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  Topic: Algae?  Aliens?  Alien Algae?< Next Oldest | Next Newest >  
PennyBright



Posts: 78
Joined: May 2006

(Permalink) Posted: June 02 2006,09:57   

Anyone know anything about this?  It sounds very interesting.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/science/06/02/red.rain/index.html

Quote


Mysterious red cells might be aliens
By Jebediah Reed
Popular Science


Friday, June 2, 2006; Posted: 12:36 p.m. EDT (16:36 GMT)

As bizarre as it may seem, the sample jars brimming with cloudy, reddish rainwater in Godfrey Louis's laboratory in southern India may hold, well, aliens.

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.


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Conversation should be pleasant without scurrility, witty without affectation, free without indecency, learned without conceitedness, novel without falsehood. - Shakespeare (reputedly)

  
keiths



Posts: 2195
Joined: Jan. 2006

(Permalink) Posted: June 02 2006,10:16   

The full paper is available here.

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And the set of natural numbers is also the set that starts at 0 and goes to the largest number. -- Joe G

Please stop putting words into my mouth that don't belong there and thoughts into my mind that don't belong there. -- KF

  
Ichthyic



Posts: 3325
Joined: May 2006

(Permalink) Posted: June 02 2006,10:33   

Quote
Strangely, a test for DNA using Ethidium Bromide dye fluorescence technique indicates absence of DNA in these cells.


uhh, it's raining blood?

EDIT:

LOL.  actually, if you take a gander at figure 11 and 12, they do, in fact, look VERY much like mammalian red blood cells!

Did somebody blow up a slaughterhouse or something?

 
Quote
An estimated minimum quantity of 50,000 kg of red particles has fallen from the sky through red rain.


so, a meteoric airburst event with over 50K kg of "organic" material, isn't noticed by any astronomers...

hmmm.

talk about some ridiculous conclusions.

even if the meteorite was entirely composed of these "organic particles", don't you think it odd that nobody would have noticed a 50K kg meteor striking the earth's atmosphere?

the evidence is presented as "some folks heard a sonic boom".

yikes.

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"And the sea will grant each man new hope..."

-CC

  
normdoering



Posts: 287
Joined: July 2005

(Permalink) Posted: June 02 2006,10:48   

Quote (keiths @ June 02 2006,15:16)
The full paper is available here.

Oh my gaawd! It's Bowfinger's low budget sci-fi feature come true! It's "Chubby Rain."

  
Ichthyic



Posts: 3325
Joined: May 2006

(Permalink) Posted: June 02 2006,10:50   

LOL.

sounds more like the subplot from the recent "War of the World's" movie.

the aliens are just trying to grow red fungus over everthing!

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"And the sea will grant each man new hope..."

-CC

  
keiths



Posts: 2195
Joined: Jan. 2006

(Permalink) Posted: June 02 2006,10:55   

Chandra Wickramasinghe's group at Cardiff University says:
Quote
Further work in progress has yielded positive for DNA using DAPI staining in the cells and daughters. However, this identification is not yet fully confirmed, and might be considered equivocal. We hope to pursue our efforts in extracting DNA (if it exists), amplifying it and carrying out genetic sequencing, but this work takes time.


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And the set of natural numbers is also the set that starts at 0 and goes to the largest number. -- Joe G

Please stop putting words into my mouth that don't belong there and thoughts into my mind that don't belong there. -- KF

  
Science Ninja



Posts: 2
Joined: June 2006

(Permalink) Posted: June 02 2006,11:01   

In 2001 a study sponsored by the Indian government concluded that the source of the red rain was Trentepohlia spores which were successfully grown in a lab.  
Red Rain of Kerala

This was also discussed on the Bad Astronomy / Universe Today forum in some detail back in January.
Red Rain: Extraterrestrial Microbes?

  
Ichthyic



Posts: 3325
Joined: May 2006

(Permalink) Posted: June 02 2006,11:06   

what's interesting is that the micrographs of the spores don't resemble anything like the electron micrographs from fig 11 and 12 of the paper being discussed here.

again, fig 11 and 12 look EXACTLY like pictures of centrifuged red blood cells to me.

I suspect the authors of a bit of "hoaxery".

OTOH, it wouldn't surprise me that single celled algae would adopt a similar bi-concave shape; it's very efficient for gas transfer.

meh, six o one...

either way, the "meteor burst" idea is absolutely ridiculous.

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"And the sea will grant each man new hope..."

-CC

  
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