Mysterious red cells might be aliens

CNN ^ | June 2, 2006 | Jebediah Reed

[RWR8189]

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 degrees Fahrenheit . (The known upper limit for life in water is about 250 degrees Fahrenheit .)

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.

[RWR8189]

Scientists have yet to identify these unusual red particles.

[yankeedame]

I ask ya...is this Hollywood material, or is this Hollywood material?

[RightWhale]

There was a movie named "Deep Red" that was kind of interesting. Sci-fi. Aliens, very tiny aliens.

[SE Mom]

Another childhood myth shattered..we thought they were Green Men..no one ever said anything about Red Men.

[Old Seadog]

What do you mean? Our frontiersmen talked about redmen all the time.

[Paladin2]

They look like micro-blobs. Wasn't the blob red too?

[StJacques]

Uh oh! Hoyle and Panspermia! Hide this from the Crevolist, quick!

Actually, there is quite a bit of discussion about Panspermia underway in the scientific community.

Check it out(pop-up link):

The New Case for Panspermia

[Ghost of Philip Marlowe]

"Go ahead, Godfrey, eat one. I dare yuh."

[Petronski]

[BenLurkin]

Oh, absolutely!

http://www.erblist.com/abg/redmen.html

[Dog]

The Andromeda Strain

[geopyg]

Was their a hurricane (cyclone in that part of the world) at the time?

[PsyOp]

I was wondering what that strange pod under my bed was...

[Triggerhippie]

[StJacques]

". . . 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."

I've been to India and I've never seen such filthy air in all my life. I wouldn't be surprised to hear that anything fell out of the sky there.

[Triggerhippie]

[SE Mom]

Hmmm..I may have spoken too soon...but in my family they smoked Lucky's...LSMFT!

[Oberon]

Hmmm.

I hate to point this out, but they look very much like ordinary red blood cells.

[Renderofveils]

It would be quite interesting if the microbes native environment is not outer space, but the clouds themselves.

[Renderofveils]

I hate to point this out, but they look very much like ordinary red blood cells.

From the article:

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."