Hard Talk

[SLVA]

So... I was flicking around the TV channels late last night and came upon this - a BBC sober type of news show and was about to jump to the next station when I realised what was being said by the guest. Paul Davies scientist, talking about "alien life forms and ET"!!! Well as you can imagine, that got my attention. Thought you might like a heads up, I think you can watch it here:
BBC News - Hardtalk - Paul Davies: Searching for alien life
I found what he had to say about the "red rain" in India interesting & caught the bit about "2nd genesis" fascinating. I didn't see all of it (I can't now either thanks to the iPhones lack of Flash player) but if I'm not mistaken, here is a scientist willing to speak the unmentionable! Basically I was shocked to see this being debated on a seriuos news show at all. Hope the link works for you guys.
Enjoy!

 

[Xylo]

I'll have to save this to view when I'm at home. Thanks for posting it.

 

[Kandinsky]

I found what he had to say about the "red rain" in India interesting & caught the bit about "2nd genesis" fascinating.

I've found the Kerala red rain to be fascinating. There used to be a great website detailing the studies of Godfrey Louis and Wickramasingh. IIRC, they'd recorded evidence that these peculiar 'cells' could replicate at over 300 degrees Celsius. Wickramasingh is or was based at Cardiff University and had been a colleague of Fred Hoyle. In their studies, the 'cells' had walls, but no nucleus or DNA. They made a good case for the 'cells' to be extraterrestrial or inhabiting the outer layers of our atmosphere.

I spent a lot of time reading the research papers and trying to substantiate and understand the science behind their findings. Ultimately, it was like treading quicksand. Credible scientists discounted the 'red rain' as sand particles or algae carried up from Earth in the violent thermals of Indian storm patterns.

Hoyle, Wickramasingh and Louis have been proponents of the panspermia hypothesis , or whatever name it goes by these days. So I had to wonder if that maybe skewed their interpretations of the evidence?

Sometimes we find equally credible scientists offering completely opposing views. In these cases, if we aren't educated to a certain level in that field, it's like eeny meeny miny mo when choosing the one that appeals more.

From all the background reading, I was left with the impression that the 'Red Rain' deserved more study. On the one hand, the specific locality of the rain over the years makes it seem unlikely to be from space. Other studies make it seem improbable that it represents an unknown living cell structure. On the other hand, some qualified and credible scientists have analysed the hell out of the stuff (microscopy, radiation etc), studied the data and concluded it's very anomalous.

On balance, I remain interested and puzzled by it all.