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Alien Bacteria May Have Landed in India

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the quite-the-little-travelers dept.

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.'"

32 of 116 comments (clear)

  1. Great... by 0311 · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...now even bacteria are being outsourced to India.

  2. Um by hawkbug · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Yeah, or they could be from some mountain top somewhere or from any other number of sources.

  3. Sorry, this is not news by Aging_Newbie · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Sorry, this is not news by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative
      Precisely why the sample has not been distributed to a variety of scientists continues to amaze me.

      If you bothered to RTFA, you'd notice that it has infact been "been distributed to a variety of scientists" for evaluation. Excerpts for your kind perusal:

      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.

      Last winter, Louis sent some of his samples to astronomer Chandra Wickramasinghe and his colleagues at Cardiff University in Wales, who are now attempting to replicate his experiments; Wickramasinghe expects to publish his initial findings later this year.

      The next significant step, explains University of Sheffield microbiologist Milton Wainwright, who is part of another British team now studying Louis's samples, is to confirm whether the cells truly lack DNA. So far, one preliminary DNA test has come back positive.

    2. Re:Sorry, this is not news by im_mac · · Score: 2, Informative

      You say the story has been surfacing periodically before... any examples of that in a peer-reviewed journal? I skimmed the actual article (in Astrophysics and Space Science which is 13 pages long so won't be copied here) and he basically suggests a couple hypothesis that don't work, i.e. dust, pollen, fungal spores etc. The fact that the cells look like biological cells but have no trace of DNA/RNA is the oddity. If it is terrestrial in origin, then it's something never seen before. Or his tests are wrong. Others are working to verify his results.

    3. Re:Sorry, this is not news by LionMage · · Score: 4, Interesting

      That's assuming there's any DNA to find. There are many self-replicating molecules in the universe, of which DNA is one kind. If researchers don't find DNA, then the next logical step IMHO is to find evidence of any other self-replicating molecules present inside these "cells."

      Preliminary tests don't seem to indicate the presence of DNA. This shouldn't be the end of the inquiry. Furthermore, repeated testing for the presence of DNA is only so useful; yes, it's good to independently verify results, but after you're satisfied that something isn't there, it's time to find out what is there.

    4. Re:Sorry, this is not news by Nutria · · Score: 2, Funny

      Preliminary tests don't seem to indicate the presence of DNA. This shouldn't be the end of the inquiry. Furthermore, repeated testing for the presence of DNA is only so useful; yes, it's good to independently verify results, but after you're satisfied that something isn't there, it's time to find out what is there.

      Absolutely. But this is work for an open-minded biologist, not an agenda-driven astronomer.

      --
      "I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
    5. Re:Sorry, this is not news by shotfeel · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Even so, you don't send it to an astromomer. Send it to a biologist, a chemist, or, hey, even a biochemist to evaluate. Does this guy go to a lawyer for medical advice (or vice versa)?

      We have yet to determine how he came to the conclusion there is not DNA (he's a solid state physicist). Its really hard to go to any "puddle" of water and not find DNA, even if there aren't any living organisms (just ask anyone who does DNA work how careful they have to be to avoid contaminating samples).

    6. Re:Sorry, this is not news by LionMage · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Agreed, although there are astronomers and astrophysicists who also dabble in astrobiology, as I pointed out in a response to a sibling comment to yours. Just because someone specializes in one field doesn't mean they don't have a right to diversify and branch out into other fields. Furthermore, what input would a carbon-chauvanist biologist have about a life form that was not recognizable to biologists as "life as we know it?" A biologist can speak authoritatively about biological processes that are understood, but no biologist has any training in looking for genetic information carried by anything other than DNA.

      (Yes, I know there's work being done with prions, but those are self-replicating protein structures which, to my knowledge, don't carry information we'd think of as "genetic" in nature. Prions don't form cells around themselves, to the best of my knowledge, nor do they seem to "code" for structures other than more of themselves.)

      Astrobiology, being a speculative field of science, has people in it drawn from a much broader spectrum of scientific endeavor, and as such is a bit more immune to prejudice and narrow-minded thinking; astrobiologists routinely speculate about "exotic" biochemistries.

