'our alien origins'

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pascal

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6146292.stm
Searching for 'our alien origins'
By Andrew Thompson
BBC Horizon

In July 2001, a mysterious red rain started falling over a large area of southern India.

Locals believed that it foretold the end of the world, though the official explanation was that it was desert dust that had blown over from Arabia.

But one scientist in the area, Dr Godfrey Louis, was convinced there was something much more unusual going on.

Not only did Dr Louis discover that there were tiny biological cells present, but because they did not appear to contain DNA, the essential component of all life on Earth, he reasoned they must be alien lifeforms.
Click to expand...
 
Is there a microscope picture of these cells?
When given a nutrient medium, do they convert that medium into more cells?
What is the internal configuration?
If there is no DNA, what do they use instead?
What do they metabolize?

There's not one bit of information in that article, so the next question is: "what, if anything, were they smoking at the time of this discovery?"
 
Oh, according to Wiki DNA was later found, the cells were similar to known Earth species.

Wiki did not get into whether the scienists that insist on alien spores are on crack or if their delusional state is natural.
 
3dilettante said:
Oh, according to Wiki DNA was later found, the cells were similar to known Earth species.
Click to expand...
According to wiki DNA evidence was found but not fully confirmed.
See reference 18: http://www.astrobiology.cf.ac.uk/redrain.html
Further work in progress has yeilded positive for DNA using DAPI staining in the cells and daughters. However, this identification is not yet fully confirmed, and might be considered equivocal. We hope to pursue our efforts in extracting DNA (if it exists), amplifying it and carrying out genetic sequencing, but his work takes time.
Click to expand...
 
pascal said:
According to wiki DNA evidence was found but not fully confirmed.
See reference 18: http://www.astrobiology.cf.ac.uk/redrain.html
Click to expand...

The presence of DNA does undermine another claim in the BBC article that the organisms replicated at 300C.
Since DNA tends to fly apart at temperatures below 150C, I'd lend more credence to a terrestrial source and wishful thinking.

Here's where I'd rate this currently.

Known Earth species spores in rain>Unknown Earth species spores in rain>Scientists claiming otherwise unwilling to contemplate chance they had made some mistake>Scientists claiming otherwise desperate for attention>Scientists claiming otherwise on crack>Scientists claiming otherwise on a 5 pound rock of crack>Scientists claiming otherwise just smoked a rock the size of a water buffalo>>>>>>>>>>>>etc>>>>>>>>>alien spores

I am quite willing to change my assessment if something more extraordinary than the need for further clarification of what species the DNA belongs to surfaces.
 
A lot of scientists think they were simply red algae. The idea of life being "seeded" from outer space is intriguing, but there is no solid proof. What will be more interesting is if probes in the future find evidence for micro-bacterial life on, say, the oceans of Europa.
 
I find this fenomenum interresting because of many aspects:

- It test our media system and its ability to properlly cover the case impartially
- It test our science community openess and flexibility to new ideas
- It test our ability to identify biological fenomena.

So far so good.

Diplo,
IIRC some time ago probes had problem to find life on earth :oops:
 
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