Thank you Ian, for the time you put into tracking down the report. The only question remaining now is, how was the ET hypothesis accepted for publication in the "peer-reviewed research journal, Astrophysics and Space Science" as the World Science article claims?

As to your comments about my comments, I only meant to say your example was of an organism in which a small percentage of cells form without DNA. Those aberrant cells would not be reproducing cells. The red rain material supposedly having been found without DNA I assume meant no DNA in any of the individual red round things they analyzed. It would be improbable for the researchers of the red rain to have only analyzed one 'cell' or to have just happened to find the few without DNA.

However, in using your example to discredit the "no DNA must be ET" statement, I actually think you need not even have presented an example to challenge that baseless premise. It was absurd on its face.

As it turns out, since the material was found to be spores, it would have had DNA. AFAIK, only prions propagate without either RNA or DNA. So the researchers publishing in Astrophysics and Space Science either did poor research or misrepresented their results. And the editors of the journal were either misled or failed to do their homework.

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Thanks! I tracked it down in January, but got too busy to assemble a webpage. When I found Sampath et al it toppled a terrestrial causal model I was developing to explain no-DNA cells involving waterspout-to-cloud injection of protocells emitted via oceanic geothermal plumes. (For those who may not know, protocells are cell-like structures without DNA that have been created in lab and that are suspected as possibly being produced near underwater geothermal vents). So I'd tracked down all kinds of data on waterspouts and known geothermal vents in the Arabian Sea (over which monsoon winds pass to Kerala). But alas, the need for such a complex multi-entity hypothesis to explain no-DNA cells collapsed when I found the official study. The ultimate result for me was a much simpler causal hypothesis.


Understood.


Right, my response to you was poorly worded and as such seems to imply that refuting the inference from odd cells to ET evidence was contingent on finding an example of no-DNA spores. But to your point, the inference is unwarranted irrespective of any such example. It would only be warranted, in my view, if there had been a known case of ET cells, then based on that case we could infer that some similar cell might be one of those. Otherwise, the inference simply invents a category of things (ET cells) without empirical and thus without scientific basis. ~Ian

Possible Causal Mechanism of Kerala's Red Rain

This whole "red rain" ordeal has shown me something.

Looking back through this thread, I see quite a few posts claiming that the chemical composition is not even right for it to be biological, yet is was, and terrestrial, no less.

If some folks has such a hard time identifying something of biological origin from our own planet, how can we ever expect to identify something of biological origin from somewhere else?

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Well, you know they took some rain, or some puddle contents, and looked for DNA -- on this the planet of life -- and didn't find any. How likely is that?

Yeah, they did some processing on what was collected. I haven't read the papers, but I suppose they centrifuged it to separate the interesting red solids from the water. But, how did they separate the red stuff from other non-interesting stuff that most certainly did contain DNA? With tweezers? As I understand from reading here, they baked the red solids, perhaps destroying any DNA there.

What were all the steps that were performed on a mixture of water and stuff that must have started out containing DNA to get to the point of analyzing some separated-out stuff that didn't contain DNA? How do you sterilize a sample from planet Earth that way -- while thinking you haven't sorted out DNA or destroyed it?

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Hey, I was wrong. But don't generalize from the hasty conclusion of an infectious disease person that it is hard to identify the organic nature of substances. And, all we had to go on was the report. Scientists examining the actual substance would not have had the same problem.

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It's not really a matter of who's right or wrong, you drew your conclusion based on the evidence presented. It appears that the process that they used to separate the material from the water is what messed things up and made it look like the samples were non-biological in origin.

What is to keep this from happening with samples we might one day get back from Mars, or some other extraterrestrial location. It just makes me wonder how we will ever find life out there if it does indeed exist when there is so much that can go wrong.

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You process it in a way that doesn't destroy signs of life. The first thing I'd do is take pristine unprocessed representative samples, kept in conditions of their origin, and immediately check for signs of life -- metabolism, movement, reproduction, biogenic chemistry.

Like Astrobiology Magazine: Dry Signs of Life

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Science. You are drawing a silly conclusion here that a sample cannot be analyzed.

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I'm not saying the sample can't be analyzed (nor do I feel I am drawing a silly conclusion) I am just voicing concern that something containing what may be a significant discovery may be one day shelved because of a situation similar to what we saw with this analysis of the "red rain".

I'm sure this is not the type of thing that happens every day or even often, it just concerns me that it can happen, kind of the same way it concerns me when the gas gauge sticks on my car.

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Yeah. False negatives are possible. So?

I don't think you can eliminate false negatives unless you simply determine in advance that all tests will yield a positive -- but then, of course, you have a bit of a problem with false positives.

