This is great, funny stuff! I tend to veer into the "can the scifi really work?" arena often too. Sometimes one can go to far, as sooner or later you just have to give up and enjoy the ride. For example, I'm not sure that even the article you referenced here mentions that the people in those shrinking movies would keep their full body mass. Shrinking would only compress all the molecules in the body, not disperse them. So if a 165-lb man shrinks to one inch in height, his density is now what? Something like that of lead? Thus, I'd assume one's invulnerabilty would increase with diminished size. Conversely, would one be able to move at all. The article says the Shrinking Man's enhanced metabolism would have him bouncing around, but I wonder if muscles that only fractions of an inch long could move a body with the proportionate weight/volume of a hunk of metal.Would his tendons and ligaments tear? Not to mention, since he'd retain his full weight, he'd basically be breaking every piece of furniture he jumped on. And how does one shrink down to sub-microscopic size and breathe, seeing that the very air molecules are now bigger than one's lungs? I love asking those goofy questions.
One reason I get a kick out of Marvel Comics is that they likewise try to bring a serious scientific veneer to their heroes' and villains' powers. DC in the main stays with the attitude that it's all fantasy and we should just go along for the ride. For example, you really never see trully definitive guides explaining much weight Superman can lift, or his upper limit of flying velocity. No major treatises on how Manhunter can shape shift and the like. But Marvel, with its Official Handbooks of the Marvel Universe, is so serious about its stuff it's great. I'm currently reading the latest OHOTMU, and I love reading stuff like "Mr. Sinister possesses body-wide control of his molecules, rendering him extremely durable", or "The Microverse is entered by the process of shrinking to the sub-molecular level, which generates particles faciliting a transfer across the dimensional boundary", or "Cyclops' optic beams are concussive beams of force created by gravitons being forced into orbit around photons. Cyclops' optic nerves access an as-yet unnamed dimension and shunt the energy of that dimension through his eyes". And back to that shrinking issue, Marvel addresses that density/weight problem by saying that people like Hank Pym actually shunt most of their molecules to another dimension. Hence their weight decreases proportionally to their size. Gotta love it! -------------- Original message -------------- From: "brent wodehouse" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> The Biology of B-Movie Monsters http://fathom.lib.uchicago.edu/2/21701757/ [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/scifinoir2/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
