ET - Check Your Messages

It's not even April, but via Wolfgang, we learn of Kerala's "red rain" and it's putative content of extraterrestial life. If true, of course, it's the biggest news since Darwin. I've read the Tech Review story, and the original ArXiv article and to me, it reeks of psuedo-scientific optimism. The interesting part for me is not what's there (electron microscopy, replication studies and fluorescence data), but what isn't, namely chemical and biochemical analysis. Also, although the authors show an increase in numbers of "cells," they fail to comment on whether there has been an increase in their mass - that would be far more persuasive.

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