World Science is running a story about a paper currently under review entitled 'The red rain phenomenon of Kerala and its possible extraterrestrial origin', which can be read here.

This paper says that Kerala in India experienced 'red rain' for a period of 2 months following an airburst meteorite, and the authors believe that the dust causing the discolouration is in fact extraterrestrial microbes.

The particles certainly look like cells of some kind, and under the microscope they show familiar cellular structures like cell walls, a detatched inner cell, and a thin layer of mucus surrounding the cell. The cell's major constituents are carbon and oxygen, making up about 94%, followed by nitrogen, silicon, iron, sodium, aluminium and chlorine.

However, no DNA or RNA could be detected in the cells, and they have no obvious 'nucleus'. There also seems to be some doubt over wether the particles actually came from the meteorite!

I'm not sure if this is the right forum to post this in, but general opinion seems to be against these guys so I'm hoping it will generate some interesting discussion