"Red rain may prove life came from outer space" (2006)

6/3/2006

Groundbreaking ideas pioneered by a Cardiff University astronomer about the origins of life on earth appeared as the cover story in last week's New Scientist.
> <br> Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe and his colleague, the late Sir Fred Hoyle, argued that life on earth was originated by comets. Although greeted with scepticism at first, this theory is becoming recognised as eminently plausible.
> <br> Recent discoveries of complex organic molecules in comets and
> interstellar dust clouds have provided striking evidence of life originating on a greater cosmic scale than just on Earth. Microbiologists are also finding properties of bacteria that show they can survive the harshest conditions of space. <br>
> The cover story in New Scientist describes a report by Indian <br> scientists that 50 tonnes of microbes fell in the form of red rain, following a sonic meteor burst, over a large area of the state Kerala in July 2001. Their published investigations show the presence of red-coloured living cells, which have no DNA. The scientists claim that the red microbes in the rain were alien microbes discharged into the atmosphere from an exploding piece of a comet.
> <br> Prof. Wickramasinghe said, "These results are very exciting but more work needs to be done on the samples in independent laboratories to test the claim of DNA-less bacteria. If life did not originate on Earth but came from comets, as the evidence now seems to indicate, it is entirely reasonable that the process of comets bringing microbial life to our planet continues even to the present day. Whether or not the "microbes" in the red rain came from space or not has yet to be proved, however."
> <br> The Indian scientists have now sent samples of the red rain to Cardiff where Professor Wickramasinghe has arranged for investigations with Dr. Gordon Webster and research student Nori Miyake, while at Sheffield these will be done by microbiologist Dr. Milton Wainwright.
> <br> Cardiff has a large and successful School of Physics and Astronomy, attracting some 300 undergraduate and postgraduate students. Physics research is focused in two areas: condensed matter physics and optoelectronics.
> <br> Researchers are using theoretical and practical techniques to answer fundamental questions about the electrical, magnetic and optical properties of new semiconducting materials and investigating the design and fabrication of new optoelectronic devices. The School has extensive facilities for building and investigating devices made from these new materials. The most spectacular results come from ultra-thin sandwich structures. The novel properties of these devices are being exploited in the design of lasers and detectors.
> <br> For researchers and students of astronomy, the School offers modern astronomical laboratories with optical, radio and solar telescopes. The University's Astrophysics Research Group and the Astronomy Instrumentation Research Group are two of the most vigorous in the UK. Members of the groups regularly use the three main British observatories in Hawaii, the Canary Islands and Australia, and they also use the Hubble Space Telescope and other space observatories.
> <br> There is also an active theory group that uses computers to investigate the physics of stars and galaxies, and a group developing techniques for detecting gravitational waves, a prediction of Einstein's theory of General Relativity.