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.

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 [nbc5.com]

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.

Re:Jupiter a better choice than Saturn in 2001

[Compulsion]

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

Re:Replay

[Anonymous Coward]

Solved.

http://www.nbc5.com/news/5985470/detail.html [nbc5.com]

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.

Link to Louis' original paper

[Oxygen99]

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

link [arxiv.org]

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.

Re:Jupiter a better choice than Saturn in 2001

[Muad'Dave]

I like Triops [triops.com] 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: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

Re:Jupiter a better choice than Saturn in 2001

[alicenextdoor]

Paul Davies published a book [amazon.com] 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.

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.

related story

[solferino]

related story [news.com.au]

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.