Wednesday, August 08, 2007

Fair Warning

When writing a DC comic book featuring the villain Giganta, a fifty-foot tall woman, do not just Google "Giganta" while trying to figure out her mass. At least not with Safe Search off.

Not that there's anything wrong with that. It's just a helluva thing to be wading through before my morning coffee.

59 comments:

Anonymous said...

You're trying to figure out her mass? I admire your dedication, but caution you: Turn Back!

After all, if you apply all the known principles of engineering and physics, her knees come apart at the slightest provocation.

Umm, maybe I should rephrase that. Her knees tear apart at the slightest provocation.

But if you must, if we assume that at 5 feet tall, she weighs 100 pounds, then at 50 she is 10 times taller. Volume is proportional to the cube of height, so it's 1000 times bigger. Assume the density stays the same, and she now weighs 5 tons.

Unknown said...

That's the EXACT reason I was figuring that out --I have a little side run about how all giant humanoids are magic-based, since science-based growth turns people into "five tons of screams broken bones and leaking fluids."

Unknown said...

Even going the other way would be bad. Take The Atom, he is supposedly science based. However, if he shrank to even 1 foot tall he would be so dense he could barely move and his own body heat would kill him.

It's things like this that should make more comic book heros have the same realization as Animal Man and Ambush Bug. That they are fictional.

Anonymous said...

Wouldn't she be 50 tons? (i.e., 100,000 lbs)

Unknown said...

Actually, I just though of a way it could work. Instead of changing the density of the individual, you change the expansion of the space-time the individual occupies. So Giganta or Atom would always be the same size and density, from their own frame of reference. It's just from an external frame of reference where they would appear bigger or smaller.

Of course this would require a stupid ammount of energy to maintain and I have no idea how different spacial expansion areas would interact.

... ok that way way too geeky.

Jay said...

However, if he shrank to even 1 foot tall he would be so dense he could barely move and his own body heat would kill him.

I think the pseudoscience hand-waving that's done there is that the "dwarf star matter" that comprises his size-changing gear disperses or shunts the extra mass away.

I know that's how the "Pym particles" work in the Marvel Universe, at least...

(Not the same John, BTW)

Anonymous said...

Actually, Dr. Jay, with a growth factor of ten, her skeletal structure would be a 100 times stronger, even though she would weigh 1000 times more. Which sounds bad - except that our bones have a large redundancy factor built in.

Miller's Giant-Man in Ultimates # 1 worried that if he grew more than 60 feet tall, his legs would shatter upon standing. But our thigh bones are quite strong - it's his vertebrae that would break at that height.

John rogers - your explanation of miniaturization (or expansion) by changing the scale of space-time is essentially the solution Isaac Asimov hit upon in his novelization of Fantastic voyage.

Afetr discussing how one could not squueze the atoms closer together, remove atoms, or shrink them, he punted and claimed that the shrinking device worked like a "reducing xerox machine". That is, the entire length scale around the Atom is reduced, so he's normal, as you say, and appears smaller to us.

Which explains how he's able to breathe while smaller than an oxygen molecule - he's using the thin layer of air that adhere's to all surfaces, even himself.

Another way to change scale: in Fantastic Voyage II, Asimov suggested that the only way to change the size of an atom was to be able to vary the magnitude of Planck's constant (there are other fundamental constants you could vary). which we have no idea how it could be done - which is why we call them... "constants."

In the Civil War Files - the writer
stated that I wrote a paper with Bill Foster on just this topic - which attracted Tony Stark's attention and led to him hiring us.
I've since updated my C.V.

Cheers,

Dr. K (the K stands for Action!)

narm00 said...

This gets touched on in Gail Simone's 'All-New Atom', for both Giganta /and/ the Atom (in this case, the current Atom, Ryan Choi).

In Ryan's case, he, and the scientists working with him, run up against the problem that by what /they/ know of physics, shrinking should be impossible - yet Ryan's able to do it.

