Slashdot Mirror
Alien Bacteria May Have Landed in India
coastal984 writes "CNN & Popular Science are reporting that a scientist in India believes he may have discovered alien life in water collected from a unusually colored rainstorm. From the article: 'So how to explain them? Louis speculates that the particles could be extraterrestrial bacteria adapted to the harsh conditions of space and that the microbes hitched a ride on a comet or meteorite that later broke apart in the upper atmosphere and mixed with rain clouds above India.'"
...now even bacteria are being outsourced to India.
Yeah, or they could be from some mountain top somewhere or from any other number of sources.
This story has been surfacing periodically since
"blood-colored showers that fell sporadically across Louis's home state of Kerala in the summer of 2001"
but it never seems to reach a conclusion. Precisely why the sample has not been distributed to a variety of scientists continues to amaze me. I would think it would not take too long for a group of scientists to qualify or reject his hypothesis.
Panspermia is not a bad hypothesis but lack of rigor in evaluating it does little for its credibility.
"...may have discovered alien life in water collected from a unusually colored rainstorm..."
Last time I checked it was a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, not alien bacteria.
there was actually another report of red rain in russia two weeks ago. No mention of alien bacteria though.
Much more detail about this phenomenon can be found here and here.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Or perhaps not.
Couldn't come to the US, fearing they might be considered illegal aliens.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
H.G. Wells was wrong! They aren't going to be killed by bacteria--THEY *ARE* BACTERIA!
-- Boycott Shell
It would also be fruitful to mention that that Google turns up these stories with the most obvious of keywords: alien rain India site:slashdot.org.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
I'm just as tinfoil-hat wary as any other slashdot regular
Pssst... most of us here are normal people. Your type is a vocal minority, laughed at and looked down upon with regularity.
..more like "hysterically overblown science with little basis for their hyperbole but it sounds pretty cool..." ie the Weekly World News of Science.
When you consider that JUST in ONE LAKE (Yellowstone Lake) in a heavily-studied US national park: "...One park biodiversity expert believes that 99% of the park's microbes and 75% of its invertebrates remain undiscovered.", I guess I'd assume that these strange little structures are Earth-generated, before I'd start reaching to outer space for explanations of their origin.
-Styopa
If you read the article, it says even the scientist himself is skeptical of the idea. I think he is just throwing it out as a possibility, and it's being exaggerated by the reporters, as it makes for an interesting headline.
I, for one, welcome our new microscopic overlords!
Sorry. I'm truly sorry. But it had to be said.
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
OMG! Red goo!!
Seriously, this could be like the (theoretical) self-replicating clays that supposedly were the precursers to DNA.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
The rain was always Red.
Where do bacteria go to resolve disputes? The settling chamber. Where do alien bacteria go to resolve disputes? They don't have the right to go to the settling chamber unless they've obtained a legal work visa.
More analysis showing possible signs of DNA here:
http://www.astrobiology.cf.ac.uk/redrain.html
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"One scientist who posted a message on Louis's website described it as 'bullshit'."
3 913,00.html
Ouch.
From: http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,172
Isn't water basically clear? So aren't rainstorms basically clear as well?
This sounds more like an article referring to a show on SciFi Channel, than something I should be tuning into National Geographic to watch.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Pretty much every issue has some kind of "gee-whiz, look at how cool it is to be a soldier and play with these high tech gadgets," article. BTW, it's no Weekly World News, because Popular Science actually takes itself seriously, whereas WWN, I believe, is in on the joke.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
You know, we are approaching the date (200)6-6-6, the day of the beast. Probably those are the bacteria of the Apocalypse! :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
If extraterrestrial germs indeed, that would be one hell of a stink comet. That would a holly molly rottenest thing ever.
Wildfire Complex
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
99% of the microbes in Yellowstone Park being undiscovered (or, at least, unidentified) sounds a whole lot more reasonable to me today, and I am completely convinced that enough remains unidentified on Earth that alien origins for any organism would be impossible to prove by any process that eliminates the known. There is simply too much unknown.
The claims of no DNA aren't convincing, either. DNA isn't hard to extract, but not while it is still in a puddle on the ground. Of course, not everything there need be alive - plenty of chemicals cause colours. A few unusual compounds could make for pretty colours but not produce DNA.
