Alien Rain Over India 241
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.
Or it could be (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Or it could be (Score:5, Funny)
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 (Score:2)
I think a simpler explanation would be that...all those Indian's have been sweating. And the evaporating perspiration has carried parts of the red dots off their foreheads, and finally collected in the clouds enough, to precipitate down.
I suspect the same would happen to an area with a decade long motorcycle rally...all those tatoos melting into the air, tho when it came back down, wouldn't be red...much darker and meaner looking...
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Or it could be (Score:3, Interesting)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Or it could be (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Or it could be (Score:2)
Re:Or it could be (Score:2)
Once the planet is completely breaded, they deep-fry it in canola oil until it is a crispy golden brown, and then serve it with cocktail sauce. Yum!
Re:Or it could be (Score:2)
Re:Or it could be (Score:2)
Very clever - they probably also planted the virulent telephone disease to get rid of any evidence they were involved.
No it must be.. (Score:2, Funny)
Jupiter a better choice than Saturn in 2001 (Score:5, Funny)
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 (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
similarly (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Jupiter a better choice than Saturn in 2001 (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Jupiter a better choice than Saturn in 2001 (Score:3, Interesting)
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" (
Re:Jupiter a better choice than Saturn in 2001 (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Jupiter a better choice than Saturn in 2001 (Score:2)
Doesn't matter what planet, when the conditions are right, it'll hatch.
Re:Jupiter a better choice than Saturn in 2001 (Score:3, Informative)
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:Jupiter a better choice than Saturn in 2001 (Score:2)
I am being naively serious about that type of life form.
Our returning spacecraft only have heat sheilds on the gravity side to pretect the rest of the craft. I'm sure that some meteors hit ground. What is to stop some spore from hitching a ride on a meteor or even breaking off in the upper atmosphere where it can gently rain down?
Re:Jupiter a better choice than Saturn in 2001 (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Jupiter a better choice than Saturn in 2001 (Score:2)
I am sure there are ways for the right spore or something else to survive space conditions for a long time, and I suppose it is theoretically possible that a lttle bit of it could hitch a ride on a rock, surviving the cataclysmmic impact tha
Re:Jupiter a better choice than Saturn in 2001 (Score:2)
However, as things look now, it seems that the conditions on early Earth were EXTREMELY good for spontaneous assembly of the necessary building block - which means that panspermia is out the door (by Oc
Re:Jupiter a better choice than Saturn in 2001 (Score:3, Informative)
Very impressive (Score:5, Funny)
Is that like a ship in a bottle?
According to the current New Scientist... (Score:5, Interesting)
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... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:According to the current New Scientist... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:According to the current New Scientist... (Score:2)
See: Book of the Damned, Lo!, Wild Talents, and New Lands.
Maybe God did it (Score:5, Funny)
-Eric
Link to Louis' original paper (Score:4, Informative)
link [arxiv.org]
Re:According to the current New Scientist... (Score:2)
Re:According to the current New Scientist... (Score:3, Insightful)
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. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Alien rain? Riiiiiiight. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Alien rain? Riiiiiiight. (Score:2)
Re:Alien rain? Riiiiiiight. (Score:2)
So
You're not nearly paranoid enough. When it's raining, stay indoors, or wear your hermetically sealed suit.
Sheesh! Amateurs!
Re:Alien rain? Riiiiiiight. (Score:2)
Nor on Linux
Offtopic, yepp
angel'o'sphere
One big problem (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Funny)
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 (Score:2)
I know you're joking, but consider this: the earth's surface area is approx. 500 million square kilometers, or over 500 trillion sq. meters. There are over 6 billion people.
Evenly spread at 1 person per sq. meter, we could only cover about 0.0012 percent of the surface area.
And I used to worry about the population explosion.
Re:One big problem (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:One big problem (Score:2)
I never specified 500 million m^2 as land surface, just total surface area, land and sea. Also, I realize that some land is not habitable. I suppose I was responding to the hypothetical (and satirical) "if we put somebody on every square meter of the earth's surface" proposition.
It's just that I couldn't resist examining the idea as a mathematical exercise which ignores geographical realities and biological necessities.
BTW, I actually
Re:One big problem (Score:2)
I'm sure that, with a little persuasion, you'd be able to get them to conduct the experiment properly.
Yep.
Re:One big problem (Score:2)
That's right, they grow and reproduce:
http://arxiv.org/ftp/astro-ph/papers/0312/0312639. pdf [arxiv.org]
Even if the original samples had Earth organisms in them, it's pretty amazing that they found something (whether it's Earth-made or not) that grows and reproduces at 300 deg. C boiling oil.
Read it, really. I'd like to hear from someone what else this could be, other than a really remarkable life form of some kind, alien or otherw
Questions (Score:5, Interesting)
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 (Score:2)
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.
Thus, bullshit I cry.
Re:Questions (Score:2)
"Anonymous Coward" is a pseudonym for Inigo Montoya.
Re:Questions (Score:3, Informative)
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
Re:Questions (Score:2)
I understand your description of "begging the question", but I don't think the original author's intent was of this meaning.
LS
You aren't the they I was refering to (Score:2)
As the "they" you are referring to, I do NOT assume that this is from space. I simply stated that it should be tested before calling it bullshit. In fact, my first question implies the opposite - if it rained this way for 2 months, how could it have anything to do with an object from space?
I understand your description of "begging the question", but I don't think the original author's intent was of this meaning.
