I’m Dr Sami Mikhail and I’m what you’d call a dirt-person or a gravel monkey – the technical term is geologist. I’m presently a Lecturer in Earth Sciences at the University of St Andrews, and I have a disturbingly strong passion for understanding how planets form their atmospheres. Sometimes I ponder abstract concepts like why Venus and Earth are so different and so similar at the same time, and if diamonds are still forming in the deep Earth right now, as my website will attest. However, I also reflect on a number of issues that arise following discussions with my colleagues, students, after reading the news, or while I’m procrastinating. One such topic is: What is the significance of humanity?

Naturally, as a scientist, I always consider all possibilities before deriving a conclusion (in light of data.) In this case my logic leads me to conclude that the answer is double-sided. Let’s see where you stand…

The case that we are insignificant:

Humanity has landed people on the moon, and landed robots on Mars, Venus, Titan, an asteroid (meteorite), and recently, on a comet. We’ve also sent a satellite beyond the edge of our own solar system (with a message saying ‘hello’ attached to it – no joke.) Because we are clever animals, we have invented numerous methods of prediction, quantification, observation, and recording – this is colloquially known as 'science'. Furthermore, we record results and theories through the medium of scripture and thus we learn, collectively, generation by generation. This process was phrased, metaphorically, by the French philosopher Bernard of Chartres (in the 12th Century), who wrote ‘nanos gigantum humeris insidentes’ (this basically means we are all small, but cumulatively we can see as far as a dwarf standing on the shoulders of giants.) In effect, I know a lot of what I know because I’ve read a lot of books, not because I’ve discovered it myself. Thus by extrapolation, this means we (the people of 2016 with access to the internet in our pockets) should be the most informed humans of all time.

Based on the cumulative efforts of scientists over the years, we now know that our solar system is roughly 4.6 billion years old, the universe is roughly 13.8 billion years old, and the cosmos is really big. It would take something travelling at the speed of light 91 billion years to get from one side to the other and that's just the bit of the cosmos that's visible to us– aka, it’s bloody huge. We also know that life began between three and four billion years ago, and has been a been a mainstay on Earth ever since – despite some really serious set-backs, termed mass-extinctions. Conversely, human beings have been on Earth for about one million years (but we’ve only been civilised for the last 50 thousand of those years.) We also know that Earth is about 6700 km deep, from surface to the centre of the core, yet the deepest we’ve drilled into Earth is only 12 km (the Kola Borehole in Russia.) More to the point, we are terrestrial animals. This means we solely occupy the thin layer of dry land exposed above the waterline, with the exception of a few people temporarily living on the ISS in a low-Earth orbit.