You have your own personal cloud of microbes — and it follows you everywhere

Remember Pig-Pen from Peanuts, the kid who travels around in a dirty dust cloud wherever he goes? It turns out that in many ways, that's an accurate representation of, well, all of us. According to researchers who published their findings on Tuesday, we're all surrounded by our own personal clouds of dead skin, fungus, and microbes — to the extent that scientists are now able to identify who's been in a room based on the lingering of personal "clouds" that people leave behind, Newsweek reports.

"We give off a million biological particles from our body every hour as we move around. I have a beard; when I scratch it, I'm releasing a little plume into the air. It's just this cloud of particles we're always giving off, that happens to be nearly invisible," data scientist James Meadow told Newsweek.

These clouds act a little like thumbprints for people. After spending four hours in a room, scientists were able to match participants in their study to the air in the room based simply on the people having occupied the space for a period of time. Gender-specific microbes also tipped researchers off to if it was men or women who were hanging out, and where.

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Down the road, microbe clouds could be used in forensics to figure out who had been in a room when a crime was committed, for example. Likewise, by studying the "cloud" around someone, scientists might be able to tell where they have been. Still, that's a long way off — in the meantime, try not to think too hard about the fact that your coworker's microbe cloud is almost definitely in your space right now.