© Pint of Science, 2026. All rights reserved.
In partnership with the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI).
For this event, tickets are available on OMSI website: https://omsi.edu/events/pint-of-science-invisible-life/ or CLICK ON OMSI LOGO TO BE RE-DIRECTED TO THE TICKET SALES!
Ocean microbes—tiny, unseen, and more abundant than plants—drive Earth’s energy and oxygen cycles. This panel explores what we’ve learned about their role in life on Earth and how scientists search for microbial life beyond it, using tools like space-ready microscopes to detect living cells.
For this event, tickets are available on OMSI website: https://omsi.edu/events/pint-of-science-invisible-life/ or CLICK ON OMSI LOGO TO BE RE-DIRECTED TO THE TICKET SALES!
Ocean microbes—tiny, unseen, and more abundant than plants—drive Earth’s energy and oxygen cycles. This panel explores what we’ve learned about their role in life on Earth and how scientists search for microbial life beyond it, using tools like space-ready microscopes to detect living cells.
The invisible forest: Life and death of the ocean’s superabundant microorganisms
Anne Thompson
(Assistant Professor, Portland State University)
Every drop of water in the Earth’s open ocean is teeming with microbial life that plays a large part in the energy and nutrient cycles on Earth. Particularly numerous in this system are cells that use the sun’s light for energy and make oxygen. These cells are the most numerous light- harvesting cells on Earth. They are more abundant than all plant cells on Earth but are all but invisible because of their tiny size and preference for the most remote parts of the ocean. This talk will look at what has been learned about these cells in the last 40 years since their discovery and how insight their life and death has changed our understanding of life on Earth.
ELVIS has left the planet—looking at bacterial swimming on the Space Station
Jay Nadeau
(Professor, Portland State University)
If life elsewhere was microbial, how would we find it and prove that it’s alive? The goal of ELVIS, a custom microscope for space flight, is to “look for life by looking for life”—placing sparse liquid samples into a robotically operated microscope and looking for objects that look and act like cells. Eventually we would like to try this on water worlds such as Europa, but before that, we need to know what “look and act like cells” means in Earth and in space. From Greenland to the Space Station, ELVIS has looked at microbial swimming, and we invite you to visit this active microscopic world.
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