by Tdarcos » Thu Aug 27, 2020 1:22 pm
RetroRomper wrote: Wed Aug 26, 2020 9:04 pm
Ant-man was also horrible to the extent, that I feel nauseous even naming it.
I saw
Ant Man. I didn't think it was horrible. Using the - for lack of a better term - "entrapment robbery" to find someone capable of sneaking in the building guarded by people with super powers was a bit contrived, but I thought the movie was okay.
Now
Fargo on the other hand, was horrible. Let's start with the first problem. Everything in the story happens in Brainerd, Minnesota. Nothing happens in Fargo, let alone anywhere in the State of North Dakota.
Ant Man was relatively entertaining escapist science fiction and violates a number of the laws of physics. There have been books or articles I've probably read on why shrinking living things won't work, usually in the context of a
Fantastic Voyage plot. I'll give you my take on why it won't work. To shrink someone that size means you do one of four things: reduce the number of atoms, shrink the size of the atoms, squeeze the space between the atoms, or shrink
and squeeze.
First, if you discard most of their atoms, the loss of brain matter makes them as stupid as something that size, plus losing a lot of body functions; human beings are not built that size, whether it's ant sized or amoeba sized (in
Fantastic Voyage). Matter can neither be created nor destroyed; where do you put the rest of the body in the interim and how do you re-integrate it?
Second, to shrink something that size would require a huge amount of power, like a good-sized power plant, to break the molecular bonds, assuming the test subject lived with that much energy applied to them, instead of cooking (or being vaporized) from the heat generated.
Let's talk about energy. Cold things are slow, hot things are fast. To turn water from liquid to a gas (boiling) requires putting
a lot of energy into it to speed up the mplecules. To cool down water (or freeze it) requires you suck a lot of energy out of it to slow down the molecules. This is why ice makes drinks cold, the heat in the drink breaks the molecular bonds in the ice, absorbing energy amd releasing slow molecules of water. This tremendously slows down the atoms in the drink, cooling it.
The same thing would apply to atomic manipulation. To compress or contract atoms requires you put energy into them, to expand, you'd have to take energy out. As one of Robert A. Heinlein's books mentioned, the typical human being burns food sufficient to keep the entire body near 37°c (98.6°F), which is enough energy to melt about 23Kg (50 pounds) of ice a day.
Just to boil tap water takes about 0.44 Kwh per liter, so if it takes the equivalent of 440 watts to just boil a liter of tap water, (1Kg of water), how much is it going to take to compress an 82Kg (180lb) human to 1/100 of its size?
Third, if you reduced the empty space between atoms, you'd need thousands, no, hundreds of thousands of tons of pressure to do it, which, of course, would turn the test subject into bloody paste.
Fourth, for reasons 2 and 3, shrink and squeeze combined won't work either.
[quote=RetroRomper post_id=113975 time=1598501046 user_id=879]
Ant-man was also horrible to the extent, that I feel nauseous even naming it.[/quote]
I saw [i]Ant Man[/i]. I didn't think it was horrible. Using the - for lack of a better term - "entrapment robbery" to find someone capable of sneaking in the building guarded by people with super powers was a bit contrived, but I thought the movie was okay.
Now [i]Fargo[/i] on the other hand, was horrible. Let's start with the first problem. Everything in the story happens in Brainerd, Minnesota. Nothing happens in Fargo, let alone anywhere in the State of North Dakota.
[i]Ant Man[/i] was relatively entertaining escapist science fiction and violates a number of the laws of physics. There have been books or articles I've probably read on why shrinking living things won't work, usually in the context of a [url=https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FantasticVoyagePlot][i]Fantastic Voyage[/i] plot[/url]. I'll give you my take on why it won't work. To shrink someone that size means you do one of four things: reduce the number of atoms, shrink the size of the atoms, squeeze the space between the atoms, or shrink [i]and[/i] squeeze.
First, if you discard most of their atoms, the loss of brain matter makes them as stupid as something that size, plus losing a lot of body functions; human beings are not built that size, whether it's ant sized or amoeba sized (in [i]Fantastic Voyage[/i]). Matter can neither be created nor destroyed; where do you put the rest of the body in the interim and how do you re-integrate it?
Second, to shrink something that size would require a huge amount of power, like a good-sized power plant, to break the molecular bonds, assuming the test subject lived with that much energy applied to them, instead of cooking (or being vaporized) from the heat generated.
Let's talk about energy. Cold things are slow, hot things are fast. To turn water from liquid to a gas (boiling) requires putting [i]a lot[/i] of energy into it to speed up the mplecules. To cool down water (or freeze it) requires you suck a lot of energy out of it to slow down the molecules. This is why ice makes drinks cold, the heat in the drink breaks the molecular bonds in the ice, absorbing energy amd releasing slow molecules of water. This tremendously slows down the atoms in the drink, cooling it.
The same thing would apply to atomic manipulation. To compress or contract atoms requires you put energy into them, to expand, you'd have to take energy out. As one of Robert A. Heinlein's books mentioned, the typical human being burns food sufficient to keep the entire body near 37°c (98.6°F), which is enough energy to melt about 23Kg (50 pounds) of ice a day.
Just to boil tap water takes about 0.44 Kwh per liter, so if it takes the equivalent of 440 watts to just boil a liter of tap water, (1Kg of water), how much is it going to take to compress an 82Kg (180lb) human to 1/100 of its size?
Third, if you reduced the empty space between atoms, you'd need thousands, no, hundreds of thousands of tons of pressure to do it, which, of course, would turn the test subject into bloody paste.
Fourth, for reasons 2 and 3, shrink and squeeze combined won't work either.