Over the years there have been several reports of mysterious things raining from the sky ranging from fish to frogs and even blood. But just this week an orange slime reportedly began raining from the sky on a village near Anchorage Alaska, and experts are still scratching their heads over what could have caused it. The mysterious material remains unidentified in labs after being collected after a heavy incident where it covered houses, rain collection barrels, and even people. And perhaps strangest of all is the fact that the substance doesn’t look like anything biologists have ever seen. So where did it come from?
The mystery rain appeared throughout the village of some 347 equally baffled residents and even made its way into the town’s drinking water. The Coast Guard was mobilized to look at the material, and determined that whatever it was, it was not man-made. Despite this, it has a sheen to it much like oil. But it is definitely not oil, according to those working closely with it.
Perhaps most disturbingly is how it appeared. First the substance was spotted in the ocean moving along the tides and reaching up the coast to the village. Then the next day it rained on top of them – suggesting whatever it is there is much more of it somewhere.
Currently biologists are working with the theory that the substance could have been created by some sort of algae. And as the ocean is undergoing some intense changes, unusual behavior and population blooms could happen in a fashion difficult to predict. After thousands of years of relative stability the ocean is finally beginning to turn to something else, and species which were staples to vast and complex ecosystems are beginning to die out due partially to man-made catastrophes.
Kivalina, a community in the northwest burrough of Alaska, currently is seeking relocation after heavy wave erosion gradually destroyed a large area surrounding the community. It is located on a long island just west of Alaska’s western coast. So if this orange slime is moving with the tides and weather formations, there’s a possibility that it could be moving to the mainland of Alaska shortly.
Worth noting is the fact that the substance appeared just as the effects from three major solar flares converged on Earth after erupting causing a fantastic display of the Northern Lights that reached as far south as Maine and Nebraska. Whether the two are somehow related is unknown.
Microbes from space contained in rain is not as novel as it may seem at first. In the summer of 2001 the residents of Kerala, India were inundated with a mysterious blood-red rain for several weeks. Later, samples from the rain that had been collected were analyzed and found to contain microbial life that could not be classified because they contained no identifiable DNA. Perhaps the difficulty in identifying this new substance could continue as scientists run into the same problems. We will simply have to wait and see. But in the mean time, if conditions unfold as they did in 2001, we could be seeing much more of the substance in the near future.