From Popular Science, a report of curious findings in India
Is It Raining Aliens?
by Jebediah Reed
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.
Specifically, Louis has isolated strange, thick-walled, red-tinted
cell-like structures about 10 microns in size. Stranger still, dozens
of his experiments suggest that the particles may lack DNA yet still
reproduce plentifully, even in water superheated to nearly 600˚F. (The
known upper limit for life in water is about 250˚F.) So how to explain
them? Louis speculates that the particles could be extraterrestrial
bacteria adapted to the harsh conditions of space and that the microbes
hitched a ride on a comet or meteorite that later broke apart in the
upper atmosphere and mixed with rain clouds above India. If his theory
proves correct, the cells would be the first confirmed evidence of
alien life and, as such, could yield tantalizing new clues to the
origins of life on Earth.
Last winter, Louis sent some of his samples to astronomer Chandra
Wickramasinghe and his colleagues at Cardiff University in Wales, who
are now attempting to replicate his experiments; Wickramasinghe expects
to publish his initial findings later this year.
Meanwhile, more down-to-earth theories abound. One Indian government
investigation conducted in 2001 lays blame for what some have called
the “blood rains” on algae. Other theories have implicated fungal
spores, red dust swept up from the Arabian peninsula, even a fine mist
of blood cells produced by a meteor striking a high-flying flock of
bats.
Louis and his colleagues dismiss all these theories, pointing to the
fact that both algae and fungus possess DNA and that blood cells have
thin walls and die quickly when exposed to water and air. More
important, they argue, blood cells don’t replicate. “We’ve already got
some stunning pictures—transmission electron micrographs—of these cells
sliced in the middle,” Wickramasinghe says. “We see them budding, with
little daughter cells inside the big cells.”
Louis’s theory holds special appeal for Wickramasinghe. A quarter of
a century ago, he co-authored the modern theory of panspermia, which
posits that bacteria-riddled space rocks seeded life on Earth. “If it’s
true that life was introduced by comets four billion years ago,” the
astronomer says, “one would expect that microorganisms are still
injected into our environment from time to time. This could be one of
those events.”
The next significant step, explains University of Sheffield
microbiologist Milton Wainwright, who is part of another British team
now studying Louis’s samples, is to confirm whether the cells truly
lack DNA. So far, one preliminary DNA test has come back positive.“Life
as we know it must contain DNA, or it’s not life,” he says. “But even
if this organism proves to be an anomaly, the absence of DNA wouldn’t
necessarily mean it’s extraterrestrial.”
Louis and Wickramasinghe are planning further experiments to test
the cells for specific carbon isotopes. If the results fall outside the
norms for life on Earth, it would be powerful new evidence for Louis’s
idea, of which even Louis himself remains skeptical. “I would be most
happy to accept a simpler explanation,” he says, “but I cannot find
any."
 Scientists have yet to identify these unusual red particles.
11:17:27 PM 
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