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[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

Skepticism greets claim of possible alien microbes

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Jan. 5, 2006
Special to World Science

A paper to appear in a scientific journal claims a strange red rain might have dumped microbes from space onto Earth four years ago.

But the report is meeting with a shower of skepticism from scientists who say extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof—and this one hasn’t got it.

The scientists agree on two points, though. The things look like cells, at least superficially. And no one is sure what they are.

“These particles have much similarity with biological cells though they are devoid of DNA,” wrote Godfrey Louis and A. Santhosh Kumar of Mahatma Gandhi University in Kottayam, India, in the controversial paper.

“Are these cell-like particles a kind of alternate life from space?”

The mystery began when the scarlet showers containing the red specks hit parts of India in 2001. Researchers said the particles might be dust or a fungus, but it remained unclear.

The new paper includes a chemical analysis of the particles, a description of their appearance under microscopes and a survey of where they fell. It assesses various explanations for them and concludes that the specks, which vaguely resemble red blood cells, might have come from a meteor.


Full story here: www.world-science.net/exclusives/060104_specksfrm.htm

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You know....

Recently here in Chicago, there was a strange dusting of rust colored deposits found on cars with an unknown origin...could it be?...

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

Cometary panspermia explains the red rain of Kerala

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Comments: 20 pages, 5 figures, paper to be submitted to Nature

Red coloured rain occurred in many places of Kerala in India during July to September 2001 due to the mixing of huge quantity of microscopic red cells in the rainwater. Considering its correlation with a meteor airbust event, this phenomenon raised an extraordinary question whether the cells are extraterrestrial. Here we show how the observed features of the red rain phenomenon can be explained by considering the fragmentation and atmospheric disintegration of a fragile cometary body that presumably contains a dense collection of red cells. Slow settling of cells in the stratosphere explains the continuation of the phenomenon for two months. The red cells under study appear to be the resting spores of an extremophilic microorganism. Possible presence of these cells in the interstellar clouds is speculated from its similarity in UV absorption with the 217.5 nm UV extinction feature of interstellar clouds.

More here: arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0310120

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[Maddad]

It's fairly easy in a lab to get cell-like bodies from simple chemicals. The tough part is making the stuff of life inside them.