Nearly 50 Tonnes of red particles showered India in 2001. Out of the four competing theories one of them is showing growing supporting evidence that what has been experienced is a working example of Panspermia. Further, alien life has now been discovered or so it may come to be.
Scientists have isolated strange, thick-walled, red-tinted cell-like structures about 10 microns in size that appear to have no DNA yet still reproduce plentifully, even in water superheated to nearly 600˚F. (The known upper limit for life in water is about 250˚F.) So how to explain them?
Growing numbers of scientists speculate that the particles could be extraterrestrial bacteria adapted to the harsh conditions of space and that the microbes hitched a ride on a comet or meteorite that later broke apart in the upper atmosphere and mixed with rain clouds above India. If his theory proves correct, the cells would be the first confirmed evidence of alien life and, as such, could yield tantalizing new clues to the origins of life on Earth.
Some of the samples of this "Alien Life" have been passed to an indapendent laboratory to replicate the the experiment and the findings are to be published later this year.
One Indian government investigation conducted in 2001 lays blame for what some have called the “blood rains” on algae. Other theories have implicated fungal spores, red dust swept up from the Arabian peninsula, even a fine mist of blood cells produced by a meteor striking a high-flying flock of bats. all these theories have problems, the fact that both algae and fungus possess DNA and that blood cells have thin walls and die quickly when exposed to water and air. More important, blood cells don’t replicate. “We’ve already got some stunning pictures—transmission electron micrographs—of these cells sliced in the middle,” Wickramasinghe says. “We see them budding, with little daughter cells inside the big cells.”
the modern theory of panspermia, which posits that bacteria-riddled space rocks seeded life on Earth. “If it’s true that life was introduced by comets four billion years ago,” the astronomer says, “one would expect that microorganisms are still injected into our environment from time to time. This could be one of those events.”
The next significant step, explains University of Sheffield microbiologist Milton Wainwright, is to confirm whether the cells truly lack DNA. So far, one preliminary DNA test has come back positive.“Life as we know it must contain DNA, or it’s not life,” he says. “But even if this organism proves to be an anomaly, the absence of DNA wouldn’t necessarily mean it’s extraterrestrial.”
Louis and Wickramasinghe are planning further experiments to test the cells for specific carbon isotopes. If the results fall outside the norms for life on Earth, it would be powerful new evidence for Louis’s idea, of which even Louis himself remains skeptical. “I would be most happy to accept a simpler explanation,” he says, “but I cannot find any."