Could someone help me find the title of the story of this entry? I will put it back once someone can identify it. Example:
There was a short story which played with this concept; among other things, a supervillain unleashes an army of giant ants on a city. The ants are all killed, but someone realizes that in order for the creatures to support their own weight, their legs would have to made of some incredible super-strong wonder-substance. They harvest the substance and are able to reproduce it. It turns out this was villain's Evil Plan all along, as it causes the global steel industry to collapse overnight. The villain ends up ruling the world. Of course, if the ant attack actually worked, he wouldn't have complained. Either way he'd win.
In a work of fiction, when someone enlarges or shrinks something via ray gun (as an example), wouldn't it be most plausible for the device to actually enlarge the building blocks, or molecules of the target, rather than what this trope suggests? If that were the case, each molecule would change size and weight proportionately to the whole, therefore allowing the target to work like normal in relation to itself?
That being said, the world around it would still be the same, but would react in direct opposition to the target's new proportions. In this case, "the bigger they are, the harder they fall," is only in relation to onlookers and the surrounding environment, but to the target, the concrete that it just fell on might seem more like styrofoam.
Now, this also brings up new issues, like the relative thinning of oxygen as a person gets enlarged, or possibly not being able to breathe at all when shrinking. Also, would you reach such a size at some point that molecules are actually visible? If the person lost a drop of blood, would it be closer to the viscosity of pudding? Could any germs or bacteria on the person/object also grow into monsters the size of a puppy? How long would someone be able to live under those conditions, barring the size/weight/density issues?
Edited by whtjunior Hide / Show Replies
Granted, molecules themselves might be a bad example (You Fail Science Forever and all), rather than the cells and tissues and materials that they make up. Is it possible that an enlarged cell tissue be more dense than it's amaller counterpart, in the same way that a tree trunk relates to a twig? Granted, I know that a twig doesn't have as many rings of growth, but they are the same material, and trees hold their weight rather well, as far as I can tell. Do I now fail Botany forever, too? lol
Actually, the entire concept starts breaking down as soon as you pick a specific scale for the "duplicate or enlarge" to work on. Enlarge the molecules and you screw up the inverse squared laws holding atoms together, patch for that and the attractions between parts of different molecules which cause the most fundamental of biological reactions to work break down. Duplicate molecules and you screw up all cellular processes. Enlarge or duplicate tissues (leaving cells the same size) and you immediately screw up the subtle cues which allow cells to know what they should be and do by their surroundings: the effects will be less instant for cells which aren't reproducing but will still be profound.
Go in the other direction and change the subatomics, fixing everything to allow for new atoms and molecules which have the right universals to allow building at a different scale... and things get a lot weirder, though I'm not positive I understand the implications well enough to commit to writing what I think they'd be beyond saying I don't think you can simultaneously introduce the new set of building blocks into a universe and confine their presence to a specific region of spacetime. Magic, of course, is free to follow or ignore the law as it pleases.
As for molecules becoming visible - regular-sized molecules are already individually visible by virtue of photons bouncing off of them in a way which allows their apperance to be mapped over time and defined. We have photographs of them as of 2009. If you manage to somehow get larger molecules which hold together like the smaller, don't screw up the reality they're in, and manage to also interact with photons the same way (this shouldn't be possible given how photons affect electron energy levels, but if things somehow got patched the right way), you could maybe observe one with the naked eye. Given the miracles and redefinitions of physics required to reach this point, I see no reason why it wouldn't look the same as a regular molecule.
I think an example of this appears in Kuroko's Basketball. In the Yousen vs Seirin match, Murasakibara (who is a giant in Japanese standards), is unable to jump for a final dunk because his knees, which had to endure the stress of multiple jumping with his huge, heavy frame throughout the game, lost the stamina to jump. Just saying, because it wasn't listed yet.
