The most complex object in the universe

It is often said that the brain is the most complex object in the universe. The admiration is understandable: about 86 billion neurons, according to Suzana Herculano-Houzel's calculation, and nearly one hundred trillion synapses. In terms of the number of elements alone, this network has almost five hundred times as many connections as there are transistors in one of today's large artificial intelligence processors. The comparison is imperfect, but it helps to grasp the scale.However, we do not know if the human brain is a cosmic singularity. We have not yet found any extraterrestrial civilization. Perhaps their inhabitants have positronic brains, like those of Isaac Asimov, or think like a swarm: a collective intelligence of unimaginable power.Meanwhile, we can contemplate what our mind has achieved. Throughout human evolution, the brain grew, perhaps driven by an increasingly close symbiosis between intelligence, social life, and technology. We learned to project the mind outside the body: into tools, machines, writing, and science. Thus, the extended mind was born, an intelligence that does not end at the skin, but continues in objects, symbols, and other humans.Let's think about it: life has created a creature capable of questioning nature and questioning itself. With science, we have penetrated territories that the senses cannot visit. We do not see atoms, molecules, or distant galaxies, but we have learned to detect them, measure them, and give them meaning.

Just a century ago, it was still debated whether the Milky Way was the entire universe. Those pale nebulae turned out to be other galaxies moving away as space expands. Relativity and quantum physics took us even further, towards a reality that contradicts intuition and which, nevertheless, we can express with the universal language of mathematics.But the human mind also performs miracles. I remember one morning going to school with my young son. We were playing at saying bigger and bigger numbers: "83,521, 97,776!". Then I told him: "No matter how big the number is. You can always add one to it".He remained silent."Wow, that's true".I had just discovered the infinite. Thus, naturally. Because our mind is capable of reaching where neither eyes nor hands can reach. And I doubt that extraterrestrials have discovered anything beyond the infinite. If they visit us one day, they will find considerable competition.