Joe Snod
2010-09-06 19:12:18 UTC
Red Rain, Red Rectangle
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/25699/
For years, claims have circulated that red rain which fell in India in
2001, contained cells unlike any found on Earth. Now new evidence that
these cells can reproduce is about to set the debate alive
["Growth And Replication Of Red Rain Cells At 121 degrees C And Their
Red Fluorescence" (arxiv.org/abs/1008.4960)]
Panspermia is the idea that life exists throughout the universe in
comets, asteroids and interstellar dust clouds and that life of Earth
was seeded from one or more of these sources. Panspermia holds that we
are all extraterrestrials.
While this is certainly not a mainstream idea in science, a growing
body of evidence suggests that it should be carefully studied rather
than casually disregarded.
For example, various bugs have been shown to survive for months or
even years in the harsh conditions of space. And one of the more
interesting but lesser known facts about the Mars meteorite that some
scientists believe holds evidence of life on Mars, is that its
interior never rose above 50 degrees centigrade, despite being blasted
from the Martian surface by an meteor impact and surviving a fiery a
descent through Earth's thick atmosphere.
If there is life up there, this evidence suggests that it could
survive the trip to Earth.
All that seems well established. Now for the really controversial
stuff.
In 2001, numerous people observed red rain falling over Kerala in the
southern tip of India during a two month period. One of them was
Godfrey Louis, a physicist at nearby Cochin University of Science and
Technology. Intrigued by this phenomena, Louis collected numerous
samples of red rain, determined to find out what was causing the
contamination, perhaps sand or dust from some distant desert.
Under a microscope, however, he found no evidence of sand or dust.
Instead, the rain water was filled with red cells that look remarkably
like conventional bugs on Earth. What was strange was that Louis found
no evidence of DNA in these cells which would rule out most kinds of
known biological cells (red blood cells are one possibility but ought
to be destroyed quickly by rain water).
Louis published his results in the peer-reviewed journal Astrophysics
and Space in 2006, along with the tentative suggestion that the cells
could be extraterrestrial, perhaps from a comet that had disintegrated
in the upper atmosphere and then seeded clouds as the cells floated
down to Earth. In fact, Louis says there were reports in the region of
a sonic boom-type noise at the time, which could have been caused by
the disintegration of an object in the upper atmosphere.
Since then, Louis has continued to study the cells with an
international team including Chandra Wickramasinghe from the
University of Cardiff in the UK and one of the leading proponents of
the panspermia theory, which he developed in the latter half of the
20th century with the remarkable physicist Fred Hoyle.
Today Louis, Wickramasinghe and others publish some extraordinary
claims about these red cells. They say that the cells clearly
reproduce at a temperature of 121 degrees C. "Under these conditions
daughter cells appear within the original mother cells and the number
of cells in the samples increases with length of exposure to 121
degrees C," they say. By contrast, the cells are inert at room
temperature.
That makes them highly unusual, to say the least. The spores of some
extremophiles can survive these kinds of temperatures and then
reproduce at lower temperatures but nothing behaves like this at these
temperatures, as far as we know.
This is an extraordinary claim that will need to be independently
verified before it will be more broadly accepted.
And of course, this behaviour does not suggest an extraterrestrial
origin for these cells, by any means.
However, Wickramasinghe and co can't resist hinting at such an exotic
explanation. They've examined the way these fluoresce when bombarded
with light and say it is remarkably similar to various unexplained
emission spectra seen in various parts of the galaxy. One such place
is the Red Rectangle, a cloud of dust and gas around a young star in
the Monocerous constellation.
It would be fair to say that more evidence will be required before
Kerala's red rain can be satisfactorily explained. In the meantime, it
looks a fascinating mystery.
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/25699/
For years, claims have circulated that red rain which fell in India in
2001, contained cells unlike any found on Earth. Now new evidence that
these cells can reproduce is about to set the debate alive
["Growth And Replication Of Red Rain Cells At 121 degrees C And Their
Red Fluorescence" (arxiv.org/abs/1008.4960)]
Panspermia is the idea that life exists throughout the universe in
comets, asteroids and interstellar dust clouds and that life of Earth
was seeded from one or more of these sources. Panspermia holds that we
are all extraterrestrials.
While this is certainly not a mainstream idea in science, a growing
body of evidence suggests that it should be carefully studied rather
than casually disregarded.
For example, various bugs have been shown to survive for months or
even years in the harsh conditions of space. And one of the more
interesting but lesser known facts about the Mars meteorite that some
scientists believe holds evidence of life on Mars, is that its
interior never rose above 50 degrees centigrade, despite being blasted
from the Martian surface by an meteor impact and surviving a fiery a
descent through Earth's thick atmosphere.
If there is life up there, this evidence suggests that it could
survive the trip to Earth.
All that seems well established. Now for the really controversial
stuff.
In 2001, numerous people observed red rain falling over Kerala in the
southern tip of India during a two month period. One of them was
Godfrey Louis, a physicist at nearby Cochin University of Science and
Technology. Intrigued by this phenomena, Louis collected numerous
samples of red rain, determined to find out what was causing the
contamination, perhaps sand or dust from some distant desert.
Under a microscope, however, he found no evidence of sand or dust.
Instead, the rain water was filled with red cells that look remarkably
like conventional bugs on Earth. What was strange was that Louis found
no evidence of DNA in these cells which would rule out most kinds of
known biological cells (red blood cells are one possibility but ought
to be destroyed quickly by rain water).
Louis published his results in the peer-reviewed journal Astrophysics
and Space in 2006, along with the tentative suggestion that the cells
could be extraterrestrial, perhaps from a comet that had disintegrated
in the upper atmosphere and then seeded clouds as the cells floated
down to Earth. In fact, Louis says there were reports in the region of
a sonic boom-type noise at the time, which could have been caused by
the disintegration of an object in the upper atmosphere.
Since then, Louis has continued to study the cells with an
international team including Chandra Wickramasinghe from the
University of Cardiff in the UK and one of the leading proponents of
the panspermia theory, which he developed in the latter half of the
20th century with the remarkable physicist Fred Hoyle.
Today Louis, Wickramasinghe and others publish some extraordinary
claims about these red cells. They say that the cells clearly
reproduce at a temperature of 121 degrees C. "Under these conditions
daughter cells appear within the original mother cells and the number
of cells in the samples increases with length of exposure to 121
degrees C," they say. By contrast, the cells are inert at room
temperature.
That makes them highly unusual, to say the least. The spores of some
extremophiles can survive these kinds of temperatures and then
reproduce at lower temperatures but nothing behaves like this at these
temperatures, as far as we know.
This is an extraordinary claim that will need to be independently
verified before it will be more broadly accepted.
And of course, this behaviour does not suggest an extraterrestrial
origin for these cells, by any means.
However, Wickramasinghe and co can't resist hinting at such an exotic
explanation. They've examined the way these fluoresce when bombarded
with light and say it is remarkably similar to various unexplained
emission spectra seen in various parts of the galaxy. One such place
is the Red Rectangle, a cloud of dust and gas around a young star in
the Monocerous constellation.
It would be fair to say that more evidence will be required before
Kerala's red rain can be satisfactorily explained. In the meantime, it
looks a fascinating mystery.
