ACID RAIN According to scientists, acid rain, which are formed under the influence of harmful emissions into the atmosphere, cause irreparable damage to the inhabitants of many water bodies, especially in the industrial regions of Russia. Acidity aquatic environment characterized by pH =

A rare natural phenomenon called “bloody rain” may occur in some parts of Sweden over the weekend, the Swedish online newspaper Local reported on Saturday, citing weather forecasters.

"Bloody rain" is a term used by weather forecasters to describe a rare phenomenon when precipitation has a pinkish-reddish hue. Scientists and meteorologists believe that this is due to the accumulation of dust in raindrops from the Sahara desert, RIA Novosti reports.

Danish meteorologists have reported that just such a storm front with dust from the Sahara could fall in "bloody rain" on Saturday and Sunday in southern regions Scandinavian neighbor - Sweden.

According to the representative of the Swedish Meteorological Institute (SMHI) Jokim Langner, this phenomenon does not pose a danger, such rain will only leave reddish stains. "Bloody rain" has previously taken place in Sweden at intervals of about five years, usually this phenomenon was observed in the spring, said Langner.

An unusual phenomenon was first mentioned in the Iliad by Homer (8th century BC). Until the 17th century, people believed that blood was really dripping from the sky instead of water, and this phenomenon was regarded as a bad omen, the newspaper notes.

Bloody rain. Harbinger of the Apocalypse

How terrible is the sight when, instead of the usual rain, an ominous stream pours from the sky - red as blood? It turns out that such bloody rains have happened hundreds of times in history - both in hoary antiquity and in times closer to us.

The ancient Greek historian and writer Plutarch spoke of bloody rains that fell after great battles with the Germanic tribes. He was sure that the bloody fumes from the battlefield soaked the air and dyed ordinary drops of water in

blood red color.

In 582 a bloody rain fell on Paris. “For many people, the blood stained their dress so much that they threw it off in disgust.- write eyewitnesses.

In 1571, red rain fell on Holland. He walked almost the whole night and was so plentiful that he flooded the area for a dozen kilometers. All houses, trees, fences turned red. The inhabitants of those places collected rain blood in buckets and explained the unusual phenomenon by the fact that it rose to the clouds of blood vapor of killed bulls.

The bloody rains were recorded by the French Academy of Sciences. In her scientific "Memoirs" it is written:

On March 17, 1669, a mysterious heavy viscous liquid, similar to blood, but with a sharp unpleasant odor, fell on the city of Chatillen (on the Seine River). Large drops of it hung on the roofs, walls and windows of houses. Academicians racked their brains for a long time trying to explain what had happened and finally decided that the liquid was formed ... in the rotten waters of some swamp and was carried up to the sky by a whirlwind!

In 1689 it rained blood in Venice, in 1744 in Genoa. Among the Genoese, the red rain caused a real panic. On this occasion, one of the learned contemporaries wrote:

What the common people call a bloody rain is nothing but vapors dyed with cinnabar or red chalk. But when real blood falls from the sky, which cannot be denied, then this, of course, is a miracle performed by the will of God.

In the early spring of 1813, a bloody rain suddenly poured over the Kingdom of Naples. The scientist of that time, Sementini, described this event in some detail, and we can now imagine how everything happened.

A strong wind had been blowing from the east for two days when the locals saw a thick cloud approaching from the sea. At two o'clock in the afternoon the wind suddenly died down, but the cloud had already covered the surrounding mountains and began to obscure the sun. Its color, at first pale pink, became fiery red.

Soon the city was plunged into such darkness that lamps had to be lit in the houses. The people, frightened by the darkness and the color of the clouds, rushed to the cathedral to pray. The darkness grew stronger and stronger, and the color of the sky was like red-hot iron. Thunder boomed. The terrible noise of the sea, although six miles away from the city, further increased the fear of the inhabitants. And suddenly streams of red liquid poured from the sky, which some took for blood, and others for molten metal. Fortunately, by evening the air had cleared, the bloody rain had stopped and the people calmed down.

