

Microbes also played a vital role in creating Earth’s atmosphere. Microbes are always busy breaking down various molecules all around us, which is how soil gets enriched and nutrients such as carbon and nitrogen complete their environmental cycles. Just how tiny are they? Well, microbes are so small that a million of them could fit on the head of a pin.īut this doesn’t mean their role is insignificant. The term “microbes” actually refers to a wide array of tiny single-cell organisms, such as various species of bacteria and fungi. But even then they were hard at work, shaping the planet we see before us. That’s a long time ago, and for a while they were the only living things around. Microbes, on the other hand, have been around since March. Microbes have been around for so long that it’s hard to comprehend, so let’s look at it another way: If the Earth’s 4.5 billion years of existence were one calendar year, humans would have shown up in the last 30 minutes of December 31st, five days after the extinction of the dinosaurs.
