Godfrey Louis is a solid-state
physicist
A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe.
Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate cau ...
from India. His hypotheses about the
"red rain" phenomenon in Kerala have attracted controversy. In April 2008, he published a paper in which he hypothesised that samples of particles from the "blood-coloured" rain that fell in his state of
Kerala
Kerala ( ; ) is a state on the Malabar Coast of India. It was formed on 1 November 1956, following the passage of the States Reorganisation Act, by combining Malayalam-speaking regions of the erstwhile regions of Cochin, Malabar, South ...
, India in the summer of 2001 were the result of a comet disintegrating in the upper atmosphere which comprised mainly
microbes from outer space.
The paper drew much media interest. Other scientists disagreed early on with Louis' hypothesis regarding the red rain's origin.
An earlier (2001) study by the Centre for Earth Science Studies, Kerala, India, reported that the red rain was the result of spores from local algae.
Since October 2006 Louis has been at Department of Physics,
Cochin University of Science and Technology
Cochin University of Science and Technology (CUSAT) is a state government-owned autonomous university in Kochi, Kerala, India. It was founded in 1971 and has three campuses: two in Kochi (Kalamassery and Ernakulam) and one in Kuttanad, Ala ...
(CUSAT) in
Kochi
Kochi (), also known as Cochin ( ) ( the official name until 1996) is a major port city on the Malabar Coast of India bordering the Laccadive Sea, which is a part of the Arabian Sea. It is part of the district of Ernakulam in the state of K ...
, Kerala.
In August 2010 Louis and his collaborators presented a paper at the SPIE astrobiology conference held in San Diego, USA, claiming that the red rain cells develop internal daughter cells and multiply when exposed to extreme temperature of 121 °C in an autoclave for two hours, and that the fluorescent behavior of the red cells is similar to the extended red emission observed in the
Red Rectangle nebula
The Red Rectangle Nebula, so called because of its red color and unique rectangular shape, is a protoplanetary nebula in the Monoceros constellation. Also known as HD 44179, the nebula was discovered in 1973 during a rocket flight associated w ...
.
See also
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Red rain in Kerala
The Kerala red rain phenomenon was a blood rain event that occurred in Wayanad district region of Malabar on Monday, 15 July 1957 and the colour subsequently turned yellow and also 25 July to 23 September 2001, when heavy downpours of red-col ...
*
Panspermia
Panspermia () is the hypothesis, first proposed in the 5th century BCE by the Greek philosopher Anaxagoras, that life exists throughout the Universe, distributed by space dust, meteoroids, asteroids, comets, and planetoids, as well as by spacec ...
*
Milton Wainwright
*
Chandra Wickramasinghe
References
External links
Home Page of Dr. Godfrey Louis*
– Is It Raining Aliens?
arXiv astrophysics– Use the search facility https://arxiv.org/find/all/1/all:+EXACT+godfrey_louis/0/1/0/all/0/1 to locate his four papers in ArXiv.org related to red rain.
– Tribune article
''Horizon'', 14 November 2006The Extraordinary Tale of Red Rain, Comets and Extraterrestrials,1 September 2010Panspermia theorists say India's red rain contains life not seen on Earth, 3 September 2010
India’s Red Rain: Still Cloudy With a Chance of Alien?, September 2010
{{DEFAULTSORT:Louis, Godfrey
20th-century Indian physicists
Living people
Year of birth missing (living people)
Scientists from Kochi