In 2003 Godfrey Louis and Santhosh Kumar, physicists at the Mahatma Gandhi University in Kottayam , Kerala, posted an article entitled “Cometary panspermia explains the red rain of Kerala” [ 26 ] in the on-line, non- peer reviewed arXiv web site. While the CESS report said there was no apparent relationship between the loud sound (possibly a sonic boom ) and flash of light which preceded the red rain, to Louis and Kumar it was a key piece of evidence. They proposed that a meteor (from a comet containing the red particles) caused the sound and flash and when it disintegrated over Kerala it released the red particles which slowly fell to the ground. However, they omitted an explanation on how debris from a meteor continued to fall in the same area over a period of two months while unaffected from winds.

Their work indicated that the particles were of biological origin (consistent with the CESS report), however, they invoked the panspermia hypothesis to explain the presence of cells in a supposed fall of meteoric material. [ 27 ] [ 28 ] [ 29 ] Additionally, using ethidium bromide they were unable to detect DNA or RNA in the particles. Two months later they posted another paper on the same web site entitled « New biology of red rain extremophiles prove cometary panspermia » [ 30 ] in which they reported that

« The microorganism isolated from the red rain of Kerala shows very extraordinary characteristics, like the ability to grow optimally at 300°C (572°F) and the capacity to metabolize a wide range of organic and inorganic materials. »

These claims and data have yet to be verified and reported in any peer reviewed publication. In 2006 Louis and Kumar published a paper in Astrophysics and Space Science entitled « The red rain phenomenon of Kerala and its possible extraterrestrial origin » [ 3 ] which reiterated their hypothesis that the red rain was biological matter from an extraterrestrial source but made no mention of their previous claims to having induced the cells to grow. One of their conclusions was that if the red rain particles are biological cells and are of cometary origin, then this phenomenon can be a case of cometary panspermia . [ 3 ]

On August 2008 Louis and Kumar again presented their case in an astrobiology conference. [ 31 ] The abstract for paper states that

« The red cells found in the red rain in Kerala, India are now considered as a possible case of extraterrestrial life form. These cells can undergo rapid replication even at an extreme high temperature of 300 °C. They can also be cultured in diverse unconventional chemical substrates. The molecular composition of these cells is yet to be identified ».

On September 2010 he presented a similar paper at a conference in California, USA