On July 25th, 2001, an India's western state called Kerala saw a bloody rainstorm even as heavy as a crimson sheet flapping down sometimes. The rain intermittently lasted for two months, dyeing the shore and leaves dark red. Local residents also found their laundry pink after washing the clothes with running water.
Scientists were shocked and the Indian government conduct an investigation. Why is it "blood-rain"? Where does red color come from? The strange phenomenon prompted researchers around the world to find the answers.
The Red Soil in the Arab Region Generates the Blood-Rain
Some investigators believe blood-rain isn't something alarming. Before the rain, strong winds brought the red soil in the Arab region. As the rain carrying the red soil fell, the whole area turned red.
But that argument was immediately disagreed by many. The reason was that the rain lasted too long. Intermittent rain of two months in one area might happen sometimes, but it seemed unreasonable that strong winds of two months in a sudden kept bringing soil from the Arab region.
Alien Bacteria
Godfrey Lewis, an applied physicist at Mahatma Gandhi university in India and a physicist at Poole university, did not think the red clay of Arabia caused the red rain. To find out what it was, he collected sediment from part of the rain in Kerala and brought it back to the lab for a comprehensive analysis. After five years of research, he was surprised to find that the red sediment was not dirt or dust at all, but alien bacteria. Lewis boldly suggested that it was an alien creature from a comet, and that the rain might have been "alien" landing on earth.
If you look under a microscope, you will be surprised to find that the particles in the red rain vary in shape and size. Some of them are spherical, some are ellipsoidal and some are long elliptic. They are visible under a microscope with a magnification of 1000 times. With thick cytomembrane but no cell nucleus, they look like something similar to bacteria.
"When you look at it through a microscope, you can see that it's not soil at all, it's biological," Lewis said. Based on the analysis of its composition, the sediment contains 50 per cent carbon and 45 per cent oxygen. It also contains some sodium, iron and other ingredients, which are very similar to the composition of microorganisms. They appear to have landed on earth from some planets outside the earth.
Comet or Meteor Shower
Lewis found that, just hours before the rain fell on July 25th, 2001, an extremely strong sonic explosion shook Kerala. According to the circumstances, the meteorite would not have produced such a violent reaction unless it had entered the atmosphere. So scientists who supported Lewis's theory concluded that when a comet passed through the earth, some debris fell off and fell through the atmosphere.
In the process, the debris gets red and hot from friction, splintering into more debris and falling to the ground with rain. Because the comet is rich in organic chemicals and life on earth has evolved from microbes, sediment in rain water also has the characters of early life.
But many doubted Lewis's outlandish theory. However, many scientists still believe that Lewis broke with conventional thinking, though his theory may not be true. Milton Wainwright, a microbiologist at the university of Sheffield, supports some of Lewis's claims. "It's too early to tell what red rain really is," Wainwright said. "but I'm sure the sediment in the bottle is definitely not soil, it's different from life on earth." The final conclusion remains to be confirmed.
On January 14th, 1962, a frightening black rain fell in Aberdeen, Britain. Before the rain, the sky was thick with clouds of black smoke, followed by heavy rain and wind. It was hard to clean the contaminated clothes. Where did the rain come from? How? It's still a mystery.
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