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That's true,

I was just voicing a concern... that's all.

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The way the question was worded offered a false premise. However, if it's only a statement that something may be missed, I have no issue.

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Chandra Wickramasinghe, an advocate of the panspermia hypothesis, is investigating the theory that the colored rains that occurred in Kerala, India in 2001 were colored by extraterrestrial (ET) cells discharged from an exploding meteor, or bolide event. The evidence for the bolide exists in reports of "thunder" during a storm from which red rains fell. While a study commissioned by the Government of India concluded in 2001 that the rains were colored by red algae spores (see), Wickramasinghe's team has to date not mentioned that study at their Cardiff University website.

British Satellite News (BSN) recently posted an inverview of Dr Wickramasinghe. Therein he reports that his team has found DNA in the red cells, which refutes the findings of Louis and Kumar, who reported that the cells had no DNA. In the BSN report, this criterion for knowing if the cells are ETs is presented:

"if no known DNA from Earth matches, the only remaining possibility would be that it is an alien life form from outer space."

The problem with that knowledge criterion is that the set of unknown terrestrial DNA is not proven to be empty. New terrestrial microorganisms are periodically discovered. So if no known terrestrial DNA match some DNA he might find, then a reasonable inference would be that it is uncataloged terrestrial DNA.

The logical fallacy in the criterion rests on is the false dilemma. To see this, note that the argument takes the form ~P -> Q, which is to say: If not P, then Q. A logically equivalent statement is P v Q, meaning simply: P or Q. Their equivalence is proven by way of two transformation rules:

So the following two statements are equivalent and the second makes the false dilemma clear:

1. If they do not match known terrestrial DNA, then they are extraterrestrial life.

2. Either they match known terrestrial DNA or they are extraterrestrial life.

Then the form of the indicated false-dilemma argument is:

However, while the argument form (disjunctive syllogism) is valid, in the given case assumption 1 should include as a disjunct "they are unknown terrestrial DNA"; which we could express in sentential logic as, P v Q v R , or naturally as:


Either they match known terrestrial DNA or they are extraterrestrial life or they are unknown terrestrial DNA.

and by conditional exchange back into the original form as:

If they do not match known terrestrial DNA, then they are either extraterrestrial life or unknown terrestrial DNA.


Of course that assumes that we're even inclined to include "or they are extraterrestrial life," which I find to be perfectly silly given there was no genuinely identified bolide event and thus not even a correlation between the colored rains and any astronomical event. Moreover, the rains fell on Kerala sporadically from July to September 2001, hardly like the fallout from a bolide event. Anyway, it will be interesting to see what Wickramasinghe concludes about the Keralan rains. ~Ian

Possible Causal Mechanism of Kerala's Red Rain

Edit: oops, the fallacious argument in the BSN report is not directly attributed to Wickramasinghe.

They won't find unknown DNA unless they fake the data or pretend to look but aren't thorough. Our genes are so interrelated there is more in the "known" than you might otherwise suspect.

You know of course humans are even related to plants? It conjurs up quite an image but it's true.

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They indicate that genetic sequencing can differentiate the DNA of different species. So I'm assuming that so long as new microorganisms can be discovered, as they are from time to time, there could be DNA in any given terrestrial sample that differs from known species, however slightly.

But even if what they find is mostly similar to known terrestrial DNA but just slightly different, Wickramasinghe may not see that as evidence against extraterrestrial origin. The BSN report quotes him saying: "Our genetic cousins are everywhere in the universe and all that happened on the Earth is that these bits and pieces of genes got together and made the entire spectrum of life that we see here on our planet." That statement seems to call upon the concept of overall similarity between terrestrial and extraterrestrial DNA such that Wickramasinghe may accept a finding of any slight difference from known species as evidence of extraterrestrial origin.

What I can't figure is how Wickramasinghe could claim as a given that "Our genetic cousins are everywhere in the universe"? He seems to assume as a given a state of affairs wherein extraterrestrial DNA have already been well documented. However, we don't have sufficient data to falsify the claim that we have no genetic cousins elsewhere in the universe. But perhaps the media report lost the context of a stipulated qualification, under the panspermia theory "our genetic cousins are everywhere in the universe." ~Ian

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I would say the evidence to date, and there's plenty of it for at least a "most plausible" conclusion, indicates no cousins.

If life were seeded here 3.5 or so billion years ago, then there is 3.5 billion years of evolution separating us genetically. That would be a bit more distant than a cousin.

There is no evidence to date that abiogenesis
occurred more than once, or if it did, the conditions required for such an event were transient and abiogenesis occurred for a time and then no more. Once life was established, the gene pool might have mingled in single celled organisms. That occurs today.

