The Aliens are Coming!!!!

In my last post, I stated that I wouldn’t watch anything on National Geographic for a long time. Well, I watched this show, Paranatural, long before writing that post. The episode Blood Rain and Star Jelly was a little different from the shows I normally watch, but I figured I’d give it a shot. It was about supposed biological material coming from space. I am not a science fiction fan and outer space is one of the few things that does not draw my interest and that I do not really understand or care about. However, this topic seemed just interesting enough to warrant my attention. I still have a bad taste in my mouth about Nat Geo, as even this show was more fantastical than informative.

Apparently, about 100 metric tons of cosmic debris falls on earth each day. I can’t help but think of the lyric from the Frank Zappa song, “Look here brother, Who you jivin' with that Cosmik Debris?” Anyway……it is kind of freaky to think of unknown matter being drawn to our planet and settling here. I’m sure the chemists know what all of this stuff is, so I leave it to them. Most of this debris we can’t see because it is dust. Anything larger burns in the atmosphere, etc. But, there have been reports of galactic castoffs over the years that are visible and may possibly be biological material.

There have been several stories of gelatinous masses that have fallen from the sky around since the 12th century, which has come to be known as star jelly. The first modern account was in Philadelphia on September 26, 1950. Two policemen in South Philly saw a UFO land in a field and later saw a 6 foot “blob” on the ground. The material quickly disintegrated but has stayed with us forever as the inspiration for the movie “The Blob”.

Most narratives are similar; the star jelly disintegrates before it can be studied. However, in 1994 a gelatinous rain fell over the Pacific Northwest that literally covered yards and branches with slimy goo. Unfortunately, many people became ill after this. However, a sample was able to be delivered to a lab intact. There was bacteria found in the material. The sample did mysteriously disappear from the lab after this was publicized, but not until vital analysis had already been done. Guess what? The blob consisted of a man made matrix.

The other type of material reported to come from “space” is red rain. No, not the red rain of the Peter Gabriel song symbolizing helplessness and weakness, but literal blood red rain coming down from the sky. Like star jelly, red rain has been reported for many centuries, since the 10th century. But from July to September 2001, periodic blood red rainfalls came alongside normal rain in Kerala, India. What caused this?

The explanations include clay dust from and industrial plant, algae, and, of course, alien life. A lab in India discovered red structures shaped like red blood cells that appear to have cell walls like plants, instead of the membranes found around human cells. What‘s more, though they do not have DNA, they replicate in temperatures up to 600°F. The hypothesis is that they are simple extraterrestrial life just like what landed on earth many years ago, eventually populating the earth through panspermia.

To me, how life originated is one of those things we can never know the answer to, like the existence of God. Believe whatever you want about the creation of life, nothing can ever prove what happened billions of years ago. However, it is possible that future space exploration may yield biological material. Are these tiny cells plotting to devour us like the infamous blob? Are intelligent aliens dumping this material on earth? I doubt it.