Mysterious Red Cells - Anyone have a clue?

Originally posted by Umbra Sideralis
quite intriguing indeed, i wonder what the hell is that!??

My personal belief is lipid membranes with a high amount of oxidised iron in them.

The ADN chain it's not related to all forms of life? i mean if something have not DNA, it is not a living thing.how can it reproduce with out DNA?,if it reproduces with out

Scientists agree on the fact that early life was based purely on RNA. It was called the 'RNA-world'. RNA molecules who has enzymatic capabilities are called ribozymes, and work basically like normal enzymer, they are just a bit more complex in structure.

how can the original cell "remember" how will be the new one?(it must be a perfect copy of his prime cell)!

Cellular duplication is exactly that - two copies of the maternal cell.

Stranger still, dozens of his experiments suggest that the particles may lack DNA yet still reproduce plentifully, even in water superheated to nearly 600 degrees Fahrenheit

No, that is wrong. DNA denaturates at temperatures well below this, even for hyperextremophile bacteria and archea.

A mineral reproduces itself without DNA.

Not sure what you mean here, but my initial answer would be no. (?)

Originally posted by Nygdan
The red rain things lack organelles, but have boundaries, AND, importantly, have these external 'layers' that are 'complex', in so far as that are laminar, ie, made up of many smaller layers. THATS intriguing, along the lines you are saying, becuase thats roughly similar to a living cell (the cell layer is made up of a lipid bi-layer, with many components embeded in it). This at least is a complex outer layer.

Lipid membranes form easily in water, and 'cells' or whatever you would call them are formed all the time if there are lipids enough. Having a complex membrane isnt hard to make either, as long as you get some polyatomar ions mixed with the lipids, they will help form the membranes if they are about the same size.

Originally posted by Nygdan
I don't think that a virus is going to survive for a few years while sitting in a vial on someone's desk though.

It is not unusual for virus to last 200+ years under good conditions. So a few years, even in a wet environment, isnt a problem for most virus types.

Crystals grow from seeds, they don't have DNA or RNA.

The crystals that are lab-grown to make the silicon chips that our computers think with are grown from the seeds of natural crystals.

This is an interesting story indeed, there's quite a lot of video footage that shows 'critters' (infra-red spectrum) and UFOs that do look like giant cells. Then there is that NASA footage that looks like pond-life under a microscope except it's meant to be from outer space on a macroscale! There's other videos that show 'plasmacrafts' - many of them look like deep sea creatures that are bioluminescent. If I put money on it I'd gamble that As Above So Below is going to turn out to be about the seas and the sky.

This also reminds me of that sci-fi book that discussed sky-creatures it called 'manisolas', if anyone has heard of BOLs then they seem to be a bit like that. It described the stages of their life cycle, they would reproduce binary-fission-like (as has been photographed on IR film showing 'critters' apparently doing same) and also re-assimilate again.

Umm..yes it is rather odd

I do disregard the bat blood theory, red blood cells don't replicate and don't endure such amount of heat. Even in the absence of heat they'd still burst when mixed with rain water.

They don't look like any fungus or algae but these organisms have been known to withstand high temperatures.

But the alien cell hypothesis is still far fetched, things that come from the sky doesn't necessarily mean that it's extraterestrial...

In short...I don't know, but it is very interesting

Why would it be more special though, for life to have evolved on some other planet instead of on this one?

Originally posted by Nygdan
I don't think that a virus is going to survive for a few years while sitting in a vial on someone's desk though.

It actually will. It depends on the actual virus, though.


[edit on 13-6-2006 by Aelita]

Cool.

I wish I knew anything about this kind of thing. Can I get an opinion from someone who has read and understood all of the links as to what the conclusions are so far and what exactly is strange about these 'red cells'?

Originally posted by Thain Esh Kelch
A mineral reproduces itself without DNA.

Not sure what you mean here, but my initial answer would be no. (?)

Minerals make copies of themselves and a chipped off peice of a crystal can 'grow' into an accurate copy of the original crystal.

Having a complex membrane isnt hard to make either, as long as you get some polyatomar ions mixed with the lipids, they will help form the membranes if they are about the same size.

I am not sure, but I think most micelles are composed of just two layers. The outer edges of these red rain things are made up of many layers. I have never heard of anyone demonstrating that they are lipids, or even organic.

[It is not unusual for virus to last 200+ years under good conditions.

Interesting. Of course, these are not viruses, but point taken, their lack of degradation doesn't mean that they aren't 'alive' in some sense.

Crystals grow from seeds, they don't have DNA or RNA.

And neither do these things.

enrikez
and what exactly is strange about these 'red cells'?

What is strange is that no one has any idea what they are. There was a period of rains in southern india, where the pools of collected rainwater were red. These werid things were inside of the them, they seemed to have rained out. A lot of researchers have been trying to figure out what they are. They apparently aren't dust particles, and have some weird features, such as their multiple-layered 'edges'. They're a mystery, for the moment anyway.

Also, I suggest that the curious check out the ATS TAG 'red rain' at the bottom of this page for a number of other threads wherein this topic has come up, there is a lot of information spread out over a number of threads.

[edit on 13-6-2006 by Nygdan]

[edit on 13-6-2006 by Nygdan]

Here's a bunch of information from one of the other threads, including papers on the subject.


Here is a link from the blog to the scientific paper.
arxiv.org...


Here is an explanation of the elemental analysis that they did:
EDAX Analysis
CHN Analyzer

Apparently unknown 'black insects' have been associated with the red rain
www.100megsfree4.com...

This is one of the more interesting results of the study, an electron microscope image of one of the objects:
external image
I've gotta say that I am disappointed with that paper. The electron microscope pictures are great, however there wasn't any sensible analysis of them. I'm not familiar with EDAX analyses, so I don't know what to make of those results. If there were complex organic molecules in those objects, then they should've done any of a number of analyses that would've shown what kinds of organic carbon and functional groups are present. Its not too helpful to say that they have carbon. Rocks have carbon.

I did like the ethidium bromide test for nuclear material, and I especially liked that they went through the bother of trying the same procedure on yeast cells. But still, have the authors of that paper had this material for all these years and this is all that they have done with it???

Here is another arxiv article on the red rains:
arxiv.org...

Here is an article on colored snow and rain events in the somewhat distant past:
abob.libs.uga.edu...

Here is an abstract that was able to conclude that it was at least partly from dust.
Method for Measuring Effective Density and Fractal Dimension of Aerosol Agglomerates

That's why I posted that crystals grow from seed - you said or some other poster said that only things with DNA (or indeed the single strand) can reproduce, which isn't true.