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According to new research led by the University of Rochester, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) should be broadened to look for signs of planetary intelligence.
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Step into your new, microscopic time machine. Scientists at the University of Colorado Boulder have discovered that a type of single-celled organism living in modern-day oceans may have a lot in common with life forms that existed billions of years ago and that fundamentally transformed the planet.
The new research, which will appear Jan. 6 in the journal
Science Advances, is the latest to probe the lives of what may be nature s hardest working microbes: cyanobacteria.
These single-celled, photosynthetic organisms, also known as blue-green algae, can be found in almost any large body of water today. But more than 2 billion years ago, they took on an extra important role in the history of life on Earth: During a period known as the Great Oxygenation Event, ancient cyanobacteria produced a sudden, and dramatic, surge in oxygen gas.