Godfrey Louis

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Dr. Godfrey Louis is a solid-state physicist at Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam. In April 2006, he published a paper in the journal Astrophysics and Space Science in which he hypothesized that samples of water taken from "blood-colored" rain collected in his state of Kerala, India in the summer of 2001 contain microbes from outer space.

Specifically, Louis and his student Santhoshkumar has isolated strange, thick-walled, red-tinted cell-like structures about 10 micrometers in size. Stranger still, dozens of his experiments suggest that the particles may lack DNA yet still reproduce plentifully, even in water superheated to nearly 600 ˚F (320 °C). (The known upper limit for life in water is about 250 ˚F or 120 °C.) Because of these unusual attributes, Louis has speculated that the particles could be extraterrestrial bacteria adapted to the harsh conditions of space and that the microbes hitched a ride on a comet or meteorite that later broke apart in the upper atmosphere and mixed with rain clouds above India. If his theory proves correct, the cells would be the first confirmed evidence of alien life and, as such, could yield tantalizing new clues to the origins of life on Earth. [1]

The scientists of the School of Environmental Scinces of the Mahatma Gandhi University has claimed that the colour of the red rain is because of the presence of spores.

Louis's claims were promoted by Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe at Cardiff university, who in 2003 had suggested that rather than being a mutation of a coronavirus SARS had arrived from space. BBC pop-sci Horizon_(television) programmes used some of this material for their shows in November 2006 about a possible H5N1 pandemic and panspermia.

Curiously, there appears to be no mention in the literature of analysis of the red raindust by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, which has been used in space probes in attempts to detect life, or other similar procedures which would provide direct information about its chemical composition.

[edit] A new department of astrobiology

The Tribune reported, on the 2nd June 2006, that a new department of astrobiology could be established at Mahatma Gandhi university. Dr James, the vice-chancellor, said the university had set up a laboratory exclusively for studies in astrobiology and it had the potential to rise to the level of a centre for astrobiology in future. This was in large part as a result of the study of the red rain in Kerala by Dr Louis and the endorsement that his work had received from Chandra Wickramasinghe.