It happened that not only bloody rains fell, but also bloody snow, as, for example, in France in the middle of the last century. This outlandish scarlet snow covered the ground with a layer of several centimeters. The people saw in the bloody rains a sign and a reproach from higher powers. Scientists also said that water becomes like blood due to mixing with red dust particles of mineral and organic origin. Strong winds can carry these dust particles thousands of kilometers and lift them to great heights, to rain clouds.

It is noted that bloody rains most often occurred in spring and autumn. In the 19th century, about thirty of them were recorded. They fell out, of course, in the 20th century. But no one was afraid of them.

As found out Mr Godfrey Lewis(a physicist from Mahatma Gandhi University), who managed to collect several samples of the liquid that fell during the mysterious bloody rain that alarmed the inhabitants of the Indian piece. Kerala in 2001, the ominous color of the precipitation was due to the high content of mysterious particles. These extraordinarily thick-shelled microscopic bodies, slightly larger than the average bacterium, were unlike anything that science had ever encountered.

Assumptions by opponents of the cosmic theory of the origin of the blood rain that these are pieces of ocean algae, fungal spores, red dust brought from the Arabian Peninsula, or even "a fog of blood cells produced by a meteor that hit the cluster bats”, were smashed to smithereens by the results of a study by an Indian scientist. In laboratory tests, Lewis found that the particles can multiply in water at a temperature of 315 ° C, there is no dust in them, and certainly no traces of blood cells. Moreover, the particles are completely devoid of DNA, include almost half of the periodic table - carbon, oxygen, iron, sodium, silicon, aluminum, chlorine, hydrogen, nitrogen and other elements - and show an abnormally low content of phosphorus.

All this led Lewis to the idea that before him were alien microorganisms brought to Earth in the core of a meteorite that exploded over India. A loud explosion and flash in the sky over Kerala on July 25, 2001, when the notorious rains began, was indeed seen by many residents of the state. An indirect confirmation of this theory is the discovery of potential traces of microorganisms in one of the Martian meteorites that fell to the ground. True, among the samples taken by Lewis, no cometary substance was found. Another question is the gigantic volume of red particles, which fell on the planet in at least 50 tons in a few days.

The discoveries of the Indian researcher caused the most heated discussion in scientific circles. Only now, neither the defenders of the version of the alien rain, nor their opponents yet have enough evidence of their innocence.

The article used materials from www.utro.ru

Blood rains

Common sense refuses to accept that in broad daylight, in calm, serene weather, from somewhere above, a scorchingly hot or scaldingly cold scarlet liquid suddenly begins to pour in stormy foamy streams, sometimes not in the form of precipitation.

As a rule, this frightening phenomenon is accompanied by ejections of pieces of flesh or gruel. Both have the characteristic smell of fresh blood. Greedily eaten by cats and cats, which, as you know, do not touch rotten meat, which indirectly indicates the biological origin of the mysterious meteorological phenomena. The same is already directly confirmed by laboratory studies of mysterious fallout, which confirmed that the sediments - blood, gruel and flesh, according to a stubborn pattern, have only the second type of human blood.

In particular, scientists at Peking University in 1998 after the scarlet rains that fell over the northern provinces of the PRC, after testing the samples collected on the ground, came to this conclusion.

It is a pity that not a word has been said about the heavenly miracle in the Celestial Empire since then.
The phenomenon, however, is not diverse, monotonous, identical in all countries. Therefore, in order to get an idea about it, let's look at long-standing events in the United States and Russia, which is useful to do, because thanks to recent archival research, they have received a lot of interesting additions and clarifications.

