What is red rain? is it a mystery?
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The world has been, for times immemorial, tormented by events that don’t really fit into any known scientific explanatory framework. Some of the events just threaten the existing logic and causality we humans are accustomed to. Luckily, some of these paradigm shifting events eventually fit into an existing framework with extensive research while some just remain mysterious and go unexplained. One us event is the mysterious red rain or the blood rain.
The mysterious red rain of Kerala, India baffled the entire world back in 2001. Several explanations were put forward to explain the unusual red stain of the rain. Some were simply rejected and some partially (yes, partially) accepted with several questions remaining unanswered.
Starting July 25, 2001, Kerala experienced an unusual phenomenon. It was monsoon and it rained. While that falls pretty much into the natural cycle as we know but what was really unusual was that this time, the color of the rain was red. This red rain continued till September 23, 2001. Prior to that, red rain in Kerala was reported in 1896. Most recently, the phenomenon was reported in July 2012.
The Boom and the Flash -
Just to add to the whole mystery thing, in 2001, a few days before the blood rain phenomenon started, people of Kottayam and Idukki reported as sudden flash of light and a sound in the sky. People say that it was pretty much like a sonic boom. Not only that, people also reported that the trees shredded shrunken and wrinkled burnt leaves. Some even reported sudden formation and disappearance of wells.
The Red Rain Pattern -
The blood rain followed a specific pattern. It always rained over a very localized area of no more than a few square kilometers. Some said that the rain was even more localized in certain areas with normal rain pouring down only a few meters from the red rain. At that time, there was no plausible explanation for this localized rain pattern. Even more interesting was that the red rain in specific poured down for no more than 20 minutes.
Suspended Particles in Rain Water -
Why was the water red? This question led scientists to test it. They found that about 9 million red particles were present in every millimeter of the blood rain. They further stated that in every one liter of the water from blood rain contain approximately 100 mg of solid. Based on these calculations, the scientists told that for the total amount of red rain that pored down on Kerala, a total of 50,000 kilograms of the red particles came down. Upon further examination, the scientists found that the solid particles they separated from the water were brownish-red in color with 90% of the solid made up of round particles and remain were debris. Further analysis of the solid matter separated from the rain water revealed the presence of green, blue, yellow and gray which go on to explain the unusual black, green and yellow rains that were also reported during the blood rain. Scientists concluded saying that the red rain was because of the red particles.
Hope that this helps you!
-TGA.
The Kerala red rain phenomenon was a blood rain (red rain) event that occurred from 25 July to 23 September 2001, when heavy downpours of red-coloured rain fell sporadically on the southern Indian state of Kerala, staining clothes pink. Yellow, green, and black rain was also reported. Coloured rain was also reported in Kerala in 1896 and several times since,most recently in June 2012.
After intense analysis at two labs in the UK, Astronomer Chandra Wickramasinghe who studied the cells with microbiologists at Cardiff University says that “ As the days pass, I’m getting more and more convinced that these are exceedingly unusual biological cells. The Red Rain cells of 2001 multiply under extreme heat and were found not to contain DNA. ”
In 2001, numerous people observed red rain falling over Kerala in the southern tip of India during a two month period. One of them was Godfrey Louis, a physicist at nearby Cochin University of Science and Technology. Intrigued by this phenomena, Louis collected numerous samples of red rain, determined to find out what was causing the contamination, perhaps sand or dust from some distant desert.
Under a microscope, however, he found no evidence of sand or dust. Instead, the rain water was filled with red cells that look remarkably like conventional bugs on Earth. What was strange was that Louis found no evidence of DNA in these cells which would rule out most kinds of known biological cells (red blood cells are one possibility but ought to be destroyed quickly by rain water).
Louis published his results in the peer-reviewed journal Astrophysics and Space in 2006, along with the tentative suggestion that the cells could be extraterrestrial, perhaps from a comet that had disintegrated in the upper atmosphere and then seeded clouds as the cells floated down to Earth. In fact, Louis says there were reports in the region of a sonic boom-type noise at the time, which could have been caused by the disintegration of an object in the upper atmosphere.
Since then, Louis has continued to study the cells with an international team including Chandra Wickramasinghe from the University of Cardiff in the UK and one of the leading proponents of the panspermia theory, which he developed in the latter half of the 20th century with the remarkable physicist Fred Hoyle.
Panspermia is the idea championed by physicist Fred Hoyle that life exists throughout the universe in comets, asteroids and interstellar dust clouds and that life of Earth was seeded from one or more of these sources.
This is an extraordinary claim that will need to be independently verified before it will be more broadly accepted. It would be fair to say that more evidence will be required before Kerala’s red rain can be satisfactorily explained. In the meantime, it looks a fascinating mystery.