---
title: "The aliens went small"
post_id: 16707
url: "https://lui.vn/the-aliens-went-small/"
language: "en"
type: "chirp"
published: "2026-09-24T10:10:30+00:00"
modified: "2026-09-24T10:10:30+00:00"
categories: ["Chirps"]
kicker: "Barrow Over Kardashev"
intro: "The Barrow scale ranks civilizations by how small they can build, not how much energy they burn - and maybe that's where the aliens went."
---

# The aliens went small

Kardashev ranks civilizations by how much energy they burn; [John D. Barrow](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_D._Barrow) flipped it in 1998 and ranked them by how small the things are they can bend – genes, molecules, atoms, nuclei, particles, spacetime itself. On Kardashev we’re still stuck at ≈0.7, not even Type I; on Barrow we’re already spelling logos with single atoms. The catch: poking at the Planck scale would take a [collider circling the sun, a little past Neptune](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-are-the-smallest-pieces-of-the-universe/), so going deep means going wide first. Linear brains, nonlinear cosmos: [103 paper folds](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-many-paper-folds-would-get-you-to-the-moon/) span the observable universe and squeeze the sheet’s width down to a Planck length. Maybe the aliens aren’t missing, though; maybe they just stayed home and went small 🔬

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