o/~ It's Rainin' "THEM" o/~

Is It Raining Aliens?

Nearly 50 tons of mysterious red particles showered India in 2001. Now the race is on to figure out what the heck they are

By Jebediah Reed | June 2006

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.

Naturally, we have earlier documented cases of falling "blood". The most famous of these "blood water" observations is in ancient Egypt:

Exodus 7:19-21 The LORD said to Moses, "Tell Aaron, 'Take your staff and stretch out your hand over the waters of Egypt—over the streams and canals, over the ponds and all the reservoirs'-and they will turn to blood. Blood will be everywhere in Egypt, even in the wooden buckets and stone jars."

Moses and Aaron did just as the LORD had commanded. He raised his staff in the presence of Pharaoh and his officials and struck the water of the Nile, and all the water was changed into blood. The fish in the Nile died, and the river smelled so bad that the Egyptians could not drink its water. Blood was everywhere in Egypt.

Sorta sounds like Texas in August, frankly.

The conventional explanation is some sort of "red tide" effect, where algae or bacteria have somehow migrated skyward and been carried by high level winds and then deposited. But conventional theories fall apart when confronted by the fact that indications suggest that there is no DNA in these organisms, thus likely cannot be terrestrial life (or we have a LOT of explaining ahead of us, take your pick).

My favorite is that a meteorite struck a flock of high flying bats.

Keep tuned to this station, folks. This ought to be interesting.

red rain