In the book Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir, Dr. Grace sits in his spacecraft, eating a breakfast burrito and staring at a wall that once housed his friend’s workshop. He finds himself contemplating the microscopic organisms that can somehow pass through solid barriers that a nitrogen atom cannot. As he stares at a hole in the wall, he realizes that at the "teeny tiny realm," solid objects are not actually impenetrable brick walls. They are strands of molecules and lattices of atoms; they are a "molecular jungle".

He observes that a nitrogen atom is like a tennis ball launched into a thick forest; it is "inert," moving in a straight line and bouncing off the first few trees until it runs out of energy. It can never make it to the other side. But a living organism, like the Taumoeba or a human, "senses its environment and takes directed action". It can weave around branches, duck under limbs, and climb over bushes to navigate the complexity.