Red Rain in India : LIFE without DNA??? WTF?

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Atheist_Scathe
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Red Rain in India : LIFE without DNA??? WTF?

Actually, this link says they were successful in finding DNA:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_rain_in_Kerala


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Red Rain in India : LIFE without DNA??? WTF?

i have to admit im confused...maybe its my interpretation skills...but is it confirmed to be algea or microbes? the article in wikipedia wasnt to clear on it...i do however remember reading this in a discover magazine article.

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Yellow_Number_Five
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Red Rain in India : LIFE without DNA??? WTF?

test? I've written a reply, but it will not post.


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Red Rain in India : LIFE without DNA??? WTF?

OK, lemme recheck for script attack buzz words...I'll try to post in pieces:

OK, here's the deal:

Mysterious rains containing some red shit fell on India over several days during July through September of 2001.

Two guys, Godfr ey Louis and Santhosh Kumar from India say this red stuff is extraterrestrial organisms released during a meteor shower.

It turns out that the Indian government commissioned these two to study the rains. Within two weeks of the first rain, The India Express reported on Aug 6 2001 that Tropical Botanic Garden and Research Institue and Center for Earth Science (TBGRI and CESS respectively) had determined the rains were colored with some sort of spore, possibly from outer space.

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Red Rain in India : LIFE without DNA??? WTF?

In November 2001, both of the above organizations issued a report saying that the material (spores) in the rain had been grown in cultures and were from the aerial bacteria Trentepohlia. You can find the report in Eos: Transactions of the American Geophysical U nion (83[31]:335, 2002).

What's being touted as a mystery has been long solved.

Let's delve deeper:

The only basis for the premise of meteor burst is that a few Keralan residents reported HEARING extremely loud thunder and a flash of light before the first rain. A simple thunder shower is more probable than the meteoric variety.

And how, exactly, could a meteor burst on the 25th of July give us the colored rains that fell through September? This was monsoon season, the air gets turned over quite rapidly.

Now Louis and Kumar say their tests found initially found no DNA, but simply finding no DNA is no reason to conclude extraterrestrial origin.

As far as that DNA goes, Prof Milton Wainwright of Sheffield University says the samples given to him by Louis and Kumar DO contain DNA. An initial test did not show DNA, most likely because the findings reported in Eos who grew the spore in culture state that Louis and Kumar heated the samples to 370C before testing them. Spore DNA is typically destroyed above 100C.

This is more or less an example of over reaction and poor methodolgy than anything else.

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Yellow_Number_Five
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Red Rain in India : LIFE without DNA??? WTF?

Hah, it was the word u n i o n. It's a shame we need to protect us from such shit, but we do.


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Red Rain in India : LIFE without DNA??? WTF?

Yellow_Number_Five wrote:
Hah, it was the word u n i o n. It's a shame we need to protect us from such shit, but we do.

yeah U/nio/N can't write it..hahah..anyway...good job on debunking that mystery..I had heard about the red rain, and it had come up somewhere else...a while back. I personally think it was God, preaparing us for his return by crying red blood on earth....

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Red Rain in India : LIFE without DNA??? WTF?

Most of the info I related comes from the most rescent issue of Skeptical Inquirer. Though I've actually been keeping up on this issue since the beginning. My harsh, rational, skeptic side aside.....I really wanted this story to have substance.

Seriously, man, fucking alien organisms landing on earth that are fundamentally differant than anything we've ever observed and don't use DNA?!?!?! Any scientist capable of doing so pops a bit of wood at such a prospect. But in the end fucking rationalism and the scientific method prevails agian - bastards. Eye-wink

I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world. - Richard Dawkins

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Red Rain in India : LIFE without DNA??? WTF?

Yellow_Number_Five wrote:
Most of the info I related comes from the most rescent issue of Skeptical Inquirer. Though I've actually been keeping up on this issue since the beginning. My harsh, rational, skeptic side aside.....I really wanted this story to have substance.

Seriously, man, fucking alien organisms landing on earth that are fundamentally differant than anything we've ever observed and don't use DNA?!?!?! Any scientist capable of doing so pops a bit of wood at such a prospect. But in the end fucking rationalism and the scientific method prevails agian - bastards. Eye-wink

Yeah it definately got me going when I read it in Discover. *sigh* Oh, well back to the old drawing board I guess. Thx Mike for clearing that up, your my hero. I do enjoy reading your posts on Infidel Guy. It would seem you spare no wit or intellect here as well. Eye-wink

I hope they cannot see
the limitless potential
living inside of me
to murder everything.
I hope they cannot see
I am the great destroyer.