Edited by TwinLeadersX
I haven't read ASOIAF, just seen some of the HBO shows, so I don't know all the mythology of the Wall. However, this sentence in its example here makes NO sense: "Once again, however, it can be argued that it was built with the help of magic (keep in mind there is supposed to be a horn that, when played, will make the structure to fall out)." I fixed the obvious typo where it said "horn than" that should obviously say "horn that." But what the heck does "will make the structure to fall out" mean? Is that supposed to be referencing erecting the wall, or destroying it?
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Destroying the wall, apparently.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Remember people, tropes are not bad. Sure, giant awesome things like humongous mecha and super insects could never exist, but big deal. The square-cube law does have one huge fan! And I mean huge. As in gargantuan. Slightly larger than a navy flagship. Haven't guessed yet?
Zeppelins! For instance, the Graf Zeppelin was 776 feet long and 100 feet in diameter. She carried 10 double-berth staterooms and had a lounge that doubled as a dining room. It was just 16 foot square. The Graf Zeppelin 2, however, was thirty feet longer in both directions, but she had 20 double-berth staterooms(nicer too), two promenades, a bar, a 4-star restaurant, a lounge, a purser's office, a writing room/library, and all the assorted rooms and gear to run a small luxury liner and an airship at the same time. And she carried cargo. The Hindenburg was even more extensive, she had even more staterooms, a grand staircase AND a piano lounge in addition to the above! Of course, being designed for Helium, the Hindenburg didn't take to Hydrogen too well, but still, DAMN.
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They're still pretty limited in what they can carry compared to their overall size, though. The Hindenburg-class zeppelins only had useful lift of around 10 metric tons for a mass of over 100 tons. Contrast that with some of the bigger cargo planes, which can carry much more.
One thing that doesn't seem to be discussed is the inverse of the trope - the fact that shrinking stories generally seem to just not give a shite about, well, the physics of shrinking.
Assuming you actually COULD build a machine to lessen the space between atoms and molecules, all you're doing is upping your target's density. I want to scream every time I see someone being legitimately shrunk, and then being picked up like they were a bug - sorry writers, but You Fail Physics Forever. They still have all the same atoms, right? Meaning their Mass is constant, which means that the 180lb. man still weighs 180lbs., but is now only 3 inches tall. Were they to stand on ANYONE'S hand, they'd go right through it, in a very bloody manner.
I've seen stories where the excess mass gets burned off as steam, but... that just raises more questions! Like, HOW. THE HELL. WOULD THEY STILL BE ALIVE!?
About the only real "shrinking" story I've seen that I applaud for it's thought is, ironically, Futurama, wherein the characters used micro-sized robots which they controlled via VR. THAT MAKES SENSE AND WORKS without raping Newtonian physics a new one.
If you can't tell, I generally like my Sci-Fi to be on the plausable end, not the "it's fantasy, but there's a machine involved so it's Sci-Fi" bullshit half-assed writers like to put out.
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Um... Dinosaurs. Dinosaurs should not exist. Anyone ever heard of Big Al? (No, not that one...) He was an Allosaurus who survived loads of injuries beyond just tripping and aside from his apparent clumsiness, he lived a healthy life. Yet scientists say King Kong couldn't exist because of the Square-Cube law. Apes are a lot stronger than archosaurs. And King Kong is close to Big Al's size. How is it NOT possible?
Edited by TweedlyDee I TELL YOU HWAT!
Dinosaurs could exist because there used to be a lot more oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere. Same goes for almost all of the pre-historic gigantic land creatures.
How do higher oxygen levels help? It doesn't make their bones stronger, it just aids their circulatory system.
Edited by TweedlyDee I TELL YOU HWAT!
Presumably they have more energy to make their muscles operate without getting as tired. I'm not very good with biology though so I could be dead wrong.
Also at the first poster, lighten up dude. Fantasy and Scifi are essentially the same genre with various subgenres. You seem to be getting a bit too bent out of shape over something that it kind of silly. It's not like these people ever claimed that their movies were scientifically accurate.
Kong's size is highly variable, both between movies and (in the original) within the movie.
That said ... the smaller versions are something over 20 feet tall. Multiply a gorilla (5'6", 400 lbs) by four, linearly. Your 22 foot tall gorilla weighs 25600 pounds, roughly equivalent to the world record elephant. So it's within the possible range of land mammals.
