Godfrey Louis is a solid-state physicist from India. His hypotheses about the "red rain" phenomenon in Kerala have attracted controversy. In April 2008, he published a paper in which he hypothesised that samples of particles from the "blood-coloured" rain that fell in his state of Kerala, India in the summer of 2001 were the result of a comet disintegrating in the upper atmosphere which comprised mainly microbes from outer space.[1] The paper drew much media interest. Other scientists disagreed early on with Louis' hypothesis regarding the red rain's origin.[2] An earlier (2001) study by the Centre for Earth Science Studies, Kerala, India, reported that the red rain was the result of spores from local algae.[3]

Since October 2006 Louis has been at Department of Physics, Cochin University of Science and Technology (CUSAT) in Kochi, Kerala.

In August 2010 Louis and his collaborators presented a paper at the SPIE astrobiology conference held in San Diego, USA, claiming that the red rain cells develop internal daughter cells and multiply when exposed to extreme temperature of 121 °C in an autoclave for two hours, and that the fluorescent behavior of the red cells is similar to the extended red emission observed in the Red Rectangle nebula.[4]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Louis, Godfrey; Kumar, A. Santhosh (2006). "The Red Rain Phenomenon of Kerala and its Possible Extraterrestrial Origin". Astrophysics and Space Science. 302 (1–4): 175–87. arXiv:astro-ph/0601022v1. Bibcode:2006Ap&SS.302..175L. doi:10.1007/s10509-005-9025-4.
  2. ↑ McKie, Robin; Gentleman, Amelia (13 March 2006). "Red rain could prove that aliens have landed". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 6 September 2009.
  3. ↑ Sampath, S.; Abraham, T. K.; Sasi Kumar, V.; Mohanan, C.N. (2001). "Colored Rain: A Report on the Phenomenon" (PDF). Cess-Pr-114-2001. Center for Earth Science Studies and Tropical Botanic Garden and Research Institute. Archived from the original on 13 June 2006. Retrieved 30 August 2009.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
  4. ↑ Gangappa, Rajkumar; Wickramasinghe, Chandra; Wainwright, Milton; Kumar, A. Santhosh; Louis, Godfrey (2010). "Growth and replication of red rain cells at 121°C and their red fluorescence". Proceedings of SPIE. 7819: 78190N. arXiv:1008.4960. Bibcode:2010SPIE.7819E..0NG. doi:10.1117/12.876393.
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