Godfrey Louis
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It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Red rain in Kerala. (Discuss) Proposed since June 2010. |
Godfrey Louis is a controversial solid-state physicist, who, while at Mahatma Gandhi University in Kerala, achieved notoriety for his hypotheses about the red rain in Kerala. In April 2006, he published a paper [1] in the journal Astrophysics and Space Science 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. Despite much media interest and the abundant coverage that Dr. Louis' theory received, many leading scientists like Dr. Milton Wainwright disagreed early on with Dr. 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 Dr. Louis has been at Department of Physics, Cochin University of Science and Technology (CUSAT) in Kochi, Kerala.
In August 2010 Dr. Louis and his collaborators presented a paper [4] in SPIE astrobiology conference held in San Diego, USA. In this paper, which is co-authored by Rajkumar Gangappa ( Univ. of Glamorgan, U K), Chandra Wickramasinghe (Cardiff Univ. U K), Milton Wainwright (The Univ. of Sheffield U K), A. Santhosh Kumar ( CUSAT, India) and Godfrey Louis , it is claimed 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. It is further reported in the paper that the fluorescent behavior of the red cells have remarkable correspondence with the extended red emission observed in the Red Rectangle nebula.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Louis, Godfrey; Kumar, A. Santhosh (2006). "The Red Rain Phenomenon of Kerala and its Possible Extraterrestrial Origin". Astrophysics and Space Science 302: 175–87. arXiv:astro-ph/0601022v1. Bibcode 2006Ap&SS.302..175L. doi:10.1007/s10509-005-9025-4.
- ^ McKie, Robin; Gentleman, Amelia (13 March 2006). "Red rain could prove that aliens have landed". The Guardian (London). http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2006/mar/05/spaceexploration.theobserver. Retrieved 2009-09-06.
- ^ 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 June 13, 2006. http://web.archive.org/web/20060613135746/http://www.geocities.com/iamgoddard/Sampath2001.pdf. Retrieved August 30, 2009.
- ^ 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. Proceedings of SPIE: 78190N. doi:10.1117/12.876393.
[edit] External links
- Home Page of Dr. Godfrey Louis
- Louis, Godfrey; Kumar, A. Santhosh (2006). "The Red Rain Phenomenon of Kerala and its Possible Extraterrestrial Origin". Astrophysics and Space Science 302: 175–87. arXiv:astro-ph/0601022. Bibcode 2006Ap&SS.302..175L. doi:10.1007/s10509-005-9025-4.
- Popular Science – Is It Raining Aliens?
- arXiv astrophysics – Use the search facility http://arxiv.org/find/all/1/all:+EXACT+godfrey_louis/0/1/0/all/0/1 to locate his four papers in ArXiv.org related to red rain.
- Tribune 2 June 2006 – Tribune article
- Horizon, 14 November 2006
- The Extraordinary Tale of Red Rain, Comets and Extraterrestrials,1 September 2010
- Panspermia theorists say India's red rain contains life not seen on Earth, 3 September 2010
- India’s Red Rain: Still Cloudy With a Chance of Alien?, September 2010
