Searching
for 'our alien origins'
By
Andrew Thompson
BBC Horizon - Nov 14 2006
In
July 2001, a mysterious red rain started falling over a large area of southern
India.
Locals
believed that it foretold the end of the world, though the official explanation
was that it was desert dust that had blown over from Arabia.
But
one scientist in the area, Dr Godfrey Louis, was convinced there was something
much more unusual going on.
Not
only did Dr Louis discover that there were tiny biological cells present, but
because they did not appear to contain DNA, the essential component of all life
on Earth, he reasoned they must be alien lifeforms.
"This
staggering claim is that this is possibly extraterrestrial. That is a big claim
I know, but all the experiments are supporting this claim," said Dr Louis.
His
remarkable work has set in motion a chain of events with scientists around the
world debating the origin of these mysterious cells.
The
main reason why Dr Louis's ideas have not been immediately laughed out of court
is because they tie in with a theory promoted by two UK scientists ever since
the 1960s.
Space
qualified
The
late Sir Fred Hoyle and Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe have been the champions
of "Panspermia", the idea that life on Earth originated on another planet.
They
speculate that life was first brought here on the back of a comet. Over the last
decade, Panspermia is being taken ever more seriously.
The
US space agency (Nasa) is now increasingly interested in searching for extra-terrestrial
life.
A
new robotic submarine is being developed to explore the oceans of one of Jupiter's
moons. This submarine is on test at the moment in a lake in Texas.
Finding
life elsewhere in the Solar System would be a vital bolster to the Panspermia
theory.
Another
section of Nasa is devoted to the study of bacteria found on Earth that can survive
extreme conditions.
Finding
these types of bacteria makes it more likely that micro-organism could survive
the hardships of travelling through space on the back of a meteoroid.
Professor
Wickramasinghe explained: "Bacteria have got to endure the extreme cold of
space, the vacuum of space, ultraviolet radiation, cosmic rays, X-rays.
"That
sounds like a tall order but bacteria do that. From what we know survival out
in space is more or less ensured. Bacteria seem to me to be born space travellers."
From
another place
Last
summer, Horizon had exclusive access to a trip taken by Professor Wickramasinghe
to India to investigate at first hand the red rain phenomenon.
He
met Dr Louis and together they visited the people who had witnessed the red rain.
He
was able to see the recent work of Dr Louis which shows that the red rain can
replicate at 300C, an essential attribute of a space micro-organism that might
have to endure extreme temperatures.
All
this has convinced Professor Wickramasinghe that the red rain is a form of alien
life.
"Before
I came I had grave doubts as to whether the red rain was really an indication
of life coming from space; new life coming from space," he said.
"But
on reflection and after talking to Godfrey, I think I would now fairly firmly
believe that it did represent an invasion of microbes from space."
Many
scientists remain highly sceptical, however, but if Wickramasinghe and Louis are
correct it will be the strongest evidence so far that the theory of Panspermia
might be true.
It
also raises the intriguing possibility that if life first originated on another
planet then it must mean all Earth organisms, including humans, evolved from alien
life.