Ryan's able to manipulate his mass, too, so he can reduce his mass, and increase it back to normal, regardless of his current height - even though, as pointed out above, that should by rights kill him.

Ryan and his friends are still trying to work out how the technology behind it all works. It's... taking them a while.

In Giganta's case, Gail, like Rogers, strongly indicates her powers are magic-based.

moleboy said...

I seem to recall a story where the Atom shrinks himself and someone else to the size of photons. The person asks how they can possibly be seeing if they are smaller then light.
The Atom responds "Thats not air you're breathing either. its better not to think about it"

Cunningham said...

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

--- Arthur C. Clarke

(as if you guys didn't know that already)

Anonymous said...

Mother Nature fashioned several dinosaurs heavier. Some over 100 tons. And they probably stood up occasionally on hind legs and scooted around a bit (on dry land mind you). So I don't see it as such a mindboggling biomechanical stretch for a humanoid at that scale. So long as she has a good calcium regimen and a thick hide. Maybe a chiropractor.

impwork said...

My first job was taking computers with Internet access into libraries around Merseyside. For national library day we had a special 24-hour opening and Ramsey Campbell came and gave a talk and read a short story. Amongst our first time web surfers that night was a man and his young boy who was about 8. The boy was too young to go and see the film Anaconda but wanted to see pictures a short search later and we had one panicked father who had found pictures completely unrelated to the film. I suspect he knew how you felt.

Good luck with your calculations although it strikes me that sometimes it's better not to try to figure some things out.

Unknown said...

That wasn't me on the dimension thing, by the way.

And Giganta being magic based is actually in continuity. I just really wanted a reason for Jaime to call his resident magic expert, Traci 13.

Anonymous said...

"I seem to recall a story where the Atom shrinks himself and someone else to the size of photons. The person asks how they can possibly be seeing if they are smaller then light.
The Atom responds "Thats not air you're breathing either. its better not to think about it' "

Yeah, that was me. But I bow to Dr. Kakalios in all such matters now.

Anonymous said...

Hi Mark!

Motherboard crash caused me to lose all old e-mail addresses - thus communicating this way. I just want to say: Congrats on the EIC job at BOOM!

Jim

Anonymous said...

if you are a gardner don't search on pussywillows either

Anonymous said...

Wow... just... wow. The nerditude of these comments is turned WAY up to 11.

Dwight Williams said...

I like the Clarke quote and Mark Waid's little hand-wave working in concert for this myself. Mass-shunting, a la the late great Gruenwald, also helps up to a point.

Anonymous said...

Hmm, 1000 x 100 = 100,000 / 2000 = 50 tons. My bad. Dropped a zero.

On another point, I dodged the redundant thighbone issue entirely, pointing to connective tissue as the weakest link, even before the spinal column. I think I'll stand by that.

And the "magic" call is definitely a good one.

Anonymous said...

Nowadays you might say that the extra mass squirts out into /back from the extra dimensions posited by string theory which are normally curled up too small to be perceived. Thus it doesn't really *go* anywhere, but it appears to and perhaps wouldn't be subject to gravity in the other dimensions (rather than pulling 'down' as in 3 dimensional space, gravity affects matter in the additional dimensions in a way that is self-negating.)

It'll be a good long time until string theory is subject to experimental testing, so using it should be safe.

Anonymous said...

"I just really wanted a reason for Jaime to call his resident magic expert, Traci 13."

After their makeout session, you'd think he'd need a reason if he didn't want to call her.

Mac Harwood said...

That always bothered me. In children's nature books, there is always a line about how if a flea was the size of an elephant it could jump a skyscraper or some such nonsense.

Hmm - if a lever is 10 times longer, but it needs to lift 1000 times more mass ...

It is sad that a blog discussing comic books has better science than a child's natural studies textbook.

Unknown said...

I do believe that the Atom's size changing is based on mass-shifting, if I remember from the Power of the Atom regular series, where Palmer's size and mass were in a state of flux after traveling through satalite communications while carrying some extra white dwarf matter on his person, that disappeared/merged with him afterwards.

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