I’m answering in hopes that someone else who knows more will answer.
I think, no. Just because if you look at a small flame, like a candle, it isn’t the same as a campfire. An ant-sized fire would be, supposedly, like a much smaller candle flame, but it’s hard to imagine such a thing. I’ve never seen such a small flame, I think they can’t exist. Why? I don’t know. Imagine a spark from a fire, which would be about the size of an ant fire. It burns out quickly because there’s so little fuel--fewer molecules, fewer bonds to break, maybe that’s it. It’s a small amount to us, but not to an ant, but it would still burn out just as quickly. So, there must be some lower physical limit to fires acting like fires as we experience them at our scale. Bigger fires also behave differently to smaller fires. They’re more violent, and “create their own weather”, like you hear when there are forest fires.
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. (Silicon a distant second on supporting chemistry that a life form might need)
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 (an octopus or porpoise might be intelligent but that’s a dead end without fire)
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 any life form would need vs where are preconceptions limiting your thinking?
Too much oxygen. A tiny little campfire would be like a massive, and very short lived inferno to the “ant” that built it, because the ratio of oxygen to fuel is perfect for human size creatures but way too high to sustain a tiny fire for a long time.
I’m answering in hopes that someone else who knows more will answer.
I think, no. Just because if you look at a small flame, like a candle, it isn’t the same as a campfire. An ant-sized fire would be, supposedly, like a much smaller candle flame, but it’s hard to imagine such a thing. I’ve never seen such a small flame, I think they can’t exist. Why? I don’t know. Imagine a spark from a fire, which would be about the size of an ant fire. It burns out quickly because there’s so little fuel--fewer molecules, fewer bonds to break, maybe that’s it. It’s a small amount to us, but not to an ant, but it would still burn out just as quickly. So, there must be some lower physical limit to fires acting like fires as we experience them at our scale. Bigger fires also behave differently to smaller fires. They’re more violent, and “create their own weather”, like you hear when there are forest fires.
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. (Silicon a distant second on supporting chemistry that a life form might need)
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 (an octopus or porpoise might be intelligent but that’s a dead end without fire)
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 any life form would need vs where are preconceptions limiting your thinking?
Too much oxygen. A tiny little campfire would be like a massive, and very short lived inferno to the “ant” that built it, because the ratio of oxygen to fuel is perfect for human size creatures but way too high to sustain a tiny fire for a long time.
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