidence to support it and is not very credible) is that an alien race with an extremely long time horizon looks for planets which are capable of sustaining life (for the sake of argument say planets on which water is in liquid form), seeds them with bacteria or RNA strands or whatever then sits back for a couple of hundred million years while an ecosystem evolves so there's plenty for them to eat and hydro-carbons to use (for plastics if not fuel) when they get here. Obviously there's a risk that intellegent life will evolve and use all these resources before they arrive but if they've seeded plenty of planets this shouldn't be too much of a set-back for them. They just eliminate the infestation, leave things to recover and go somewhere else for now.

Re:Or it could be

[eno2001]

Inefficiency is relative Earthman. I've met beings several eons old who have done this sort of thing before. To them, such a terraforming process would be similar to your informal time unit known as "fractions of a second". Do not fall into the trap of measuring the universe by your own perspective.

Jupiter a better choice than Saturn in 2001

[BadAnalogyGuy]

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.

Re:Jupiter a better choice than Saturn in 2001

[meringuoid]

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.

Re:Jupiter a better choice than Saturn in 2001

[Anonymous Coward]

"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!

Re:Jupiter a better choice than Saturn in 2001

[Compulsion]

If this is what you're referring to, they were very small worms, not bacteria. I'm sure there was some bacteria in there, though.

Re:Jupiter a better choice than Saturn in 2001

[m0nstr42]

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" (entry, rather?). Could a lone bacteria/spore/whatever that was just "floating" on its own through space survive entry into the atmosphere without being burned up?

My guess (IANA cosmologist) is that after a long journey through space it would have been accellerated to great speed by passing nearby massive objects, so despite not having much mass the friction would still be pretty intense.

Re:Jupiter a better choice than Saturn in 2001

[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.

Re:Jupiter a better choice than Saturn in 2001

[Muad'Dave]

I like Triops 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!

Re:Jupiter a better choice than Saturn in 2001

[alicenextdoor]

Paul Davies published a book 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.

Very impressive

[endrue]

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?

According to the current New Scientist...

[meringuoid]

... 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.

Re:According to the current New Scientist...

[LucidBeast]

It is blood and Han Solo got to them first. We can all take it easy now.

Re:According to the current New Scientist...

[miskatonic alumnus]

Charles Fort strikes again.

Re:According to the current New Scientist...

[shotfeel]

Its red, so of course its blood -the traces of iron found are bound to the hemoglobin (which carries oxygen) in the red blood cells.

It couldn't possibly be the rain was red because the traces of iron were simply iron oxide (AKA rust) which also turns water red.

Alien rain? Riiiiiiight.

[Stephen H-B]

Good thing my tinfoil hat is waterproof. Let's see those alien rain bugs infest my brain now!

Re:Alien rain? Riiiiiiight.

[joeme1]

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.

One big problem

[smooth wombat]

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.

Re:One big problem

[Scrameustache]

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!

Re:One big problem

[Jeremi]

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.

Questions

[LS]

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

Re:Questions

[RetiredMidn]

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.

Re:Questions

[MarkusQ]

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.

"That begs the question" ... No it doesn't. That does not mean what you think it means.

Actually, I beg to differ. He's using it correctly (or at least, it can be read that way). Begging the question is assuming what you are claiming to prove; in this case, they are assuming that the bio-goo in the bottle is from space (and not a contaminant) and using it as evidence that there is bio-goo in space. That, in a nutshell, is question begging.

--MarkusQ

Alien?

[jav1231]

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.

Sounds impressive

[Centurix]

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

[Kangburra]

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

Re:In Soviet

[oliverthered]

Common, at least try to try.
In Soviet Russia aliens reign over you!

similarly

[grumpyjack]

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.

Bullshit.

[TangoCharlie]

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!

Re:Bullshit.

[Rashdot]

No, it can't be bullshit because I've got loads of that already and it's dark brown.

Peter Gabriel is an alien

[bjb]

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)

Re:Ancient Semitic religions

[ArcherB]

Well, the Bible does speak of rain and rivers running red with blood. Now we've seen it happen. Start looking for a plague of toads next and be ready with the sheep's blood.

Too bad the facts are so humdrum.

[Ancient_Hacker]

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.

Re:Too bad the facts are so humdrum.

[Becquerel]

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. Dr Godfrey Louis website, with a pic of the particles and mirrors to this paper and links to other papers, here

Chubby rain?

[Slashdolt]

Someone had to say it...

Blood Storm

[LS]

It appears that something similar occurred over Florida mid-December.

Here's the article

LS

New Scientist article

[woodlouse_man]

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

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?

Re:New Scientist article

[SnarfQuest]

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...

Re:New Scientist article

[bcmm]

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?).

Alternative Explanations?

[Lord_Dweomer]

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?

Maybe God did it

[elrous0]

If I've learned nothing else from the study of intelligent design; it's that, when in doubt, shrug your shoulders and say "Maybe my sky-god did it."

-Eric

Occam's Razor

[maggard]

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.

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.

Link to Louis' original paper

[Oxygen99]

No link to the New Scientist, but here's the paper written to support the original hypothesis:

link

Possible Strange Earthlife More the Point

[Rob Carr]

New Scientist has a more extensive article titled Alien rain over India. 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?

No it must be..

[Lazy Reader]

Spaghetti Sauce. Proves existence of noodly appendages once and for all.

Obligatory

[cciRRus]

All your tandoori chicken are belong to us.

related story

[solferino]

related story

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.