It's Raining Aliens... again?

In the summer of 2001, in the state of Kerala in southern India, there were about 50 tons of mysterious red particles mixed in with the rain. After some scientific research, Godfrey Louis, a physicist from Mahatma Gandhi University, published a paper in the prestigious journal Astrophysics and Space Science, implying that these particles are actually microbes from space.

They reproduce, however they have no DNA – unlike other life on Earth. In fact, in the samples taken and analyzed, these microbes are able to reproduce in superheated water at temperatures over 600F. For Earth-based life forms, nothing can survive past about 250F. So these are hardy seeds indeed – as they would have to be to survive a space journey – given the radiation and heat and cold they would have been exposed to in space on their trip here.
It is speculated that they may have been riding onboard a comet or meteorite that exploded when it hit Earth’s atmosphere.

More researchers in the UK, are now studying the rainwater samples to corroborate or dispute the findings. Predictably, there are always naysayers to just about any theory. Some people will come up with the most protracted, unlikely theories to explain away anything that suggests that there might be life on other worlds besides this one. In one case, an Indian government scientist blamed it on algae. Another one says it is fungal spores. Another says it must be red dust swept up from the Arabian Desert, to drop on this one particlar spot of Kerala, India. And another one – this is my favorite – is that a meteorite hit a flock of bats veeeeeery high up – say 30,000 feet where the clouds are, and it’s tiny droplets of bat’s blood. No other parts of the bats. Just the blood. 50 tons of it. Mixed in the rain. Yep.

Well, for one thing, blood cells don’t replicate. And these cells are definitely replicating. In fact they have photographs showing cross-sections of the cells showing budding daughter-cells coming from within the parent cells. It also means they are not dust – Arabian or otherwise. For another thing – these cells HAVE NO DNA!!! That means they are not any kind of life from Earth, not bats, nor spores, nor anything else Earth-based, since all our life forms have DNA.

It amazes me that some people simply CANNOT accept that there are other forms of life elsewhere despite evidence or logical reasoning to the contrary. That’s like Christopher Columbus being determined to find no life forms in the Americas when he arrived here. As if Europe was the only land that could produce life. The arrogance of that type of thinking is simply staggering.

I have an older aunt who does not believe that it is possible to travel to the moon because it is only a light in the sky – it is not a real place. That is her belief. And she thinks it is laughable and preposterous to think otherwise. There are also those who firmly believe the Earth is flat. How crazy of the rest of us to suggest that it might be round.

So we have the contingent of people who believe that this cannot be from space or from another world because no lifeforms could possibly exist outside THIS one world - REGARDLESS of any evidence, facts or reasoning. Then, at the other end of the spectrum, there will no doubt be those who are thoroughly convinced that this is an alien plot. A spaceship dropped off a sample of alien lifeform by seeding it into our clouds so that it would come down in the rain, and then it grows and develops into a horrible disease that wipes out all life on this planet, clearing the way for the aliens to come and assume ownership of our world. There are all kinds of people…

Panspermia is the name of the theory proposed about 25 years ago that suggests that life here originally developed from a sample of similar simple lifeforms from space that arrived onboard another meteorite. Maybe this is an ongoing process. In fact, it would be illogical to assume otherwise.

* information for this article gathered from Popular Science, 2006