Sometimes in summer, perhaps under a bedside lamp, your attention might have been captured by a tiny flying insect, drifting mazily in the light. This was probably a fairyfly. These little insects are a millimetre or less long, and one species at just 0.15 millimetre is the smallest known flying insect. It's probably impossible for an insect to be any smaller and still fit in the means of metabolism, flight and reproduction. There is an irreducible minimum size needed to achieve all these things.
But perhaps it might be possible to make an artificial drone that was smaller. I'm not sure. Drones don't need to reproduce, currently anyway, so a saving there. But then to be useful a drone must send back some information, so that might tip things back the other way.
Fairyflies
Sometimes in summer, perhaps under a bedside lamp, your attention might have been captured by a tiny flying insect, drifting mazily in the light. This was probably a fairyfly. These little insects are a millimetre or less long, and one species at just 0.15 millimetre is the smallest known flying insect. It's probably impossible for an insect to be any smaller and still fit in the means of metabolism, flight and reproduction. There is an irreducible minimum size needed to achieve all these things.
But perhaps it might be possible to make an artificial drone that was smaller. I'm not sure. Drones don't need to reproduce, currently anyway, so a saving there. But then to be useful a drone must send back some information, so that might tip things back the other way.