cameo AT groundcontrol.us

Thanks soooo much!!

I just saw your reply. I would love to have a copy of the pdf report emailed to me.

send to keeb333 AT gmail DOT com. T

Thanks

I was the first scientist to be informed of the phenomenon and had the privilege of collecting a reasonably good quantity of rainwater. As the news flashed in the media the next day, reports started coming in from a number of places in the state, and some of them had other colours like blue and yellow. We were not able to cope with the number of reports and could collect samples only from a few places. I give below details about the phenomenon at the first place (Changanasserry) from where I got the report.

(1) The rain was visibly red and very deep in colour. Water collected in vessels kept outside was brick red to brown. This was seen around 8 am. A number of people reported hearing an extremely loud thunder early in the morning, around 5:15 am, and a few people also reported seeing something like a lightning. This was an isolated event and was not repeated. We talked to a large number of people and determined that people in an elongated region of about one and a half to two kilometer length lying roughly in the east-west direction had heard the sound with almost similar intensity right overhead. People living in areas adjacent to it could identify that the sound came from one side. We concluded that this could not have been a lightning stroke, but could have been only a meteor that came close to the ground. Our immediate conclusion was, therefore, that the colour was due to meteor dust. Eventually, we found that it contained some elliptical shaped organism and gave the sample to microbiologists. They cultured the sample in different media and came to the conclusion that it consisted of spores from a lichn-forming algae of the family Trentepohlia.

(2) Barakn’s observation that the winds would have carried the particles very far is true. But it has to be noted that the meteor (we are certain that there was one) came from the west at a low angle and could have started disintegrating much before it reached over land in Kerala. If the meteor (if at all it had been the cause) had deposited dust in the lower stratosphere and the upper troposphere, winds would have initially carried it to the west and then, at lower heights, brought it back to the east and over Kerala. This can be confirmed by taking a look at the wind pattern over the region at different altitudes.

(3) Barakn’s observation that it could have been only dust from Africa or the Arabian Peninsula cannot be true because we have observed and isolated large quantities of the red coloured spores from the rain water.

(4) Barakn says that Godfrey Louis should go back to studying crystals. Perhaps. But I am yet to see any biologist taking any serious interest in this phenomenon. I am sorry to say that even the microbiologist who conducted the study based on our sample did not find the time to look more seriously into the matter. Our estimate was that, in the least, one thousand kilograms of spores had fallen in that region. This is a very conservative estimate, after making allowances for a number of possible and improbable errors, because we just could into believe the figures we initially arrived at. We still are unable to say how so much spores, if indeed that is what they really were, went into the sky one fine morning. Many such unanswered questions are mentioned in our report. May be Godfrey’s conclusions are incorrect. But he has succeeded in drawing attention to a strange phenomenon that is yet to be explained.

~Kevin

-barakn

(my sciscoop password is randomly-generated and impossible to remember, I ’spose there’s a way to change it)