(And if Kong is last of his species — as he definitely is in the 2005 version — presumably there's a *reason* he's the last one standing. So the Kong species might be "only" elephant-size, with Kong their world-record individual.)
The problem with Kong is his athletic ability; there's a reason elephants don't leap around. I can buy that Kong would be more athletic than a similarly sized elephant — elephants probably were never very athletic animals, even way back in their evolutionary history when they were smallish — but in the 2005 version he's if anything more athletic than a *normal-sized* gorilla.
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Dinosaurs ... nothing to do with oxygen. Only sauropods were noticeably bigger than the largest land mammals (mammoths, etc.) — hadrosaurs, ceratopsians, theropods etc seemed to top out about 15 tons. Sauropods completely ignored any sane limits and hit like 80+ tons, but from the studies I've seen, it seems perfectly workable without invoking superstrong bones or anything. (Actually, the thing that was close to the limit likely was articular cartilage strength, not bone strength.)
IIRC, isn't there a theory that dinosaurs had hollowed bones similar to birds? Would that make a significant difference on the weight load for them?
Yes, sauropods (the largest dinosaurs), and some theropods, did have hollowed bones — some vertebrae are *extremely* hollowed out. This was probably a factor in their large size, yes... but there must be more to it than that, as no flightless birds ever reached (say) T. rex size. (The largest ever, the 'elephant bird' Aepyornis, was ~900 pounds.) This may be because they had less time or lived on islands... but the entire question of the evolution of very large size is really not very well understood.
so let me get this straight: if a creature of a given mass requires X amount of piping to support itself, then shouldn't you be able to have anything of any size as long as you keep that ratio consistent?
The law does not say that you cannot have very, very large creatures. It says that you cannot simply scale up a creature while rendering it's proportions the same as a creature that is considerably smaller. You could make a 20ft giant person but that person would look rather like a massive pillbox with legs not like a normal human that was 20ft tall.
However if you can figure out a way of strengthening to 'material' you can make a creature far larger without making it comparitively thicker. Eventually however you get to the point that the structure cannot bear the addition weight of the additional reinforcing structures at which point you reach the upper limit.
Dinosaurs were likely far stronger in their internal structures, in the sense that they probably used cartilage to distribute the weight better so that due to the increased strength of their internal physiology they could get a lot bigger than any other creature since.
That was pretty much my take on it...It's not that it's impossible to have a 50ft woman, it's that if you did she'd have to be different structurally than a 5ft woman if she were to survive. She'd need a bigger heart (or more hearts) stronger bones, possibly hollowed out, or made of something different than ours our to support the frame. All of this is also assuming the same conditions found on earth, also. If we assume a larger planet, yet less dense so that the gravity was lower the organisms could be larger and maintain similar movement to humans, right?
All of this assumes these creatures are based on the same patterns of life we currently know of, also (not that we'd have a scientific basis for thinking otherwise). I'm sure that you could scientifically justify an extremely large creature that could survive and move athletically as well, it probably wouldn't look the way that we'd expect it.
Dinosaurs apparently could get much bigger because they (and their surviving bird branch) have better bones than mammals. Like birds, they had a series of air pockets throughout their bones that made them significantly lighter than mammalian bones, without sacrificing strength. It also may have helped with respiration.
It also had to do with the strategy most of the larger species used for reproduction: laying as many tiny eggs as possible, with a handful of them surviving into adulthood (such as Sauropods). They weren't limited by in utero gestation and weaning like with placental mammals.
I'm removing the Vasa example. There is no indication in the actual example that the sinking of the Vasa was due to the square/cube law, and even if there were, it is not factual (a second ship of the same size was commissioned at the same time which served its time without hitches).
The reason for the Vasa's sinking was more likely a combination of the overly high profile (an extra cannon deck that was not usual in ships at that time) and the fact that the ship had not yet taken on all the ballast it was supposed to have, making it ride even higher on the water when it was hit by a stray side wind. The ship started taking on water through the open gun ports (open for display on the occasion of the launch) and could not be stabilised, leading to its eventual capsizing and sinking.