(Also, survivable high-speed atmospheric impacts would require any bacteria to be in a meteorite large enough to reach the surface AND large enough to hold all the bacteria being found AND deep enough inside for the fragment to be blasted off a planet(oid) without killing everything in it. I'd be much more ok with this claim if the find was in a sizable, FRESH crater.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
So has anyone checked to see how the "cells" the weren't collected are doing in the wild? Do they multiply there? Turn whole lakes red?
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
This is just like insect evidence from their planet. More will be coming. The government know about it has entered negotiations.
Believe it.
None!
Wikipedia article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_rain_of_Kerala
"...may have discovered alien life in water collected from a unusually colored rainstorm..."
Last time I checked it was a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, not alien bacteria.
Are you sure? Could be a pretty good yoghurt or chese. I'm not willing to allow a cheese gap.
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
The article claims that the study was published in the "presigious" journal, Astrophysics and Space Science. I'm an astronomer and I've never heard of it. And yes, this does matter: a major find like ET life will have journals like Science and Nature tripping over themselves to publish it. Every step down from there is an indiciation that someone didn't think that the research was reasonable. Of course, the fact that this is a solid-state physicist who published this and not, say, a biologist is disturbing, too.
Also, I'm going to be a bit junior-high here and point out that "Astrophysics and Space Science" has a very unfortunate acronym and must be difficult to cite with its abbreviation.
The online journal appears to be here.
Whether it is pretigious or not, I leave to people who know more than I.
--- Attorneys Assisting Citizen-Soldiers & Families -
The red tint can easily come from bacteria called iron bacteria. I am familiar with water wells and the necessity sometimes for disinfecting and filtering the water before use from those microbes.(having the old lady go medieval on you from her losing a set of all-whites in the wash is a good motivator for research and corrective actions with said infected well :p ) Here is a URL for your perusal on this subject
a cteria.html
http://www.health.state.mn.us/divs/eh/wells/ironb
"Other theories have implicated fungal spores, red dust swept up from the Arabian peninsula, even a fine mist of blood cells produced by a meteor striking a high-flying flock of bats."
Now wait just a goddamn minute.
A flock of bats!? I think it's time to have F5 Industries figure out exactly how many bats, of what type, struck by a meteor of what size and velocity, are needed to create a fine red mist across a chunk of land that size.
This is the third time I've seen this article in several months..really, can't moderators be bothered to do a quick archive search to see if a story has already been posted?
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
http://arxiv.org/ftp/astro-ph/papers/0312/0312639. pdf
He goes into quite a bit of detail about the test they ran on these bugs. Pretty interesting stuff.
I'm glad you liked it.
--davidwr
Do cryptologists get to look at the gene sequences of these bacteria?
I think it's time to have F5 Industries figure out exactly how many bats, of what type, struck by a meteor of what size and velocity, are needed to create a fine red mist across a chunk of land that size.
Huh? I.. I don't know that. AAAAAaaaahh!!! [thrown off bridge]
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Not only is it pseudo-science garbage, but it's a pseudo-science garbage double-dupe (or pseudo-science "tripe," for short). After the homeopathy / carpet fuzz / schizophrenia article, I've just about lost all repsect for him. Could someone please take away his rights to post articles in the Science section?
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
India has always had crazy stories like this: wild man-beasts, man-eating babies, etc. Hell, alien bacteria will feel right at home with the Indian swamp monster.
Read the whole thing if you're interested.
Still, the fact that the samples haven't been shared out widely speaks ill of this researcher. After all, didn't this stuff rain from the sky? It can't be in particularly short supply.
Actually, now that I think about it, wouldn't a chemosynthetic creature (or what would be called a chemosynthetic creature were it part of our tree of life) be hard to detect, since they typically just expedite reactions that take place anyway? Like metal oxidation?
What! Reporters exaggerating the facts for a headline?! I'm shocked! .... No, wait, I'm really not.
It's been run THREE times on Slashdot now since January 7th that I could find in a quick search.
You'd think that a story like this would stick in the memories of the dorks running this site...
Alien bacteria in India? Maybe that's why I get the chronic shits everytime I go there.
The journal goes by its acronym; it's right here.