The evidence to date leads all life forms back to a single source with 3 main branches and viruses sort of unclassified. Tree of Life project
So when you look at the DNA of lifeforms in the Eukarotes branch, there are large portions of DNA in common even in organisms as diverse as plants and people. If you found even small segments or genes in common, it isn't likely ET. Life seeded on another planet isn't going to have genes in common with life here. Even given the fact certain genetic combinations might be selected. Since genes perform different functions in different organisms depending on interaction with other genes, and there are many genes that perform the same functions in completely different ways, selection pressures are still not going to result in the same gene patterns in two organisms separated by 3.5 billion years of evolution. Keeping the open mind of science perhaps if two organisms which had evolved a considerable amount of DNA before separating were compared there might be some DNA that matched. But that's not what the evidence currently indicates and you couldn't draw that conclusion without corroborating evidence like finding a life form sealed within a meteorite.

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Good points beskeptical ! Another problem occurs to me regarding the panspermia theory advanced by Wickramasinghe et al wherein ET microbes are held to be frequently raining down on the Earth. Those theorists hold that comets are the primary delivery mechanism of ET microorganism (see and section 3 here). However, the comets (and asteroids) that orbit the Sun are believed to have formed from the solar nebula, a cloud of gas and dust that once surrounded the Sun and from which the planets were formed. Comets are believed to have formed in the outer parts of the nebula, their frozen-gaseous contents being similar to the atmospheres of the outer planets. For that reason, the contents of comets are believed to reflect the early state of the solar system.

However, while the contents of comets represent a very early stage of the solar system, microorganism would most likely arise only after an extensive period of time on a planet close to the Sun versus in a gas cloud far away from the Sun. Moreover, life would most likely arise on a suitable planet that was not continuously bombarded by asteroids, and so well after the initial stages of planetary formation, which would be well after the comets had formed. In short, the origin of comets seems contrary to their being likely carriers of microorganisms. Of course one cannot rule out that some comet came in from a distant planetary system, but then it likely originated in an early pre-life stage there too. It's also possible (for ought we know) that life could originate in gas clouds, but then we've got a highly speculative theory relying on another highly speculative theory such that Occam's razor tends to get in a parsimonious mood. ~Ian

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I provided a comment on the original article with the one provided in this thread, the one that mentions the probable cause being fungus (http://telegraphindia.com/1030620/as...ry_2086578.asp

He had this to say:


Does the debate really continue?
Could this fungus rain happen more than once?
Did that Popular Science website simply bring up old news again?

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The unreliable Linda Moulton Howe is hot on the trail of red rain. There's the usual leading questions, and misinterpretation of statements, but it's more enjoyable fuel for the fire.

Red Rain Cells of Kerala, India - Still No Definite DNA

Hmm, apparently, those panspermia red-rain comet bombs favor Kerala as a target.

So, what's the hold-up?

Why on Earth...

I can't wait. Yes, I can.

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There is a new report of a red rainfall in Kerala, India just a few days ago. Forum members may recall widespread media reports last year giving credibility to the theory that red rains that fell in Kerala in 2001 were alien microbes falling from a speculated-to-exist bolide event overhead. That dramatic theory is promoted by Louis, Kumar and Wickramasinghe.

Every now and then over the last two summers I've been doing Google News searches for "red rain" and Kerala, predicting that the same terrestrial forces that created the red rains in the summer of 2001 would strike again. So it seems I finally got a hit (above). Moreover, last summer I came upon a report of a fish fall in Kerala. Yes, believe it or not, it happens. Waterspouts over the sea can draw up small fish into the clouds from which they fall shortly thereafter. I cite numerous credible reports of such in my full report on the 2001 Keralan red rains. I also explore the idea that those red rains were caused by waterspouts drawing up red-tide algae.

One wonders: how could Louis, Kumar and Wickramasinghe support their alien-microbe explanation in light of another red rain in Kerala years later? Are we to believe that Kerala is somehow a magnet for alien-microbe infested meteors?

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Charles Fort wrote a book called "Book of the Damned" (available free here) about various phenomena of this general type. Two of the most common were red rain and fluffy white stuff like asbestos. He collected hundreds of thousands of reliable reports from around the world. The funny thing was that just after I read the report there was an item in the newspaper of the fluffy white stuff falling in Sydney. The red slush has frequently been referred to as containing organic material, but I think in the sense of carbon based stuff rather than living. Mind you, falls of fish and frogs also happen, so who knows what goes on up there. Although the Fortean Society is a bit crackpot, Fort himself was a brilliant man.