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Between July 25 and September 23, 2001, intermittent red rain fell on the southern Indian state of Kerala. The heavy downpours featured red-coloured rain, leaving clothes stained in a manner reminiscent of blood.
Reports also emerged of yellow, green, and black
rain. Initially, scientists speculated that the rains acquired their
distinctive colour from fallout resulting from a hypothetical meteor burst.
However, a study commissioned by the Government of India revealed that airborne
spores from a locally prolific terrestrial alga were responsible for the
colouration of the rains.
Locals described the onset of
the first coloured rain with a loud thunderclap and a flash of light, followed
by groves of trees shedding shrivelled grey "burnt" leaves. Reports
also highlighted the simultaneous occurrence of shrivelled leaves and the
sudden disappearance and formation of wells in the area.
The phenomenon gained
international attention in early 2006 when media reports speculated that the
coloured particles might constitute extraterrestrial cells. This intriguing
theory was proposed by Godfrey Louis and Santhosh Kumar of Mahatma Gandhi
University in Kottayam. An investigation into the isotopic ratios of nitrogen
and carbon, however, supported the terrestrial origins of the solid material in
the red rain.
The unexplained nature of the red rain phenomena in Kerala has fuelled dramatic speculation, with some suggesting that it may represent a form of hypothetical microorganism called panspermia. Scientists advocating the panspermia theory posit that these microorganisms could have originated on Earth and spread throughout the universe, offering an explanation for the origin of life known as the proto-domain theory.
As long as the red rain phenomenon remains unexplained,
unconventional theories like the proto-domain theory are likely to maintain a
following outside the scientific mainstream.
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