Uh, no, you weren't the "they" I was referring to. If I meant you I'd've written "he" or "
Re:Questions (Score:2)
In this case, yes it most certainly does. Take a logic class.
Re:Questions (Score:3, Insightful)
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 (Score:2)
Not that meteorites are uncommon, it's just that I tend to see red flags anytime someone pops up with "X is the only explanation for Y" rather than "X appears to explain Y."
Alien? (Score:5, Funny)
First Fortean post (Score:2)
Re:First Fortean post (Score:2)
Sounds impressive (Score:5, Funny)
Replay (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.nbc5.com/news/5884173/detail.html [nbc5.com]
Bullshit. (Score:4, Interesting)
My favourite quote from the article is
The slashdot posting would almost have you believe that Aliens had actually landed. Sheesh!
Re:Bullshit. (Score:2, Funny)
Peter Gabriel is an alien (Score:4, Interesting)
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:Peter Gabriel is an alien (Score:2)
John Tesh, on the other hand, has a rather alien-sounding track called "Red Rain" on his 1997 horror-show entitled (shudder) Sax All Night.
Too bad the facts are so humdrum. (Score:5, Insightful)
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. (Score:2)
"Life on Earth Spawned from Extraterrestials" just doesn't seem like it would fit on the Times front page next to "Parliamentry Procedures Revisited in Istanbul" and "US Farmers Denounce Cutbacks in Fed Agricultural
Re:Too bad the facts are so humdrum. (Score:2)
Re:Too bad the facts are so humdrum. (Score:4, Interesting)
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 [arxiv.org]. Dr Godfrey Louis website, with a pic of the particles and mirrors to this paper and links to other papers, here [vsnl.com]
Re:Too bad the facts are so humdrum. (Score:2)
Astrophysicists and space scientists don't necessarily know boo about life forms on Earth. I'd be more impressed if he got it published in "Microbiology".
Just doing a quick google image search turns up several microphotographs of pollen grains that look very similar to the pics in the paper.
Re:Too bad the facts are so humdrum. (Score:2)
Chubby rain? (Score:3, Funny)
Blood Storm (Score:4, Funny)
Here's the article [theonion.com]
LS
Chalk one up (Score:2)
New Scientist article (Score:4, Interesting)
http://www.newscientistspace.com/article/mg1892541 1.100 [newscientistspace.com]
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 (Score:3, Funny)
When they triggered the improbability drive, a houseplant was converted into a whale...
Re:New Scientist article (Score:3, Interesting)
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? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Alternative Explanations? (Score:2)
Re:Alternative Explanations? (Score:2)
No but I do find it interesting it was mentioned to have happened before. The closest thing in the apocolypse is a bright star falling and contaminating 1/3 (or was it 2/3) of the worlds water supply. Keep in mind, the end of days aren't like Hollywood portrays them. After the worst passes there is 1,000 years of peace (which would obviously mean lots and lots of dead people). The world doesn't just explode. It's the end of an age.
As for alter
Re:Alternative Explanations? (Score:2)
Occam's Razor (Score:3, Insightful)
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 [wikipedia.org].
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.
Possible Strange Earthlife More the Point (Score:4, Interesting)
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?
Obligatory (Score:2, Funny)
Why did it only fall on India? (Score:2)
Re:Why did it only fall on India? (Score:2)
Re:Why did it only fall on India? (Score:2)
Two months (Score:2)
The more likely explanation is that it is some industrial airborn effluent generated in the region that was kept hushed for some reason.
well technically, "duh" (Score:2)
Not an answer to "Where did life come from?" (Score:2)
A: Life came from outer space.
Q: Where did life in outer space come from?
likewise
Q: Where did life on Earth come from?
A: God created life on Earth.
Q: Where did God come from?
Re:Not an answer to "Where did life come from?" (Score:2)
A: God created life on Earth.
Q: Where did God come from?
This is like asking "What happened 1 second before the start of time".
If you think about it, neither existence ("Where did matter/energy come from?") nor non-existence make any sense. Can anybody truly imagine the universe as being completely void of matter and/or energy? I cannot reconcile either one of these positions, but I know that we do exist.
So to answer your question, God didn't come from anywhere. God is Alpha and Omega, meaning G
red rain (Score:2)
Second, my first guess is industrial pollution. India isn't very good at such things as industrial hygene (part of the reason why they can underprice Europe & N. America). But this, supposedly, has been disproved. I'd look again.
Unlike many people however. I think that panspermia is possible, perhaps even ikely. But that doesn't mean it happens a lot, and it doesn't mean I believe that pa
related story (Score:3, Informative)
Why couldn't life start on earth? (Score:2)
Why couldn't life start on earth
Do these people have any idea just how huge space is and how unlikely it is that material from another established planetary system with life could have come to earth intact?
It's as rediculous as the Intelligent Design dumbasses
Re:In Soviet (Score:4, Funny)
In Soviet Russia aliens reign over you!
Re:Uh.. (Score:2)
Critical to Louis's theory is the length of time the red rain fell on Kerala. Two months is too long for it to have been wind-borne dust, he says.
It can't possibly have been raining blood from birds or bats for two months either.
Re:Ancient Semitic religions (Score:2, Interesting)
more likely, junk science (Score:2, Troll)
Re:more likely, junk science (Score:2)
Re:Alien attacks! (Score:2)
Re:Red Rain. I think not (Score:2)
Albiet the army is involved.....
Thats where my idea came from , but how do they then explain the 93 coming