Very small aliens

Tiny aliens in a fleet of tiny spaceships, as imagined by Douglas Adams and noted by Andy Kelly [FT403:67 ]are extremely unlikely. The reason is that a technological civilisation capable of building spaceships must have mastered fire. Without such skill the raw materials could not be processed. An ant-sized alien close enough to a fire to do useful work would be incinerated. For the same reason technologically advanced aliens can’t be exclusively aquatic. It is always possible, I suppose, that a race of big aliens might build the spaceships while another race of tiny aliens does the space travel. But Occam’s Razor rejects such multiplication of hypothetical entities. We might therefore confidently expect that aliens capable of visiting Earth will be terrestrial and at least a foot tall, with proportionate manipulative appendages.

Nick Guitard

Poundstock, Cornwall