Alien size?

Just had a random thought pop into my head so i thought i would stick this thread up to get peoples opinions.
Why are the majority of UFOs and supposed types of alien around the same sort of size as humans?
I have seen a lot of theories flying about but have never seen somebody either report an alien or craft that is either way bigger than anything we know could possibly be built by humans, or even something that is way too small to be manned by humans.
I remember seeing a few bits that are either on the large size, but not absolutely huge, and a few things that may be a little smaller.
In my opinion if alien life was visiting from other planets, whats to say that the life they contain is not either really small or really big?
I am talking about humanoid creatures the size of buildings or even as small as an insect.
If we were being visited by tiny creatures, we would never know as they wouldnt be detectable, and in theory they could move around in craft that could be mistaken for insects, but on the other hand if there were aliens that were as big as buildings, there is no way they would be able to move around undetected unless they had the technology to make themselves invisible.
Planets are all different sizes, and just in our solar system we are nowhere near the biggest, so would it not make sense that smaller planets would have smaller life forms, and larger planets would have larger life forms?
Looking forward to hearing peoples opinions on this

How odd as I was only thinking about this same thing yesterday!
Earth, compared to alot of planets is TINY! So, who's to say there isn't another planet thats 1000x smaller than our with intelligent life on it? They could be flying here and we'd have no idea!

As you said, we could mistake them for bugs! Or, they could be so minute that we couldn't even see them with the naked eye!

An interesting set of questions, None I've answers to of course, but I can speculate!

Many of the UFO reports I've seen run along the same lines you suggested. The craft is usually within "human" size ranges, But I believe the different types of aliens that have allegedly come into contact with humans have a vast range of sizes. If I remember correctly: the "Grays" are short little things comparatively, and the "Reptilians" are much taller than us. That's just what I've came across on the topic..

I have seen the same kind of things regarding grays and reptilians, but surely they are still a bit too close to the same size as us
It kind of reminds me of the end of the film Men in Black, where it zooms out and there are aliens playing marbles with us!!

reply to post by 2012king


Ahh! My apologies, I see now you meant extreme size differences.

In that case, I think your line of thinking works, as I share it. They could be visiting now, and we'd call them a new species of insect. Even a species we already discovered, but know nothing about yet.

The question makes me think even more outside the box than I already do. Maybe Earth itself is an intelligent alien, and we are it's oblivious lice. Who's to say the milky way and it's neighboring galaxies are not just the cells of some massive organism? I don't suspect we'll ever know, But it is terribly good fun to ponder..

I'll stop now, before my head becomes the epicenter of the next "semi-Big bang" for creatures that inhabit ME to wonder about for ages.

The only thing I can contribute to this thread is this.

The size of the alien ship and they size - don't matter, what matter is the technology behind being able to build a spaceship of certain size.

It could be the entire race / civilization (lets call them incestnoids) flying in a car size ship, but they were able to build it, by applying advance technology. At the same time the regular size UFO, could be a "one man long range resonance craft", because they civilization, did not achieve the technology to build something bigger . . . yet.

Size of the alien being - doesn't matter - they technology does. imho.

Originally posted by Inquisitive1
Who's to say the milky way and it's neighboring galaxies are not just the cells of some massive organism? I don't suspect we'll ever know, But it is terribly good fun to ponder.

Wow ! Same thought occurred to me some years ago too !

I guess some people may think that our use of microchips could have come from alien technology, however if you consider if there were aliens the size of insects, what if we were able to utilize their versions of microchips?
Now thats when the earths technology would get really interesting!!

Originally posted by drsamuelfrancis
How odd as I was only thinking about this same thing yesterday!
Earth, compared to alot of planets is TINY! So, who's to say there isn't another planet thats 1000x smaller than our with intelligent life on it? They could be flying here and we'd have no idea!

As you said, we could mistake them for bugs! Or, they could be so minute that we couldn't even see them with the naked eye!

Not just odd... these thoughts must be drifting out of the collective unconscious, because I had this exact same thought one afternoon when a pesky bee kept zooming up and staring me right in the face!

