that's my article of the week Kyriacos.. excellent. Original and creative. I like your adaptive thinking and although I've often pondered the perils of time travel, space travel etc. I'd never fully appreciated the immune system flaw. it deserves a full response.

I have read some interesting ideas about the immune system as being like a Second Brain. It has it's own rhythm sending out a molecular sweep twice a day at approximately 12 hour intervals. The immnune system does not just seek out pathogens. It actively monitors, calculates and reports on all the molecules in our bloodstream and sends that information for processing. It's remarkable. You can visualise the separate parts of the immune system. Just concentrating on for example Dentritic T Cells can actually make them more active. I gave my immune system a character so I could communicate with it. I can't tell you more about it's character but it does have a clipboard and is efficient. If I'm sick, it get's sick too !

If you went travelling to other planets you might be completely immune to their pathogens or succumb to them in seconds. I reckon our presence could infect a host planet with terrible consequences.. and that is why when we send probes to mars, they don't send them to land in the most promising places for fear of contaminating the soil. even with a probe which has been produced in an aseptic lab by technicians in funky suits, then flown through the vacuum of space at near zero temperature, exposed to deadly cosmic rays and plummeted through the atmosphere at ridiculous miles per hour. ( A tardigarde would easily survive that).. Even weirder, it seems that a host of life manages to exist on the outside of the International Space Station. and on that note, I'll stop right there.

thanks again for the excellent post. It will become enmeshed into my boring after dinner monologues. (I can just see the chin rubbing, murmurs and eye rolling... from both of my daughters) who are currently 22months and 4months old !! :)

oh yeah I almost forgot.. I assume from your name that like me you have Greek heritage. I read somewhere that anyone alive today with Greek heritage almost certainly has ancestry (no matter how remote or distant) to one or MORE of the Ancient Greek Philosophers..

Which uncle is yours?

I'm betting on Heraclitus who saw time as real and flowing as opposed to his near contemporary my great uncleParmenides who saw time as nothing more than an illusion ;)