There is a small bottle containing a red fluid on a shelf in Sheffield
University’s microbiology laboratory. The liquid looks cloudy and
uninteresting. Yet, if one group of scientists is correct, the phial
contains the first samples of extraterrestrial life isolated by
researchers.

Inside the bottle are samples left over from one of the
strangest incidents in recent meteorological history. On 25 July, 2001,
blood-red rain fell over the Kerala district of western India. And
these rain bursts continued for the next two months. All along the
coast it rained crimson, turning local people’s clothes pink, burning
leaves on trees and falling as scarlet sheets at some points.

Investigations
suggested the rain was red because winds had swept up dust from Arabia
and dumped it on Kerala. But Godfrey Louis, a physicist at Mahatma
Gandhi University in Kottayam, after gathering samples left over from
the rains, concluded this was nonsense. ‘If you look at these particles
under a microscope, you can see they are not dust, they have a clear
biological appearance.’ Instead Louis decided that the rain was made up
of bacteria-like material that had been swept to Earth from a passing
comet. In short, it rained aliens over India during the summer of 2001.

Not
everyone is convinced by the idea, of course. Indeed most researchers
think it is highly dubious. One scientist who posted a message on
Louis’s website described it as ‘bullshit’.

But a few researchers
believe Louis may be on to something and are following up his work.
Milton Wainwright, a microbiologist at Sheffield, is now testing
samples of Kerala’s red rain. ‘It is too early to say what’s in the
phial,’ he said. ‘But it is certainly not dust. Nor is there any DNA
there, but then alien bacteria would not necessarily contain DNA.’

Critical
to Louis’s theory is the length of time the red rain fell on Kerala.
Two months is too long for it to have been wind-borne dust, he says. In
addition, one analysis showed the particles were 50 per cent carbon, 45
per cent oxygen with traces of sodium and iron: consistent with
biological material. Louis also discovered that, hours before the first
red rain fell, there was a loud sonic boom that shook houses in Kerala.
Only an incoming meteorite could have triggered such a blast, he
claims. This had broken from a passing comet and shot towards the
coast, shedding microbes as it travelled. These then mixed with clouds
and fell with the rain. Many scientists accept that comets may be rich
in organic chemicals and a few, such as the late Fred Hoyle, the UK
theorist, argued that life on Earth evolved from microbes that had been
brought here on comets. But most researchers say that Louis is making
too great a leap in connecting his rain with microbes from a comet.

For
his part, Louis is unrepentant. ‘If anybody hears a theory like this,
that it is from a comet, they dismiss it as an unbelievable kind of
conclusion. Unless people understand our arguments - people will just
rule it out as an impossible thing, that extra-terrestrial biology is
responsible for this red rain.’

Amelia Gentleman and Robin McKie
The Observer