There is a theory that if alien life exists, those organisms will be roughly our size. The reasoning is that you can’t achieve advanced civilisation without fire, and you can’t tend a fire if you’re much smaller or larger than a human.
Not my theory, but an interesting thing to consider
I find that theory fascinating, as well as the one where it would have to be carbon based like us because chemistry.
Then intelligent life would need to be land based because you can’t easily do things requiring heat without an oxygen atmosphere and something to burn
To be space faring, your planet couldn’t have much more gravity than earth, else chemical rockets wouldn’t work
At what point is it usefully generalizing on what life would need vs where are preconceptions limiting your thinking?
What about using heat from geothermal vents?
Thermal vents under water will keep you alive but it won’t be your energy source for industry. Also, how do you invent the steam engine under water on a thermal vent that cannot move around?
Smaller I suppose, but larger? Why not? Wouldn’t you just have a really large fire?
Bigger fires burn out quicker cause they burn hotter.
But maybe you wouldn’t need as much fire cause bigger animals tend to hold heat better?
Curious what the actual research reasoning would be.
But maybe you wouldn’t need as much fire cause bigger animals tend to hold heat better?
I thought the same thing. Then again, fire is not only needed for heat, but also for cooking food and creating new materials (metallurgy essentially). But surely a large creature could just make fires the same size as humans do if they needed to do those things? But perhaps it’d be impractical to cook food at a tiny fire hehe
I don’t know specifically about fire but I think the square-cube law plays a significant factor in the idea that alien life would be similar in scale to humans.
Yea probably within an order of magnitude or so - then again, elephants are probably within an order of magnitude of size of humans. I don’t see why elephants couldn’t eventually evolve to an intelligent civilisation, given enough time. I’d say that’s still pretty large.
But yea I mean the blue whale and the largest dinosaurs are probably about the limit of how large life can get, at least with Earth conditions.
andrewrgross@slrpnk.net 3 weeks ago
I’ve never heard that before! It’s interesting.
I think it depends a ton on environmental conditions. Could combustion on planets with different gravity and pressure take place at different scales?
phailhaus@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
Fire is a thermodynamics problem, so it relates to area and volume, not gravity.
Gravity does impact creature size, however. A lower-gravity environment supports larger creatures, higher forces creatures to go smaller. Thought is a chemical process though, so that would have a minimum size as well.