Have aliens already landed? In India? In 2001?

[FrostyBoy]

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.

http://www.popsci.com/popsci/science/2c21c0f98d07b010vgnvcm1000004eecbccdrcrd.html

hmm... *waits for mr big shot to give his reason as to why it can't possibly be an alien*

[FrostyBoy]

picture time!

[Lancer]

That's not the same ones with that probe thingy I never tell anyone about.

[Sandman]

The most likely explanation is that they're from Earth.

[Winston]

Jelly beans

I say we ask techumseh to tell us what he thinks about all this, then conclude the opposite.

[Vince278]

They have no DNA or RNA yet they seem to reproduce. Yet, if someone truly thought it was alien then it would be locked up in a level four containment facility. India should have at least one.

[asleepathewheel]

Nothing to worry about, this show has already been canceled.

[SlowwHand]

Where do you think Mobius came from? Now you know.

[Odin]

Originally posted by Sandman
The most likely explanation is that they're from Earth.

A terran life form would have DNA.

[Sandman]

Mammalian red blood cells don't have DNA. Admittedly they're not independent life forms, but still.

That's assuming that this isn't just a hoax.

[Starchild]

Not that I dispute the accuracy of a PopSci article, tis hard to when a prestigious paper has that many popup ads, but are there any links to the actually peer-reviewed scientific journals that these papers are supposed to be published in?

[Lancer]

They're red, so I suggest we nuke them.

[CrONoS]

From the forum of PopSci:

Topic: "Mysterisous red rain" not identified?
redtailhawkman - created 04:19pm Jun 3, 2006 EST

Has anyone noticed that those "alien microbes" really really really look a lot like red blood corpuscles? Has the guy not had high school biology?

subtraho - 06:05pm Jun 3, 2006 EST (#1 of 2)

Except, of course, that red blood cells would have DNA in them and don't replicate themselves.

redtailhawkman - 06:40pm Jun 3, 2006 EST (#2 of 2)

Actually, red blood cells DON'T have any DNA in them. Per the article in Wikipedia, (and the human anatomy class I took about a year ago) "Erythrocytes [red blood cells] in mammals are anucleate when mature, meaning that they don't have a cell nucleus and thus no DNA." Further, this guy only says he has pictures of the cells (taken with a transmission electron microscope for some reason), "sliced down the middle", but he didn't send those pictures along with the picture of "alien microbes". Also, instead of sending the samples to a biologist or pathologist or medical doctor, he sent them to an astronomer. The experiments where he claims that the cells reproduced in "water superheated to 600 degrees" is interesting, but I would wonder why he didn't send the results of those experiments out in his press release? All in all I have to wonder whether this guy is really that dim, or thinks the general public are that uninformed?

[CrONoS]

I think this is the research:

http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/astro-ph/pdf/0601/0601022.pdf

THe mags:

http://www.springer.com/west/home/physics?SGWID=4-10100-70-35683926-0&SHORTCUT=www.springer.com/sgw/cda/frontpage/0,11855,4-10100-70-35683926-0,00.html

The guy webpage:

http://education.vsnl.com/godfrey/

And the book:
http://springerlink.metapress.com/(tvkkv1ytbcda2xugacpqzgah)/app/home/contribution.asp?referrer=parent&backto=issue,31,36;journal,1,586ingpublicationresults,1:100241,1

Originally posted by Starchild
Not that I dispute the accuracy of a PopSci article, tis hard to when a prestigious paper has that many popup ads, but are there any links to the actually peer-reviewed scientific journals that these papers are supposed to be published in?

[Urban Ranger]

He should let somebody else look at a sample.