Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 19:08, 5 April 2006

Red rain in Kerala was a phenomenon observed sporadically from 25 July to 23 September 2001 in the southern Indian state of Kerala. Heavy downpours occurred in which the rain was primarily red, staining clothes and appearing like blood. Yellow, green, or black rains were also reported (see).

It was initially suspected that the rains were colored by fallout from a hypothetical meteor burst. But the government of India commissioned a study which found the rains had been colored by spores from a locally prolific aerial algae. Then in early 2006, the Keralan colored rains suddenly rose to worldwide attention after media reports of an extraordinary theory proposed by Godfrey Louis and Santhosh Kumar of the Mahatma Gandhi University in Kottayam. Louis and Kumar propose that the colored particles are extraterrestrial (ET) cells. But Louis and Kumar have offered no refutation of the official findings because their papers do not actually address them.

The rain

The colored rain of Kerala first fell on 25 July 2001, in the districts of Kottayam and Idukki in the southern part of the state. As well as red rain, some reports suggested that other colours of rain were also seen . Many more occurrences of the red rain were reported over the following 10 days, and then with diminishing frequency until late September.

According to locals, the first colored rain was preceded by a loud thunderclap and flash of light, and followed by groves of trees shedding shriveled gray "burnt" leaves. Shriveled leaves and the disappearance and sudden formation of wells were also reported around the same time in the area, and are considered related incidents by residents.

The coloration of the rain was due to red particles in suspension in the rain water. When it fell, the red rain was at times as strongly coloured as blood. It typically fell over small areas, no more than a few square kilometres in size, and was sometimes so localised that normal rain could be falling just a few metres away from red rain. Red rainfalls typically lasted less than 20 minutes.

The official findings

Within two weeks after the first red rain, on 6 August 2001 it was reported in the media that scientists at the Center for Earth Science Studies (CESS) and the Tropical Botanic Garden and Research Institute (TBGRI) determined that the particles coloring the rainwater were not from a meteor but were instead some type of spore (see).

Then in November of 2001, commissioned by the Government of India's Department of Science & Technology, the CESS and TBGRI released a report (Sampath et alii) concluding that Kerala's rains were colored by algae spores, which were successfully grown in medium into algae of the Trentepohlia genus (see the abstract or the full report). The algae grows on many surfaces and only above water. The official study states these as its findings:

• the coloured rain in many parts of the state is due to the presence in rainwater of significant quantities of coloured lichen-forming algal spores of local origin;
• no dust of meteoric, volcanic or desert origin is present in the rainwater;
• the colour of the rainwater is not due to any dissolved gases or pollutants.

Theories assuming official findings

Of all the theories about the cause of the colored rains of Kerala, only these assume the official findings. The official study called for further research to explain exactly how so many local spores became commingled with local rains. Here are two theories that address that call.

Cyclonic uptake

History records many instances of unusual objects falling with the rain — in 2000, in an example of raining animals, a small waterspout in the North Sea sucked up a school of fish a mile off shore, depositing them shortly afterwards on Great Yarmouth in the United Kingdom. Tornadic winds can also draw large quantities of organic aerosols up into the clouds. A highly relevant example of such is found in Waldo McAtee's 1917 study Showers of Organic Matter wherein this account is given:

"On the afternoon of June 11, 1847, the wooded part of Morayshire appeared to smoke, and for a time fears were entertained that the fir plantations were on fire. A smart breeze suddenly got up from the north and above the woods there appeared to rise about 50 columns of something resembling smoke, which was wreathed about like waterspouts. The atmosphere now calmed and the mystery was solved, for what seemed smoke was in reality the pollen of the woods."

That description of columns of pine pollen that "wreathed about like waterspouts" suggests that the pollen was being drawn upwards by tornadic winds (albeit not full tornados). While there may be no reports of such winds at the time of the colored rains in Kerala, we cannot discount the possibility. Moreover, McAtee's Showers of Organic Matter also presents many cases of rains colored yellow by pollen. So even if the Keralan spores were not drawn up by tornadic winds, McAtee's examples demonstrate that organic aerosols can be drawn up en mass and rained out in extraordinary concentrations, which counters claims that it is "unbelievable" that so many spores could be drawn up into storm clouds.

Storm circulation

Another theory that takes the official findings as a given argues that an early pre-monsoon wet period caused a bloom of the local algae. Then an unusually large release of spores accumulated in the area during a subsequent dry spell before and during the rains. Then when a scattered storm approached, it lofted up accumulated spores and drew then into its cloud by way of the warm updraft that can drawn in air from ground level forward of a storm (see). The storm-circulation theory invokes the anatomy of a self-propagating storm described in R.S. Scorer's Dynamics of Meteorology and Climate as the causal mechanism.

Contrary conventional explanations

While the following theories are conventional, they contradict the official findings:

Coloured rain is by no means unheard of, and is usally caused by the transport of dust from desert regions in high pressure areas, where it mixes with water droplets. One such case occurred in England in 1903, when dust was carried from the Sahara and fell with rain in February of that year. Consistent with such red rains, Satyanarayana et alii proposed in 2004 that the Keralan rains may have been colored by dust from the deserts of Arabia. They argue that LIDAR observations had detected a cloud of dust in the atmosphere near Kerala in the days preceding the outbreak of the red rain. However, that hypothesis cannot explain certain aspects of the red rain, such as its sudden onset and gradual decline over two months, its localisation to Kerala despite atmospheric conditions that should have seen it occur in neighbouring states as well, and the official findings of the colored particles were Trentepohlia algae spores, not sand (see the abstract or the full official report).