I'm removing the Avatar example.
We already have had a 9-foot tall human (ok, 8'11") here on earth, and there's nothing really preventing a 10-foot tall one here except for our biology. We've got 10' plus bears now. For all its other inaccuracies, the Navi's height is NOT a reasonable example of this trope.
And if we start listing every instance of Humungous Mecha, this page is gonna get really long.
Could someone explain how this trope does/doesn't apply to giant annelids? Like the purple worms of D&D, or the sand worms of Dune? My science is too much of a fail to make any informed statements on this subject, but I'd assume since most of their bodies are taken up by muscle mass, those species could mitigate the effects of the law to a certain extent.
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The bodymass grows cubic, but the muscle capacity (not it's mass) increases squarish (since muscles get stronger, when they increase in diameter and not in their volume at all).
If I increase my size by the factor 1.5, that would mean, that my muscle capacity increases by 2.25 and my weight by 3.375. I would have some serious issues.
Fun fact: For that reason, animals in arctic areas tend to be larger, than elsewhere. Their skin only increases squarish but their body mass increases cubic, what means, that they can contain much more body heat and tend to emit unproportunally less heat to their environment.
Edited by 70.33.253.43
Would Mass Effect's Reapers be the Inversion of this trope? (I'm not sure if I get it right, so asking, before I possibly add it as an example) They are freakishly huge space ships, but can pull a turn, that would tear any of the Human Alliance ships in half, as Joker (your ship's pilot) puts it. Oh, and the Reaper in question does it in the planet's atmosphere, somewhere a human ship this size probably wouldn't be able to land at all (at least not with the intent of taking off again), if humans could build this big flyable ships anyway, that is. Or maybe Justified, since the Reapers are space biotechnological version of Cthulhu/Eldritch Abomination? (and earlier in the game, the player can see this crazy huge ship take off another planet, coupled with damn loud noise and what looks like red lighting crackling on its surface - as well as have conversations about the impossibly powerful ship of the supposed Big Bad)
Edited by Demoneq Hide / Show Replies
Everything in Mass Effect that breaks physics as we know it relies on the eponymous mass effect to do so. Reapers use eezo to keep gravity and inertia at bay, and so can override the ill effects of the law. It's not really an example. Some of the bigger walking mechs probably do the same to a lesser degree, actually.
Insects did get bigger than a goliath beetle. did not do the research
I think this article should be renamed to something more simple and understandable like "Impossible Giant" or "The King Kong Paradox". Or something better than those, if you can think of any.
Possible that larger-than-normal creatures could exist if not made out of the Earth's conventional structures (carbon nanotubing for one) so although a directly scaled up being would just plain die, one's like the Na'vi from Avatar could exist (combined with the fact that they had less gravity so James Cameron could shove the Square Cube Law up everyone's asses.) although approaching godzilla size the gravity would be so low and the creature so complex (how does it blood flow fast between it's body) that it would die while the guys from the rampage game could maybe be possible, but 99% sure not on Earth. Maybe Village of the Giants size on Earth.
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Dinosaurs? — nevermind someone already asked that
Edited by 70.142.50.36
Eh, Na'vi aren't actually that big as giant things go. They'd be maybe 500ish pounds on Earth (they're really slender). Well within what's possible to be really athletic even in Earth gravity.
Theropod dinosaurs seemed to do fine on two legs up to the 10 ton range or so. Na'vi aren't even close to pushing it.
You don't need carbon nanotubes and other exotica until you get into like the kaiju range. Big sauropod dinosaurs hit 80ish tons, probably 100+ though it's questionable, with normal flesh and bone. If you could find a way to get along without articular cartilage, you could stretch that further — bone is stronger in compressive strength than cartilage.
Edited by 128.194.250.106
Linking to a past Trope Repair Shop thread that dealt with this page: Split examples or rename
, started by BioTube on Jun 27th 2011 at 6:49:38 AM
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman