Nearly 50 tons of mysterious red particles showered India in 2001.

In April, Godfrey Louis, a solid-state physicist at Mahatma Gandhi University, published a paper in the prestigious peer-reviewed journal Astrophysics and Space Science in which he hypothesizes that the samples contain microbes from outer space.

Louis has isolated strange, thick-walled, red-tinted cell-like structures about 10 microns in size. The particles may lack DNA yet still reproduce plentifully, even in water superheated to nearly 600¢ªF. Louis speculates that the particles could be extraterrestrial bacteria adapted to the harsh conditions of space and that the microbes hitched a ride on a comet or meteorite that later broke apart in the upper atmosphere and mixed with rain clouds above India.