An elegy for a dying microbe explores what we really mean by ‘death’

Death comes in many forms. There’s the death of a vast multicellular system – which is to say, the variety that tends to preoccupy us most. On a smaller scale, there’s the death of a single cell, which occurs unceremoniously at every moment, both around and within us. On an intergalactic scale, there’s the so-called ‘heat death’ that most physicists believe will be the ultimate fate of the Universe. And there are certainly many other varieties in between.

In this short video from the YouTube channel Journey to the Microcosmos, the US writer and YouTuber Hank Green argues that what unites all these forms of death is a transition to a state of equilibrium. Centred on microscopic footage of one small microbe during its final moments, the short makes for an intriguing and surprisingly moving reflection on life, death and the imprecise boundaries between these two states.