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Red rain could prove that aliens have landed

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.

This sounds a little far fetched, but then I remembered that some microbes survived the space shuttle disaster, so maybe some microscopic “aliens” survived falling throw the atmosphere on a comet’s back.

Microbes survived the Columbia shuttle disaster

PANSPERMIA, the idea that life on Earth was seeded by microbes from space, has had a boost from an unlikely source: the Columbia space shuttle, which broke apart on re-entry in February 2003.

Robert McLean at Texas State University in San Marcos had sent three strains of bacteria on the doomed Columbia sealed in a box to see how weightlessness would affect their growth. When the disaster happened, he assumed that the box had been destroyed. A few days later, however, a colleague spotted the charred container in a newspaper photograph of shuttle debris.

McLean prised open the box to find the inner layers intact. The innards of the box had survived temperatures of more than 175 °C. His three bacterial strains had died, but he was surprised to find another bacterium, Microbispora, thriving inside (Icarus, DOI: 10.1016/j.icarus.2005.12.002).

McLean thinks that the Microbispora, which are found in soil, contaminated the box before it was sealed and sent up on the shuttle. The bacteria’s hardiness lends support to the notion that living organisms originated in space, and hitched a ride to Earth on an asteroid (see “Panspermia”). “Microbispora has shown that’s possible,” he says.

 A Muslim Leader in Brooklyn, Reconciling 2 Worlds

A teenage girl wants to know: Is it halal, or lawful, to eat a Big Mac? Can alcohol be served, a waiter wonders, if it is prohibited by the Koran? Is it wrong to take out a mortgage, young Muslim professionals ask, when Islam frowns upon monetary interest?

The questions are only a piece of the daily puzzle Mr. Shata must solve as the imam of the Islamic Society of Bay Ridge, a thriving New York mosque where several thousand Muslims worship.

To his congregants, Mr. Shata is far more than the leader of daily prayers and giver of the Friday sermon. Many of them now live in a land without their parents, who typically assist with finding a spouse. There are fewer uncles and cousins to help resolve personal disputes. There is no local House of Fatwa to issue rulings on ethical questions.

Sheik Reda, as he is called, arrived in Brooklyn one year after Sept. 11. Virtually overnight, he became an Islamic judge and nursery school principal, a matchmaker and marriage counselor, a 24-hour hot line on all things Islamic.

Day after day, he must find ways to reconcile Muslim tradition with American life. Little in his rural Egyptian upbringing or years of Islamic scholarship prepared him for the challenge of leading a mosque in America.

The job has worn him down and opened his mind. It has landed him, exhausted, in the hospital and earned him a following far beyond Brooklyn.

“America transformed me from a person of rigidity to flexibility,” said Mr. Shata, speaking through an Arabic translator. “I went from a country where a sheik would speak and the people listened to one where the sheik talks and the people talk back.”

This is the story of Mr. Shata’s journey west: the making of an American imam.

Over the last half-century, the Muslim population in the United States has risen significantly. Immigrants from the Middle East, South Asia and Africa have settled across the country, establishing mosques from Boston to Los Angeles, and turning Islam into one of the nation’s fastest growing religions. By some estimates, as many as six million Muslims now live in America.

Leading this flock calls for improvisation. Imams must unify diverse congregations with often-clashing Islamic traditions. They must grapple with the threat of terrorism, answering to law enforcement agents without losing the trust of their fellow Muslims. Sometimes they must set aside conservative beliefs that prevail in the Middle East, the birthplace of Islam.

Islam is a legalistic faith: Muslims believe in a divine law that guides their daily lives, including what they should eat, drink and wear. In countries where the religion reigns, this is largely the accepted way.

But in the West, what Islamic law prohibits is everywhere. Alcohol fills chocolates. Women jog in sports bras. For many Muslims in America, life is a daily clash between Islamic mores and material temptation. At the center of this clash stands the imam.

I watched a lot of National Geographic specials when I was growing up, and my grandfather, who I loved very much, but was not the most worldly person you’d ever meet, subscribed to and saved every issue of National Geographic magazine. For me NG was as much about exploring foreign culture as it was about exotic lands and wildlife. Perhaps its a  curiousity that started when I was young and stayed with me that explains my fascination for different cultures. America is a melting pot to some degree, but within that melting pot are subcultures like this Muslim leader in NYC. Just like the subculture of Quakers in Pennsylvania, the Cherokee tribes in the Smokey Mountains, or the Chinese in San Fransico or a myriad of other cultures within the American umbrella of cultures. Its interesting to see the ways that the larger culture of America effects these groups and how those groups effect American culture as a whole. Except for the possible exception of Canada I can’t think of a country that how many ethic groups or religions just get along relatively well and even thrive.