5.0 KiB
Godzilla's Shameful Secret
-
Author: u/xamueljones My arch-enemy is entropy*
-
URL: http://www.angelfire.com/ego/g_saga/kaijubiologyarticle.html
-
Score: 5
-
Created: 2014-12-10T10:50:04
Post:
Comments:
u/krakonfour [+11] (an hour later)
Gosh it's so wrong. This is what happens when you try to explain fantasy using very basic and flawed knowledge of chemistry, biology and physics.
For one, immerse a corpse in radioactive, sterile water... And the bacteria in the gut eat if from inside out. The radioactivity needed to destroy bacteria in the gut before they start degrading the body is enough to roast the corpse... And even after that, what happens to a cell that doesn't get supplied with oxygen and glucose/energy metabolites? It uses its reserves in seconds, shuts down all its little pumps and allows water to fill it until it literally explodes like a water balloon.
It's called lysis.
Seriously, theories like 'aliens put them there' are actually more plausible than a corpse turned into radioactive stone and still retaining the fine neurological structure and chemical balances that form memories and instincts.
u/xamueljones [+2] My arch-enemy is entropy (3 minutes later)
When I found this site and then tried submitting it to /r/rational, it said that someone else had already posted this six months ago. I decided to post the link anyway since there might be others like me who weren't part of /r/rational back then.
Which brings me to the question, how long should people wait to resubmit older links? I went with my judgement that six months was long enough, but what should the cut-off date be?
u/rationalidurr [+3] If fighting is sure to result in victory, then you must fight! (38 minutes later)
Other information We encourage the practise of wise reading, occasional reposting (as we can't bump old posts), and use of spoiler tags if you're posting something that might be a spoiler: A == A.
Feel free to repost things, but i would check the second page of sub before doing so.
u/DCarrier [+1] (3 days later)
The most massive living thing is a redwood tree estimated at 2100 tons.
That's the tallest living thing. The most massive living thing is Pando, a quaking aspen that weighs around 6000 metric tons.
What were these natural reactors like? Mostly, they would have seemed like ordinary lakes or ponds, the water hotter than normal, perhaps boiling at times. The shores and waters, due to radiation, would have been normally devoid of life, again due to radiation.
Of course, wandering animals would have come by to drink. Some of them would have been fatally poisoned by radiation over time and wandered off to die. Some would have died along the shores. And a few would have slipped or been carried into the waters.
Natural nuclear reactors require a higher concentration of U235 than we have now. The only known one was 1.7 billion years ago, so I imagine that's around the necessary age. Animals didn't occur until 600 million years ago. Even multicellular life didn't appear until a billion years ago.
The Kaiju do not need to breath like we do. Their metabolisms are not based on chemical reactions. No oxygen necessary. They can exist underground, in vaccuum, on land or at the bottom of the ocean.
And yet godzilla was defeated by an oxygen destroyer.
u/xamueljones [+1] My arch-enemy is entropy (3 days later)
As a counter point to your interesting arguments,
Natural nuclear reactors require a higher concentration of U235 than we have now.
This article is clearly about a different world where kaiju exist. That world has a lot more naturally occurring radioactive material.
The Kaiju do not need to breath like we do.
I imagine it's the same reason that Godzilla doesn't fly even though he likely has the ability. He thinks he can't, so he doesn't. Ergo he thinks he needs to be able to breathe, so when something seemingly removes his ability to breathe, he passes out.
Thanks for pointing out flaws in the article. It was fun to think of counter-arguments.
u/DCarrier [+1] (4 days later)
Ergo he thinks he needs to be able to breathe, so when something seemingly removes his ability to breathe, he passes out.
So, five minutes after the movie ends he wakes up and continues his rampage?
There is one thing I didn't see addressed, but I didn't read all the way through so maybe it just gets addressed later. How do Kaiju get so big? A tower of solid bone that size will collapse. Being nuclear-powered doesn't change that.
u/xamueljones [+1] My arch-enemy is entropy (4 days later)
The kaiju are made out of different materials created through nuclear processes; materials that are incredibly dense and strong. I think the author states that their body are theoretically as strong as carbon nano-tubes, which can be used as a space elevator.