Researchers have claimed that the colors of an exoplanet could provide them significant help in understanding the kind of microbial life that exists on that alien world. The research team from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany has come up with a catalog detailing the colors of microbes on earth as a powerful way of detecting life on exoplanets and defining the likely form of that life.

The researchers led by Siddharth Hedge and Lisa Kaltenegger said the earth's reflection seen from space in the near-infrared suggests that oxygen is present in our atmosphere, and therefore gives rise to existence of life.

The emphasis of the German team was on the reflective spectra of microbes, and not plants. It was simply because the reflective spectra of microbes are in existence for much longer time or 2.5 billion years in contrast to plants that are present on earth for only 500 million years.

For the study, Germans selected 137 types of microbes in temperate and extreme environments from around the world. The method of light reflection was different for each microbe.

"No one had looked at the wide range of diverse life on Earth and asked how we could potentially spot such life on other planets, and include life from extreme environments on Earth that could be the 'norm' on other plane.