Red rain in Kerala
[3][4][5] Coloured rain was also reported in Kerala in 1896 and several times since,[6] most recently in June 2012,[7] and from 15 November 2012 to 27 December 2012 in eastern and north-central provinces of Sri Lanka.
[4] According to locals, the first coloured rain was preceded by a loud thunderclap and flash of light, and followed by groves of trees shedding shrivelled grey "burnt" leaves.
Physicists Godfrey Louis and Santhosh Kumar of the Mahatma Gandhi University, Kerala, used energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy analysis of the red solid and showed that the particles were composed of mostly carbon and oxygen, with trace amounts of silicon and iron.
[15] Initially, the Centre for Earth Science Studies (CESS) stated that the likely cause of the red rain was an exploding meteor, which had dispersed about 1,000 kg (one ton) of material.
A few days later, following a basic light microscopy evaluation, the CESS retracted this as they noticed the particles resembled spores,[16][17][18] and because debris from a meteor would not have continued to fall from the stratosphere onto the same area while unaffected by wind.
A sample was, therefore, handed over to the Tropical Botanical Garden and Research Institute (TBGRI) for microbiological studies, where the spores were allowed to grow in a medium suitable for growth of algae and fungi.
[19] In November 2001, commissioned by the Government of India's Department of Science & Technology, the Centre for Earth Science Studies (CESS) and the Tropical Botanical Garden and Research Institute (TBGRI) issued a joint report, which concluded:[6][17] The colour was found to be due to the presence of a large amount of spores of a lichen-forming alga belonging to the genus Trentepohlia.
The report also stated that there was no meteoric, volcanic or desert dust origin present in the rainwater and that its colour was not due to any dissolved gases or pollutants.
"[17] Attempting to explain the unusual spore proliferation and dispersal, researcher Ian Goddard proposed several local atmospheric models.
In November 2012, Rajkumar Gangappa and Stuart Hogg from the University of Glamorgan, UK, confirmed that the red rain cells from Kerala contain DNA.
[12] LIDAR observations had detected a cloud of dust in the atmosphere near Kerala in the days preceding the outbreak of the red rain.
Sasidharan Pillai, a senior scientific assistant in the Indian Meteorological Department, proposed dust and acidic material from an eruption of Mayon Volcano in the Philippines as an explanation for the coloured rain and the "burnt" leaves.
[32] The volcano was erupting in June and July 2001[33] and Pillai calculated that the Eastern or Equatorial jet stream could have transported volcanic material to Kerala in 25–36 hours.
Sometimes the fall of red rain seems to have occurred after an air-burst, as from a meteor exploding in air; other times the odd rainfall is merely recorded in the same year as the appearance of a comet.
While the CESS report said there was no apparent relationship between the loud sound (possibly a sonic boom) and flash of light which preceded the red rain, to Louis and Kumar it was a key piece of evidence.
Their work indicated that the particles were of biological origin (consistent with the CESS report), however, they invoked the panspermia hypothesis to explain the presence of cells in a supposed fall of meteoric material.
Two months later they posted another paper on the same web site entitled "New biology of red rain extremophiles prove cometary panspermia"[41] in which they reported that The microorganism isolated from the red rain of Kerala shows very extraordinary characteristics, like the ability to grow optimally at 300 °C (572 °F) and the capacity to metabolise a wide range of organic and inorganic materials.
In 2006 Louis and Kumar published a paper in Astrophysics and Space Science entitled "The red rain phenomenon of Kerala and its possible extraterrestrial origin"[4] which reiterated their arguments that the red rain was biological matter from an extraterrestrial source but made no mention of their previous claims to having induced the cells to grow.
[44] Researcher Chandra Wickramasinghe used Louis and Kumar's "extraterrestrial origin" claim to further support his panspermia hypothesis called cosmic ancestry.
[46][47][48][49][50] Louis and Kumar made their first publication of their finding on a web site in 2003, and have presented papers at conferences and in astrophysics magazines a number of times since.
Louis then incorrectly reported on 29 August 2010 in the non-peer reviewed online physics archive "arxiv.org" that they were able to have these cells "reproduce" when incubated at high pressure saturated steam at 121 °C (autoclaved) for up to two hours.
