Human extinction. The coordinated release of various strains of a human sterilization virus.

Humanity’s transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture is one of the most important developments in human and Earth history. Human societies, plant and animal populations, the makeup of the atmosphere, even the Earth’s surface – all were irreversibly transformed.

Humankind is revealed as simultaneously insignificant and utterly dominant in the grand scheme of life on Earth by a groundbreaking new assessment of all life on the planet. The world’s 7.6 billion people represent just 0.01% of all living things, according to the study.

Human extinction. The coordinated release of various strains of a human sterilization virus.

What do the most powerful people in the world read? For Donald Trump, the depressing but familiar answer is nothing beyond tweets and headlines.

As a planetary astrobiologist, I am focused on the major transitions in planetary evolution and the evolving relationship between planets and life.

People might be behind a speciation boom that cancels out the extinction crisis—but that’s not necessarily good news. The tunnels of the London Underground are hot, dark, and damp. Crowds of warm-blooded humans congregate on the platforms. Stagnant pools of water collect beneath the tracks.

Leaving planet Earth isn’t easy. This year, NASA’s Astronaut Candidate Program received a record 18,000-plus applications from highly qualified scientists bent on discovering space’s deep abyss. It will choose a handful, if that.

What a waste are two thumbs on the space bar. There they sit, nearly flaccid, punctuating the end of each word, awaiting the call to crack stone or to use sharp flakes to incise wood. It is easy to think of other traits as making us human.

We are living in the Anthropocene age, in which human influence on the planet is so profound – and terrifying – it will leave its legacy for millennia. Politicians and scientists have had their say, but how are writers and artists responding to this crisis?

“Human activity is leaving a pervasive and persistent signature on Earth.” So begins one of the more depressing scientific papers I’ve ever read.

It’s been nearly 160 years since we Homo sapiens, or “wise people,” first got an inkling through Charles Darwin and the discovery of Neanderthal remains that we are just another evolving species on this planet.

In 1997, scientists found the first scrap of Neanderthal DNA in a fossil. Since then, they have recovered genetic material, even entire genomes, from a number of Neanderthal bones, and their investigations have yielded a remarkable surprise: Today, 1 to 2 percent of the DNA in non-African people comes from Neanderthals.

That genetic legacy is the result of interbreeding roughly 50,000 years ago between Neanderthals and the common ancestors of Europeans and Asians. Recent studies suggest that Neanderthal genes even influence human health today, contributing to conditions from allergies to depression.

Sarah Perry is a contributing editor of Ribbonfarm. Nouns for human beings – “people” or “person” – conjure in the mind a snapshot of the surface appearance of humans. Using nouns like “people” subtly encourages thinking about people as frozen in time, doing nothing in particular.

Like much of her work, Ashley Zelinskie eludes a one-dimensional definition. She is a Star Trek-obsessed nerd who studies electrical engineering, theoretical physics, and space in her spare time.

When it comes to artificial intelligence, we may all be suffering from the fallacy of availability: thinking that creating intelligence is much easier than it is, because we see examples all around us.

Let’s say someone successfully cloned human ancestors. Then what? Are they like chimps, to be put in a zoo or a nature reserve? Do they need carers? Should we enroll them in kindergarten? What do fossils tell us about how early humans would fit in with modern ones?

Allan Sekula, Gas Terminal, Barcelona (2008) from the series "Methane for all.

It was the 18th-century scientist Carolus Linnaeus that laid the foundations for modern biological taxonomy. It was also Linnaeus who argued for the existence of Homo troglodytes, a primitive people said to inhabit the caves of an Indonesian archipelago.