Can anyone think of a way to break the Square-Cube Law?

Anything anyone knows would be handy. Fringe-ish physics theories fine. It could be helpful for me, is all.

Technically speaking, the Square-Cube law cannot be broken; it's a mathematical law. However, in terms of giant animals, a lower gravity could help, as well as stronger tissues. And a higher tolerance for inertia, too.

Then teach me to break maths!

Divide by 0. You'll be pleasantly surprised◊

I suppose you could always alter the fundamental structure of the universe. The square-cube law relies on the fact that there are three dimensions of space. Change the number of dimensions, and you change the law.

"Shunt mass into alternate dimension" wasn't my ideal way, but good start, thanks.

Depending on how big you want it to be, the design could prevent it from collapsing by itself.

The problem being that the only way to get around that is to decrease the number of dimensions. (Since volume in 4-space goes up with length⁴)

edited 30th Nov '11 3:43:53 AM by Yej

I'm afraid that's no good, I want classic humanoid Humongous Mecha for this story, mostly.

A friend of mine did link me to a discussion on the curvature of spacetime in relation to the Earth and Sun. Can anyone explain in layman's terms what a Riemannian manifold and an Einstein tensor are?

edited 30th Nov '11 3:44:17 AM by AirofMystery

...No. At least, I can't, since I'm not a pure mathematician/topologist.

However, from reading Wikipedia, I get the impression that a Riemannian manifold is essentially what we normally think of as space, except more general, i.e. Euclidean space has a specific formula to calculate the distance and angle between two points. Contrariwise, a Reimannian manifold can use any formula you please for those things. The one used in Relativity is actually a good example of exactly how it is non-Euclidean. If s represents total distance, then in normal 3D space, s²=x²+y²+z². However, in Relativity, s²=x²+y²+z²- t².

However, I do (partially) understand the Einstein tensor: it is essentially a 2D grid of numbers that describe how space curves at a given point. This affects how angles and distances are measured. Specifically, a triangle drawn on non-flat surface has angles that do not add up to 180 degrees.

edited 30th Nov '11 4:00:52 AM by Yej

Well, that makes a fair amount of sense. Thankyou.

If you just want really big creatures/humanoids, you might get away with having their tissues made from something lighter and stronger.

Fancy nanomaterials are probably your best bet here. Ground pressure still an issue, of course.

Simply provide a reactive force to counter the weight. You could, for instance, give your Humongous Mecha a Jet Pack that it can fire up to reduce its weight when it needs to move quickly. Perhaps even incoporate a bit of transforming - when the jetpack is turned off, your mecha transforms into a stationary gun, but when it needs to move it activates its jetpack and can take off that way.

Or you could replace parts of the structure with Pure Energy. For instance, have the robot consist of a torso, head/pilot's seat, and hands and feet - and connect the feet and hands to the torso with some sort of tractor beam.

I'm just going to go ahead and say that this is one of those few cases where my belief that there should be science in science fiction comes into play. I very much oppose the scientific one-upmanship contest that much published hard SF turns into, but if your first instinct when real science threatens your plot is to want to break the laws of mathematics, then you have the wrong mentality for the genre. As people have pointed out, there's lots of other ways to achieve the result you want without going to such ridiculous lengths.

/rant

...you could use handwavium reinforcing fields...

Giants are from another world called jötunheim, not miðgarð. Problem solved.

EDIT: Wait, you're trying to write a mecha? Okay.

Well, why does justification for the mecha's existence even matter? It's a story about mecha, right? In a world where people operate mecha, right? Then the reader can simply trust that the world of your story has already found a way to somehow make giant mecha work. The reader doesn't need to know about the specifics, and you can safely write a story about giant mecha without them.

Now stop twiddling your fingers over the details, details, details and get back to working on your actual story. Maybe work on something more substantial such as the internal and external conflicts and the interactions between the characters.

edited 30th Nov '11 5:46:07 PM by annebeeche

Just write a story about very tiny people piloting mecha that are about five feet tall.

Never mind, everyone, I've got something. Thanks for all your suggestions.

I'm sorry, but I don't agree with either of these sentiments. The science fiction I'm writing isn't hard, per se, but I still want the technology consistent because the technology drives much of the plot. Characterisation is important, but I'll work that out once I'm done figuring out what everything can and can't do.

And the line about breaking mathematics was a joke, but if I knew a plausible way to (I'm not very good at maths) then I would claim that was why I could have mecha. I want to use plausible reasons for impossible things to happen.

edited 30th Nov '11 7:14:41 PM by AirofMystery

Hell, even Isaac Asimov used a Shrink Ray. Go nuts, brother!

The science should never get in the way of the story. If I need a laser gun to point at a bad guy and go "pew pew pew" and then have that guy fall over dead with not a mark on him, then it will happen, and all the scientists who get annoyed by it in the world can go fuck themselves if it's the only way to get a good story out.

That's why they go write irritating hard science fiction where the science attempts and fails at being the plot.

I mean, really, you can and should get away with anything and everything you can, so long as it's for the purposes of telling a good story (or make people laugh, or make a video game fun). I don't give a shit about how the mechs in some show wouldn't work, I care about what they're going to do. If I cared about the fact that no mech in any setting, period, will work in reality as they are shown (i.e. the fast bastards inspired by Gundam), I wouldn't watch that kind of show.

I'm perfectly fine with this in general, but I feel that if you have no respect for science, then you should not be writing science fiction. And someone whose first reaction to the square-cube law getting in the way of his plot, out of all of the other handwaves or justifications he could use to get around it, is to want to "break" it seems to me to have no respect for science (as I say below, I didn't realize it was a joke).

Plausible reasons for implausible things to happen is perfectly fine - what bothered me was the apparent implication that, rather then use any of the much more plausible justifications/handwaves you could have gone with, you wanted to simply disregard mathematics altogether. I didn't realize it was a joke.

I didn't want to disregard mathematics, I wanted to get around it. If I wanted to disregard it, I could've just said "Space is magic!" and I never would've started this thread in the first place.

I agree, but somehow I just can't bring myself to write about this sort of thing in this particular setting without justifying it to myself.

edited 30th Nov '11 8:24:05 PM by AirofMystery

Well, ultimately science fiction isn't necessarily about the science. It's just window dressing. There's only two kinds of good science fiction: those that use the label to create an intriguing but ultimately irrelevant back drop for a good plot (Star Wars), and those that make the ramifications of the science as they relate to society the major plot point (the work of Isaac Asimov).

This is where hard science fails, miserably. The good stuff got lost in translation. For hard science fiction writers, the science is the point, and yet in reality, the vast majority of science fiction audiences don't give a shit about the science, they want to know how the science affects society and experience that through interesting characters in an interesting setting—or, they want to see shit blow up.

However, I do agree in the sense that, if I was going to have lasers that go "pew pew pew" and leave no visible marks on their victims, I sure as fuck wouldn't bother trying to justify it. Why must I reinvent the wheel? It's a laser gun. It doesn't matter if you call it a raygun or a Quantum Particle Accelerator Cannon Mark VI, in the end you point the thing at someone and they die. I don't need to explain to the audience why they die, they just need to know that they're dead.

So, in this sense, I would say that, unless this somehow becomes a major plot point, how the mechs survive the square-cube law is irrelevant. We get it, they're mechs, their super-awesome fields repel the laws of physics. Just get on to the shooty and stabby, please.