The NAU Review — Are we alone?

Oct. 14

The age-old question of ‘are we alone?’ is a compelling one, and third-year doctoral student Amber Young is committed to finding an answer. She is looking for life on other planets, and now NASA is helping her out. The Department of Astronomy and Planetary Sciences student recently recieved a grant to analyze chemical components and specific biosignatures from exoplanets that could show potential signs of life. As part of the grant, she will work with NASA team members on the LUVOIR Mission  to build computer modeling tools that will allow her to examine which observational scenarios are ideal for detecting and interpreting biosignatures.

In order to investigate the effect of warming on microbial communities, a team of NAU researchers transplanted cylinders of soil from high elevation forests north of Flagstaff to lower, warmer meadows to simulate climate warming, using others at the highest elevation as controls. Over the course of 15 years, the lower-elevation transplants were watered to match higher precipitation of their original climate, and researchers removed samples of the soil at regular intervals. After more than a decade of studying these samples, the results are finally in: warming slows microbe growth.