Wikipedia:Peer review/Red rain in Kerala/archive1
Red Rain in Kerala[edit]
I have requested a peer review. This is a very good article for something that I know little about, and neither do very many people in the project. This is a step towards this becoming an FA. CrazyC83 19:00, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
You might not even be paying attention to this anymore, but I hate seeing requests with no responses :) And this is a quite interesting phenomenon. It's a little short compared to most FAs, but I guess that's not a formal obstacle.
- There's a few statements that are uncited - eg "Many more occurrences of the red rain were reported...", the major elements table (unless that goes with ref 11), and clean up the citation needed statements.
- There's a lot of miscellaneous theories of varying plausibility described in the article, but no definitive statement of what it actually was, unless the algae study mentioned in the lead was the final conclusion. If that's the case, then the real explanation needs its own section, preferably before the alternative theories. If not, it should at least be given more prominence since it was (apparently) the official government conclusion.
- The text in general could benefit from a more chronological presentation. How long after the rains did the government release its conclusions, what theories were offered in the interim vs. theories that were proposed after the official explanation, etc.
- I don't know anything about Wickramasinghe, but his quote doesn't make him sound very reliable or knowledgeable at all. I don't know about Louis and Kumar either, but information about their background/scientific credentials/other work might be useful in evaluating just how far off their rockers they really are.
- There's a mention of other instances of colored rain but not much detail. It's a little out of the scope of this article, but an incidental mention of "dust from the Sahara caused colored rain over England" is a little too weird to pass by without more explanation.
Opabinia regalis 02:50, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
- Yeah, I kinda lost it after 2 1/2 weeks and was focusing on making GA's out of other articles. Good points though. I'll fix them up. CrazyC83 22:21, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
Here are a few responses to the bulleted list above:
- The Centre for Earth Science Studies (CESS) and Louis & Kumar's papers give tabular details of reported sightings. The table of major elements in Louis & Kumar does not appear to match with the graph (table 1 and fig. 14, in 0601022, from memory) The x-ray spectrum graph (in 0101022) shows clear peaks for Ca, P, Fl and Cl which are not detailed in the table.
- As best I can see, Louis & Kumar's explanation is seriously flawed from the outset: although microparticles would take weeks to fall through the upper atmosphere they simply would not fall over the same place. The 'official' explanation seems to be trentepohlia, but read the November 2001 CESS report carefully before going along with this.
- The chronology seems to be that the disintegrating meteor idea was advanced within a few days, concern having been expressed about the initial red rainfall, shriveled leaves on trees and the possibility that the raindust may have dangerous. As the red rain continued, this explanation didn't hold water, so the algal bloom idea seems to have been advanced.
- Chandra Wickramasinghe may be best known among his detractors for his suggestion in a letter to the Lancet in 2003 that SARS was caused not by mutation of a coronavirus but by spores from space. Although there might not be many who would immediately believe that H5N1, if/when it becomes pandemic, is similarly caused, on past precedent an announcement on these lines would seem not entirely unlikely. Clearly an impartial approach does not deny the possibility of panspermia; but the question of responsibility towards a general readership does need to be addressed.
As the reference is not immediately to hand, it might not be appropriate to mention that Godfrey Louis hopes to establish an astrobiology department at Mahatma Ghandi university.
- Very large quantities of sand and dust are regularly transported around the globe by winds, and the process is now monitored by satellite. This should be mentioned. Kerala's red raindust, however, does seem to have been somewhat different.
-- Chandra Wickramasinghe recently hosted a conference at Cardiff. Contributors included Godfrey Louis. Derails are expected to be published in the near future. -- As soon as I can find out how to use the Wiki talk pages to send a message to other contributors I'll be happy to avail others of more detailed references ... Meanwhile, if anyone knows why there is still no trace of analysis by gas chromatography mass spectrometry; let alone a simple measurement of the specific density of the red raindust, which affords a critical means to differentiate between competing hypotheses...
Davy p 00:37, 5 November 2006 (UTC)