It's a small world

Not sure about that.

I have never seen a microbe donning a space suit and deliberately scarpering off the Earth like us humans can.

Thats because microbial lifeforms have the ability to adapt to new environmental conditions whereas humans cannot. Therefore microbes would not need to leave a post meteor impact earth. Also we might be able to go top the moon for a few days but to say we have the current ability to relocate ourselves permanently to another world is simply a fallacy.

Humans think we are the most important entity in existence. I'd say if the truth were known then only top ten list we might make the top of is arrogance.

Those pictures are amazing. I'm forever being asked by kids, how big is the sun, etc etc etc. Nopw I can show them. In fact I just might make up some models that they can hold and get interactive with.

Find me a microbe,or anything else,which can write as well as you can, and THEN I'll believe you when you say that we humans are not the most complex entities known in the universe.

We humans build Space Shuttles, build computers, fling Voyagers to the stars, dissect the Genome, formulate Quantum Mechanics, Know what E=MC squared means, do heart transplants,face transplants,kidney transplants,hair transplants.Solve Fremat's Last Theorm,Understand DNA and do Genetic engineering.

Find me an Issac Newton or an Albert Einstein anywhere else.

Right now we are admiring the works of the Robot we sent to Saturn.

Dont know anything ELSE that can do that!

If I may offer some of my multiples of 2 cents worth...

To say we are the height of the evolutionary food chain is correct. But, it is really only on the intellectual level, I believe. Using an analogy, we have overcome the need to hunt for food and previously still be seen as food by other predators. Our technological achievements reflect this - houses with heat, therefore no sickness; refrigerators to keep food fresh for longer, therefore less time spent hunting/gathering (at the supermarkets); medicines to keep us healthier, thus living longer than almost all other "meat-based" organisms; technology to make our lifestyles easier, therefore we become slaves to modern (so-called) living.

Just because we can "do it", desn't mean we are the height of evolution.

Puny ants carrying almost 450 times their own body weight - we can't. Fleas jumping over a loaf of bread akin to us jumping over a skyscraper - we can't. Worms living off of sickening sulphur deposits and carbon dioxide because they are the only elements available to them in volcanic vents - we can't. Bacteria able to live on any surface, in any temperature (yes, even when frozen will come back to life afterwards), with almost any element/compound/chemical/substance at its disposal, and even in a vacuum - we can't.

Our evolution has simply given us the brain power to utilise the resources in our environment to make materials that help us achieve the same feats.

But on a physiological level, we are as delicate as snow flakes - one quick wave of extreme heat, and we will simply evaporate. Sure, we might be abe to prepare our environment, and not ourselves physically, to survive an asteroid impact - but ONLY if we have enough time, and even then, will only survive if there are enough compatible couples to propel the human race forward once more, left after the destruction.

Chances are, bacteria will beat us hands down, and so to the ants, the fleas, and the cockroaches. And they won't need space suits, or iodine pills, or concrete shelters.

We might be smartest, but who has the better chance of surviving an extinction event at short notice?



Seanie.

Find me a microbe,or anything else,which can write as well as you can, and THEN I'll believe you when you say that we humans are not the most complex entities known in the universe.

We humans build Space Shuttles, build computers, fling Voyagers to the stars, dissect the Genome, formulate Quantum Mechanics, Know what E=MC squared means, do heart transplants,face transplants,kidney transplants,hair transplants.Solve Fremat's Last Theorm,Understand DNA and do Genetic engineering.

Find me an Issac Newton or an Albert Einstein anywhere else.

Right now we are admiring the works of the Robot we sent to Saturn.

Dont know anything ELSE that can do that!

Right now, in the minisculely small part of the universe we know we appear to be the most inteligent life forms. That really is all we can say and it really isn'tall that much.

Yes, we do have some nice achievements but we are killing eachother and the whole planet we live on. That doesn't seem any more advanced than a termite and imensly un-inteligent.

I said "complex" ,Seanie, I never said that we can swim better than a shark or build better termites nests than termites,make better snakes venom than vipers, or better feathers than birds.

By the way even if there were only bacteria here, the Earth would still be the most complex place.

The self-replicating DNA molecule which builds bacteria,grass,trees AND OURSELVES is itself the most unfathomably mysterious and complex molecule in the known Universe.We are only beginning to decode it.
One DNA molecule encoded the information to build the body and brain of Einstein!

We are throw-away robots built by the DNA molecule: Our instructions from the DNA molecule... "Replicate me". DNA replication is the purpose of life.
(The DNA molecule stamped "best before.. 90 years" on our bodies whether we like it or not...yes "throw-away".)

There well may be more complex things "out there" than ourselves (living things which navel-gaze),when we find them we will hand the crown over to them.

I said "complex" .

What metric are you using to measure complexity?