On Sat, Jan 07, 2006 at 02:25:43PM +0530, Srini RamaKrishnan wrote: > Anyone know what's happening here?
About 50% of all "science" reported on Slashdot is bogus. arXiv.org is not peer-reviewed, anyone can publish there. Rains colored with mineral particulates are very common (ours typically come from the Sahara). Rain contaminated with (terrestrial) organisms are also not exactly rare. Material transport in the inner solar system is quite frequent (shortest Mars-Earth transfer time is 6 months), pebble-sized fragments remain <40 deg C during the entire journey. Interstellar dust transport also appears to happen (a dusty star in our neighbourhood appears to accelerate dust which impacts our system, Earth included with fast um-sized dust grains). Ethidium bromide is not a specific test for DNA. You can't expect to see fluorescence from unenrichened DNA (it takes separating DNA from an optically dense bacterial overnight culture to get enough to see a band in a ethidium bromide-stained gel). I would spin this down from a large volume, lyse the suspect cells, extract the DNA and amplify it by PCR. Odds are overwhelming it's terrestrial. If life, as it is to be expected (see frequent crosscontamination by impact ejecta) not only has a common origin but frequent population exchanges telling extraterrestrial organism DNA from any common local extremophile bug is going to be difficult. Our best chance to find life is on Mars (where there's extensive undground ice, and some hints of liquid water under the ice in some craters according to orbital radar surveys). > Cheeni > > Link: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/01/07/0711224 > Posted by: Zonk, on 2006-01-07 07:10:00 > > jdfox writes "World Science is [1]reporting on a controversial paper > to be published shortly in the peer-reviewed research journal > [2]Astrophysics and Space Science, describing a strange red rain that > fell in India in 2001, shortly after a meteor airburst event in the > area. The authors posit that the red particles found in the raindrops > may be extraterrestrial microbes. The authors' [3]last two [4]papers > on the subject were unpublished: this published paper is more > cautious. The [5]paper can be viewed online, and should obviously be > considered in context. More info on the 'panspermia' hypothesis can be > found at [6]Wikipedia." > > References > > 1. > http://www.world-science.net/exclusives/exclusives-nfrm/060104_specks.htm > 2. > http://www.springer.com/sgw/cda/frontpage/0,11855,4-10100-70-35683926-0,00.html > 3. http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0310120 > 4. http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0312639 > 5. http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0601022 > 6. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panspermia > > > -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org";>leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE
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