Is there a specific size range for intelligent life under biological constraints, or could smart aliens be as much smaller than bugs or much larger than whales?

Question

I read a long time ago an essay by Asimov that described what elements could support life as a building block and why most elements cannot. I didn’t fully understand that at the time but it was interesting to see why carbon based makes sense and some other random element does not work.

Similarly, I wonder if under different planetary conditions, smart alien life (so not single cell life) can be very tiny or very large, or if there are biological constraints that would restrict that size range regardless of basic setup.

In: 324

Answer 1

What you are reading in this thread is based on what we understand today, based on our own examples.

The awesome thing about the unknown is that we can guess but there is no way to know. Could some microscopic critters on some distant planet have a different way to processing information that we cant even imagine today? Yes.

Could we be those microscopic critters to some other giant species that we cant even fathom? Also Yes.

Just as the dust mite (likely) cant imagine that humans put a robot on mars and gathered dust from a comet, we could be as equally small (or equally as dumb) to something else out there.