America. North Carolina. The farm of retired cavalryman Thomas Clarkson in the vicinity of the town of Sampson. February 13, 1850. Cool afternoon. The family, not excluding young children, collects cow and horse dung in wheelbarrows, which are used to fire stoves. Suddenly, the silence is broken by a deafening sound from somewhere above. Children - a boy and two girls are scared. They feel like someone is shooting a cannon right at them. They run headlong to their father, who shouts: “Guns are firing from the sky. I don’t know where they come from, but we’d better hide in the cellar!” Mrs. Clarkson loses consciousness because, first, sliding across her chest, three weighty pieces of bony meat fall on her, then she is literally flooded with thick and sticky blood. Under the bloody shower, which lasted from the strength of a minute or two, also falls neighbor Neil Campbell, who works on his plot.

You have to give credit to his resourcefulness. While Mr. Clarkson was evacuating the household, the neighbor, having determined that “a grazing area of ​​​​almost one hundred and fifty square meters was hopelessly spoiled with brown-red water,” dragged a tub, collected heavenly trophies into it, not forgetting to drain the slurry scooped out of the puddles there. When Mr. Clarkson, dressed in clean clothes, returned, the neighbors watched in amazement for more than an hour as the withered grass, the foliage of trees and shrubs gained a rich green color, as if there was no winter.

Surprised enough, the neighbors took the tub to the local doctor, Mr. Robert Gray, who immediately assured that it was blood mixed with dirt.

To be sure, Mr. Gray, having splashed a weak solution of wine vinegar into the tub, made several preparations, and, having examined them under a microscope, assured that the neighbor's trophy was of a purely biological origin.

Moreover, the cellular structure of the preparations is not animal, but human. The reaction of the newspapers, which prepared a number of publications in hot pursuit, was mixed. Some called the farmers "liars by collusion." Others saw the reasons for the loss of flesh and blood "in executions by quartering, perpetrated by bandits right in the baskets of giant balloons."

Both, of course, do not correspond to the real state of affairs. This was confirmed by another American bloody mystery, which unfolded years later, on February 25, 28, 30 in Catham County, at the ranch of Samuel Backworth, located relatively close to the possessions of Clarkson and Campbell. This time it was Buckworth's sister, Miss Susanna, who fell under the hot, brown downpour. As she watched the workers harrow the freshly plowed field, she smelled the pungent smell of blood, "exactly like what happens in a slaughterhouse."

It began to rain immediately, scarlet and crimson, soaking what she thought was blood into the girl's plush jacket, staining the fence of the cattle pen like good paint along the way. The grass, which was "literally washed", became brittle, like glass. If they stepped on it, it crumbled into dust. Having heard from onlookers who attacked the ranch about frightening miracles, perceived by many as harbingers of war or pestilence, Francis Vaneble, a professor at the University of North Carolina, immediately went to the place and, with the consent of the owner of the farm, Mr. Backworth, took more than three hundred samples of soil, presumably soaked in blood. The samples were sent to Germany, to the University of Goetingen, which at that time had the best biological and chemical laboratories in the world, the equipment and methods of which made it possible to easily identify human blood, to exclude that it was taken from an animal. Getingham, who in the past graduated with a gold medal as a professor, identified human blood in soil samples.

At that time, they could not determine the blood type. Communicating with the press, Francis Vaneble gave them copies of the conclusions of his German colleagues, frankly admitting that, faced with the fact of heavenly bloodshed, he had no idea where the reservoir from which it was pouring came from behind the clouds. By the way, the incident in the vicinity of this farm, “when blood flowed and nothing fell,” is perhaps not the only one of its kind.

Similar miraculous events in late XIX centuries took place in Rybinsk, more precisely on one of the berthing landing stages of the Volga River, which stretches along the city for twenty kilometers. Based on a survey conducted on September 14, 1891 by the police interrogator N.I. Morkovkin, an amazing picture emerges. A red, blood-smelling liquid fell on the surface of the great Russian river "in abundant stripes, and dyed the water the color of boiled beets, which was witnessed by people who were waiting for the arrival of the steamer." One of the passengers, a local pharmacy pharmacist G.S. Porokhov, insisted on taking water samples to determine the chemical composition of the dye. This is where what happened happened. As soon as water comes into contact with inner surface galvanized bucket, it instantly changed color, from dark red to milky white. Investigator Morkovkin, however, ignoring color metamorphoses, persistently identifies the precipitation as “natural, and fresh blood, the smell of which could not be confused with anything else by fifty sober interrogators who were on the deck of the landing stage.”

