Aliens?

teh
Call it the Red Mennace…from outer space.

As bizarre as it may seem, the sample jars brimming with cloudy, reddish rainwater in Godfrey Louis's laboratory in southern India may hold, well, aliens.

[snip]

Louis has isolated strange, thick-walled, red-tinted cell-like structures about 10 microns in size. 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 . (The known upper limit for life in water is about 250 degrees Fahrenheit .)

So how to explain them? Louis speculates that the particles could be extraterrestrial bacteria adapted to the harsh conditions of space and that the microbes hitched a ride on a comet or meteorite that later broke apart in the upper atmosphere and mixed with rain clouds above India.

Sound wild? Check out one of the “alternate” explanations:

Other theories have implicated…a fine mist of blood cells produced by a meteor striking a high-flying flock of bats.

Umm, is there a None of the Above option? I’m always suspicious of thes kinds of seemingly fantastic stories but who knows, maybe this time we really have been invaded by little green men, er, red cells.