A. Santhosh Kumar

The Red Rain Phenomenon of Kerala and its Possible Extraterrestrial Origin

A red rain phenomenon occurred in Kerala, India starting from 25th July 2001, in which the rainwater appeared coloured in various localized places that are spread over a few hundred kilometers in Kerala. Maximum cases were reported during the first 10 days and isolated cases were found to occur for about 2 months. The striking red colouration of the rainwater was found to be due to the suspension of microscopic red particles having the appearance of biological cells. These particles have no similarity with usual desert dust. An estimated minimum quantity of 50,000 kg of red particles has fallen from the sky through red rain. An analysis of this strange phenomenon further shows that the conventional atmospheric transport processes like dust storms etc. cannot explain this phenomenon. The electron microscopic study of the red particles shows fine cell structure indicating their biological cell like nature. EDAX analysis shows that the major elements present in these cell like particles are carbon and oxygen. Strangely, a test for DNA using Ethidium Bromide dye fluorescence technique indicates absence of DNA in these cells. In the context of a suspected link between a meteor airburst event and the red rain, the possibility for the extraterrestrial origin of these particles from cometary fragments is discussed.

Unusual autofluorescence characteristic of cultured red-rain cells

The red cells found in the red rain in Kerala, India are now considered as a possible case of extraterrestrial life form. These cells can undergo rapid replication even at an extreme high temperature of 300 deg C. They can also be cultured in diverse unconventional chemical substrates. The molecular composition of these cells is yet to be identified. This paper reports the unusual autofluorescence characteristic of the cultured red rain cells. A spectrofluorimetric study has been performed to investigate this, which shows a systematic shift of the fluorescence emission peak wavelength as the excitation wavelength is increased. Conventional biomolecules are not known to have this property. Details of this investigation and the results are discussed.

Anisotropy in elastic properties of lithium sodium sulphate hexahydrate single crystal—An ultrasonic study

The double sulfate family of (ABSO4) where A and B are alkali metal cations, is the object of great interest owing to the complexity and richness of its sequence of phase transition induced by temperature variation. A new sulfate salt characterized by the presence of water molecule in the unit cell with the chemical formula, Li2Na3(SO4)2·6H2O (LSSW), was obtained. The ultrasonic velocity measurement was done with pulse echo overlap technique [PEO]. All the six second order elastic stiffness constants, C11  =  C22, C33, C44  =  C55, C12, C14 and C13  =  C23, are reported for the first time. The anisotropy in the elastic properties of the crystal are well explained by the pictorial representation of the surface plots of phase velocity, slowness, Young’s modulus and linear compressibility in a–b and a–c planes.

Microhardness studies of sulfamic acid single crystal

Vickers microhardness study of (100), (010) and (001) faces of a non-linear optical crystal sulfamic acid have been reported. Single crystals of sulfamic acid have been grown by slow evaporation method. The load dependence of the Vickers microhardness of sulfamic acid crystal were investigated and analyzed from the stand point of various theoretical models. Crystal samples in a, b and c-axes exhibit reverse indentation effect which is best described by Meyers law, Hays-Kendalls approach and proportional specimen resistance (PSR) models. The negative values of load dependent quantities in Hays-Kendalls approach and PSR model suggest that the origin of indentation size effect is associated with the process of relaxation of indentation stresses.

Autofluorescence characteristics of the red rain cells

Red rain cells are the microscopic biological cells which appear mixed in rain water in large quantity imparting visibly red color to the rain water in a strange event called red rain phenomenon. Our study of this phenomenon which happened in Kerala, India in 2001 has shown that the origin of these cells is possibly extraterrestrial. These cells are not so far successfully identified as any organism known on earth. The cells have unusual property like ability to reproduce at extreme high temperature and the colorless daughter cells cultured from the red cells show unusual autofluorescence characteristics. In this paper we report the autofluorescence characteristics of the original red rain cells. High resolution fluorescence microscopy is employed to study the fluorescence images of the cells under UV-Visible excitation. The results are discussed.