How airborne microbes ride clouds, hop continents and even make it rain

Everywhere that scientists look, they seem to be finding creatures clinging to life in increasingly remote environments – from Antarctic ice to boiling hydrothermal vents at the bottom of oceans. However, biologists have only recently begun paying close attention to one of the planet’s most fascinating venues for life: the sky. A collaboration between the US filmmaker Flora Lichtman and the California Academy of Sciences’ digital publication bioGraphic, the short film Life in the Clouds examines the complex and utterly fascinating ecosystems far above our heads.