> Maybe Earth is just a big petri-dish for a very advanced alien species trying to reconstruct their own evolutionary history? When I was in like 3rd or 4th gr

> Maybe Earth is just a big petri-dish for a very advanced alien species trying to reconstruct their own evolutionary history? When I was in like 3rd or 4th grade we were each given a petri dish and told to swab different surfaces (bathroom door handle, water fountain spout, etc.) and then we would learn about bacteria while we watched ours grow. Well the teacher told us our petri dish would grow “it’s own little world” and I (fellow weird kid) had just seen Men In Black so I was fascinated by the idea of an entire world so tiny that it could exist on a cat’s collar. Of course I asked what would happen to our worlds after the experiment (I thought we’d get to keep them!) and when I found out it would go in the trash I refused to participate. (Weird and stubborn - my poor parents.) And I had completely forgotten about that for 20+ years until today, when you’ve got me laughing at the thought that we could be the petri dish of some clueless 4th grader of an advanced alien species.