Then I thought, an ant walking around on the ground has no concept of my entire size. Comparatively, and along with your "Earth is tiny" concept, parallels my thought that aliens could also be so HUGE that we cannot sense their very existence. Then there's the whole "visual spectrum" limit we have. Maybe they are our size, but out of our realm of detection for that reason. The options are limitless. We humans are just conceited enough to 'make them in our image' so to speak!

Great topic!

reply to post by 2012king


This makes me recall an episode of Star Trek TNG.

Here's the answer you are looking for...

Well there are many species of aliens.So i would think they come in all diffrent shapes, sizes, colors ect...

reply to post by dsm1664


In Star Trek, only NOSES come in different shapes and sizes... Need a new alien? Let's give it a different type of messed up nose! Ta dah!

reply to post by Gazrok


...ears, forehead and nose actually.

Deny ignorance Gazrok!

My opinion, is that a 50 foot tall humanoid, would have to have a much thicker bone structure than an average human on Earth. If the 50 footer had the same size bone structure as us he would collapse unto himself.

On an evolutionary time scale, nature favors animals that don't have to eat as much. Because, in times of drought and famine, nature favors the ones, that don't have a large appetite.

Therefore, I think that an extremely large humanoid, would be a rare sight in our universe.

Whales are different, because once they grew legs and feet to walk on land, they realized that they could not find enough food on land to support there huge bodies; so they returned to the sea.

Elephants and giraffes have to be tall, in order to reach food from tall trees. So a humanoid does not have to be extremely tall, if he gets his food from tall trees, because he can simply climb the tree to get food.


Cheers,

Erno86

I remember reading a short story years ago about a race of ailens the size of microbes whos colony ship was the size of a bullet which hit a man in the rear and turned him into their new world ..I also saw in Men in Black an ability of aliens to compress themselves down to a small size so a large alien could use a tiny craft..Like my grandma said..out there..anything you can imagine.is real somewhere

Some starships, might have to be "built big," because if they are on some kind of "Noah's Ark" mission, or on a zoo collecting mission, with the idea of seeding other planets with T-Rex's and whatnot, the ships would have to be built big.

About 30 years from now, the United States will have built entire swarms of flying insectoid robot drones; the size of dragonflys. That is because, it is cheaper to build a flying insectoid drone, than it is to make a flying, flapping winged hummingbird drone.

Therefore, an "advanced" space alien race, should have whole armies of flying robot drones.

An interesting question that I devoted some thought to in the past.

I think it's a fair assumption that we have to assume" life as we know it" ( i.e incorporating mass) needs to originate from an area of physical mass such as a planet.

We know that the Earth, our Sun and our overall Solar system is relatively small in comparison to the objects we have already observed with large Suns being over 1000 times more massive than ours.

We must also assume that the gravitational constraints that apply locally to us probably apply on planets that are smaller or larger than ours in that the Solar object mass and Planetary mass interact in some way which would affect the bilogical inhabitants of that region.

It is also likely that there is a universal constant in terms of size of particles of useable energy that we would recognise in comparable biological life in terms of cellular respiration.,...this is to say Gasses such as Oxygen or Nitrogen, Proteins, Carbohydrates and Fats and the radiation emitted by Solar objects all would be the same size on the originating alien planet as they would be on Earth providing limitations.

These are the ones we'd recognise.

There could well be something out there that uses Entire Solar systems to power it;s warp drives....luckily theres still enough room for everyone statisitcally.

Originally posted by Gazrok
reply to post by dsm1664

 

In Star Trek, only NOSES come in different shapes and sizes... Need a new alien? Let's give it a different type of messed up nose! Ta dah!

don't forget the skull bumps!

hey is that avi from star blazers?

the last thing we want here, is an alien from a high gravity planet.


bones of steel and fast.

it's better than a light grav alien, if we were fighting.

but it depends, gravity is universal.

ant size and will swarm or blue whale size and flounder.