Another theory, which has no evidentiary basis, is that the rain contained mammalian blood, a large flock of bats having been killed at high altitude, perhaps by a meteor. Some bat species in India live in very large communities. However, no bat wings or other remains were found raining from the sky, and no known process would separate the red blood cells from white cells, platelets and other blood components. Red blood cells disrupt rapidly in regular rainwater because of osmosis, but this was not evident with the red particles.

Unconventional explanation

Another theory presented in absentia of the preexisting official findings was proposed in 2003 by Godfrey Louis and A. Santhosh Kumar, two scientists at Mahatma Gandhi University in Kottayam, Kerala. Samples of the rainwater were collected at many locations, allowing the red particles to be collected and analyzed, and Louis and Kumar observe that the red particles do not look like dust but instead appear to be biological cells. Chemical analyses indicate that they consist of organic material, and so they proposed that the particles may be microbes of extraterrestrial origin.

Louis & Kumar's analysis found that the red particles were typically 4 to 10 µm across, spherical or oval in shape, and similar in appearance to unicellular organisms. On average, 1 millilitre of rain water was found to contain 9 million red particles, and the weight of particles in each liter of rainwater was about 100 milligrams. Extrapolating these figures to the total amount of red rain estimated to have fallen, Louis & Kumar calculated that a total weight of some 50,000 kilograms of red particles had fallen over Kerala.

Energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy analysis showed that, the particles were composed of mostly carbon and oxygen, with trace amounts of silicon and iron (see table).

A CHN analyzer showed 43.03% carbon, 4.43% hydrogen, and 1.84% nitrogen.

Louis and Kumar performed tests with ethidium bromide to see if any DNA or RNA was present in the red particles, but found none.

Their results are scheduled to be published in the journal Astrophysics and Space Science.

Possible cometary origin

A few hours before the first occurrence of the red rain, a sonic boom was reported by residents of Changanasserry in Kottayam district, accompanied by a flash of light. Louis and Kumar suggest that this was caused by the disintegration of a small comet entering the Earth's atmosphere, and that this comet contained large quantities of the red particles. Observations show that 85% of the red rain fell within 10 days of 25 July, and Louis and Kumar suggest that this is consistent with the settling of red particles released into the upper atmosphere by a cometary break-up. Initial speculation by scientists in Thiruvananthapuram suggested that the red particles could be dust from a comet, but subsequent research found that they were Trentepohlia algae spores (see the abstract or the full official report).

Louis and Kumar further suggest that the particles are cells and thus represent evidence of extraterrestrial life. If the particles are biological in nature and did originate in a comet, it would be the first evidence in favour of the theory of panspermia, in which life on Earth is proposed to have been carried here from elsewhere in the universe. Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe have been among the proponents of the theory, but it has never found much of a following, being dismissed by most mainstream scientists.

Further tests on the particles are currently being carried out at Sheffield University by Dr Milton Wainwright, who has previous experience researching stratospheric spores. As of March 2006, he believes that they are definitely cells, similar in appearance to spores of a rust fungus. Most recently he backed off any suggestion that the particles lack DNA when The Observer posted this correction: "Dr Wainwright has asked us to make clear that currently he has no view on whether red rain contains DNA and that it is physicist Godfrey Louis who is of that view."

References

1. ^ Gentleman, Amelia (2006). "Red rain could prove that aliens have landed". Guardian Unlimited. Retrieved March 12. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
2. Abstract of official report.
3. Ramakrishnan, Venkitesh (2001). "Coloured rain falls on Kerala". BBC. Retrieved March 6. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
4. Radhakrishnan, M. G. (2001). "Scarlets Of Fire". India Today. Retrieved March 6. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
5. Mystery of the scarlet rains and other tales — Times of India, 6 August 2001
6. Now wells form spontaneously in Kerala — Times of India, 5 August 2001 (from the Internet Archive)
7. ^ Louis G., Kumar A.S. (2006), The red rain phenomenon of Kerala and its possible extraterrestrial origin, accepted for publication in Astrophysics & Space Science (PDF)
8. Lane, Megan (2000). "It's raining fish!". BBC. Retrieved March 6. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
9. Satyanarayana M., Veerabuthiran S., Ramakrishna Rao D., Presennakumar B. (2004), Colored Rain on the West Coastal Region of India: Was it Due to a Dust Storm?, Aerosol Science and Technology, v.38, p.24–26
10. ^ It's raining aliens — transcript of a New Scientist podcast - get podcast here
11. Is mysterious 'red rain' first evidence of life in space? — Yorkshire Today

External links

• “Skepticism greets claim of possible alien microbes” in World Science
• “Red rain could prove that aliens have landed” by Amelia Gentleman and Robin McKie in The Observer
• “When aliens rained over India” by Hazel Muir in New Scientist
• “Red rain was fungus, not meteor” by Kamal Gopinath Nair in the Indian Express
• Possible Causal Mechanism of Kerala's Red Rain

Louis and Kumar's papers

• The red rain phenomenon of Kerala and its possible extraterrestrial origin
• Cometary panspermia explains the red rain of Kerala
• New biology of red rain extremophiles prove cometary panspermia

• Anomalous weather
• Astrobiology
• Kerala
• 2001 meteorology