A news story from India this week caught my eye: A physicist from Mahatma Gandhi University is studying samples from a red rain which fell in 2001. Godfrey Louis has put forward the idea that the blood-coloured drops contain microbes from outer space. These droplets contain "cell-like structures" which reproduce without containing DNA.
Louis has theorized that this substance somehow hitched a ride on a comet or meteorite that broke apart in Earth's atmosphere. The red drops were mixed in with rain, which fell to the ground. If this theory is correct, we would have confirmation that alien life exists.
This story got me thinking about other unusual substances that have fallen from the sky, which I will be examining in more detail in this week's article.