A day later, another police rank, K.P. The publican had already dealt with the city's bloody rain, when the red liquid stained the clothes of passers-by and was not washed off during washing. Moreover, in contact with open areas body, the liquid burned painfully. The publican suggested that the poisonous brown rainfall must have been carried in the clouds "from the chimneys of the dye factory." So be it, but aniline and other paints never smell of blood.

In the twenties of the last century, the outstanding naturalist Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky was interested in celestial ejections of flesh and blood, who connected the phenomenon with one of the planet's responses to the harmful aspects of the moral and technological activity of civilization. This hypothesis has many supporters.

Alexander VOLODEV
"UFO" № 5 2010

The heroine of the Icelandic “Saga of the People from the Sandy Shore” died after a bloody rain fell on her from a cloud ... of course, there are many fantastic moments in this saga, but this particular detail inspires confidence: “bloody rains” do sometimes happen, and in this case, except that their lethality is exaggerated.

Reports of "bloody rains" are found in historical sources related to different eras. In 582, such a nuisance happened in Paris. According to a contemporary, the clothes of people caught in the rain were so stained with blood that people threw them off in disgust. In 1571, this was recorded in Holland, in 1669 - in Chatillen (France), in 1689 - in Venice, in 1744 - in Genoa, in 1813 - in the Kingdom of Naples ... in a word, there are many examples, and each time such a phenomenon was perceived as a grandiose catastrophe , as a manifestation of God's wrath or even the end of the world. True, contrary to everyone's fears, no one died from such rains ... so why did this happen?

In some cases, people were so frightened that they simply did not notice one detail: the “bloody rain” falls exclusively under the trees! In this case, the “organizer of the miracle” was the hawthorn tree. This butterfly, emerging from the cocoon, empties the intestines, the contents of which look like a blood-red liquid. This liquid dries on the leaves of trees, and when it starts to rain, its drops wash away the dried liquid, turning into the color of blood.

However, not always bloody rains were observed in the corresponding season, not always dark drops fell only from trees ... moreover, the discharge of hawthorn butterflies does not explain the gloomy, frightening-looking rain clouds with a blood-red tint, which were observed, for example, in the Kingdom of Naples.

In this case, the reason was different - and it consisted in rocks containing iron. If such rocks are on the surface, iron is oxidized, entering into chemical reaction with oxygen, and the rocks acquire a reddish color. Strong wind lifts tiny particles such rocks into the air - that's how they get into rain clouds.

The reddish tint gives the rain the dust that the winds bring from the deserts. For example, the Mediterranean sirocco wind can bring reddish dust from the Sahara quite far - even to the Baltics. The North African garbi wind creates the same effect.

Perhaps the most impressive example of a "blood rain" was observed in 2001 in the state of Kerala in southern India: in that year, red rain fell from time to time for almost two months. The first case was noted on 25 July and the last on 23 September. A hypothesis has been put forward linking the red rain to the explosion of a meteor whose particles mixed with the rain - and some locals did speak of a flash of light preceding unusual rain, but there was no direct evidence that some kind of meteor exploded over India then. Subsequently, scientists found that dust - meteoric, volcanic or some other - had nothing to do with it: the raindrops were colored with reddish spores. Supporters of the space version did not give up: some media began to shout about "alien organisms." Alas, the organism, which someone really wanted to declare an alien, turned out to be an ordinary microscopic algae of the genus Trentepohlia, long known to scientists. Most likely, heavy rains caused its increased reproduction, which led to "bloody rains".