      So... why not give samples to an astronomer? It's not as crazy an idea as you seem to suggest. The tendency in the modern world to overly-compartmentalize and over-specialize can retard the progress of science. Considering that the astronomer in question, Prof. Wickramasinghe, was one of the co-authors of the seminal paper on the theory of panspermia, why not let him participate in the research?

      Many scientists have profitably crossed between disciplines in the past. I don't see why we should take a provincial view in this particular case.

  4. Rainbows... by talkingpaperclip · · Score: 3, Funny

    "...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.

  5. red rain in russia by prurientknave · · Score: 3, Funny

    there was actually another report of red rain in russia two weeks ago. No mention of alien bacteria though.

    1. Re:red rain in russia by tbone1 · · Score: 2, Funny
      there was actually another report of red rain in russia two weeks ago.

      Hm, was Peter Gabriel anywhere near the area?

      --

      The Independent: Reverend Spooner Arrested in Friar Tuck Incident - ISIHAC, Historical Headlines
  6. Popular Science article is rather sparse... by TripMaster+Monkey · · Score: 3, Informative


    Much more detail about this phenomenon can be found here and here.

    --
    ____

    ~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey

  7. But certainly by Opportunist · · Score: 4, Funny

    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.
  8. War Of The Worlds in reverse? by objekt · · Score: 4, Funny

    H.G. Wells was wrong! They aren't going to be killed by bacteria--THEY *ARE* BACTERIA!

    --
    -- Boycott Shell
    1. Re:War Of The Worlds in reverse? by maniac/dev/null · · Score: 4, Funny

      Does this mean they can only be stopped by large, terrible war machines?

    2. Re:War Of The Worlds in reverse? by nEoN+nOoDlE · · Score: 2, Funny

      Woohoo! Finally something the President is good for!

      --
      Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
  9. Continuation of earlier /. stories... by GillBates0 · · Score: 3, Informative
    It should be noted (atleast in the new Slashdot "Related Story" section) that this is a continuation of these two earlier stories published on /. earlier this year.

    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
  10. Ahh yes, "popular" science.... by argStyopa · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ..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
    1. Re:Ahh yes, "popular" science.... by Dr.+Photo · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Frankly, given the fact that outer space is like FIVE TIMES bigger than the Earth, I'd say that Occam's Razor puts the burden of proof squarely on the "It came from Earth" crowd. ;-)

      Five times bigger, folks. That's a lot of space!

  11. Re:WTH Is Going On Here? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

  12. It HAS to be said... by Hikaru79 · · Score: 2, Funny

    I, for one, welcome our new microscopic overlords!

  13. More analysis showing possible signs of DNA by bharath · · Score: 2, Informative

    More analysis showing possible signs of DNA here:

    http://www.astrobiology.cf.ac.uk/redrain.html

  14. Re:WTH Is Going On Here? by maxwell+demon · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.
  15. Activate... by idontgno · · Score: 2, Funny

    Wildfire Complex

    --
    Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
  16. They were algae spores by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    Wikipedia article:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_rain_of_Kerala

  17. Presigious? by CheshireCatCO · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  18. it is called iron bacteria by zogger · · Score: 2, Informative

    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

    http://www.health.state.mn.us/divs/eh/wells/ironba cteria.html

  19. Summon the Mythbusters! by electric_yak · · Score: 2, Interesting

    "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.

  20. Good PDF of the subject by reezle · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

  21. Re:Repost by SEE · · Score: 2, Funny

    This isn't just the third time the story's run this year. It's also the second time Zonk ran the story in the Science section this year.

  22. Chemist by Mark_MF-WN · · Score: 2, Insightful
    I'd say the chemist/biochemist might be the best bet. Really, what is the hallmark of life, other than that it causes unusual chemical reactions to take place? You don't typically see CO_2 turning into sugar when bombarded by sunlight, unless there's a cyanobacteria or something around to do the job. Sugar tends to be fairly stable in O_2 without monsters to catalyze its breakdown. So if you seal up a wee little ecosystem, and catch it changing in some way that is inconsistent with simpler, non-living chemical reactions, that's a good clue that you might have a sample worth probing further.

    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?