the.com/microbial life
the planet's original operating system, still running everything you take credit for.
means organisms too small to see individually — bacteria, archaea, fungi, protists, viruses arguably — that outnumber and outweigh every visible thing on earth.
from from micro (small) plus microbe, coined in the 1870s by Charles Sedillot to describe the tiny life Pasteur and Koch were busy proving caused disease and fermentation alike.
total massoutweighs all animals on earth combined
your bodyroughly half your cells are microbial, not human
survival recordfound thriving 3 km beneath ocean floor
oxygen origincyanobacteria invented photosynthesis, made air breathable