388 years ago, Galileo worked out why human giants can't exist
scientificamerican.com
388 years ago, Galileo worked out why human giants can't exist
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Re: 388 years ago, Galileo worked out why human giants can't exist
#2I’d heard this before, but it’s a fun reminder of how, in a sense, the laws of physics depend on what size you are. (Or rather, which laws have the most impact depends on the size of objects in question)
Note that if you disable JavaScript you can read this without the nag wall.
Re: 388 years ago, Galileo worked out why human giants can't exist
#3I'm not sure about this... for pure shear or tension load the strength scales by the square of the diameter, so increasing beam "linear size" by 10 gives only 100x strength, but our beam-bones would usually fail in bending, not in shear, where the strength scales by a factor of 10,000x (stress = (bending Moment x beam radius) / (Area Moment of Inertia of beam cross section), where the Area moment of inertia is a function of cross section diameter^4)
And don't we already know that giant dinosaurs existed?
Re: 388 years ago, Galileo worked out why human giants can't exist
#4I don't know how convinced I am. First there were dinosaurs in the past, the brachiosaurus was 4 x as big as an elephant and there are probably yet undiscovered dinosaurs that were even bigger given discovery of partial fossils like the Sauroposeidon.
Also we know in the past there were dargonflys with wingspans greater than 2 feet and centipedes that grew as long as a car.
Re: 388 years ago, Galileo worked out why human giants can't exist
#5This seems like a flawed argument. By the logic in this article, wouldn't horses or cows, which weigh multiple times what a human does, have to have stocky rather than slender legs?
Re: 388 years ago, Galileo worked out why human giants can't exist
#6I don't know how convinced I am. First there were dinosaurs in the past, the brachiosaurus was 4 x as big as an elephant and there are probably yet undiscovered dinosaurs that were even bigger given discovery of partial fossils like the Sauroposeidon. Also we know in the past there were dargonflys with wingspans greater than 2 feet and centipedes that grew as long as a car.
The atmosphere is believed to be more oxygen rich back then, in order for those dragonflies to exist.
Re: 388 years ago, Galileo worked out why human giants can't exist
#7This seems like a flawed argument. By the logic in this article, wouldn't horses or cows, which weigh multiple times what a human does, have to have stocky rather than slender legs?
1. They stand on 4 limbs, rather than 2.
2. That would be assuming that human legs are sized at the max capacity they can carry, which is not true.
Re: 388 years ago, Galileo worked out why human giants can't exist
#8I don't know how convinced I am. First there were dinosaurs in the past, the brachiosaurus was 4 x as big as an elephant and there are probably yet undiscovered dinosaurs that were even bigger given discovery of partial fossils like the Sauroposeidon. Also we know in the past there were dargonflys with wingspans greater than 2 feet and centipedes that grew as long as a car.
The atmosphere is believed to be more oxygen rich back then, in order for those dragonflies to exist.
That seems to not be the reason from the latest data. Insect oxygen transfer basically doesn't scale cleanly with oxygen in the atmosphere like the original hypothesis thought.
What IS true though is that pterosaurs and later birds and bats came onto the scene, and that's just game over for giant dragonflies.
Re: 388 years ago, Galileo worked out why human giants can't exist
#9I don't know how convinced I am. First there were dinosaurs in the past, the brachiosaurus was 4 x as big as an elephant and there are probably yet undiscovered dinosaurs that were even bigger given discovery of partial fossils like the Sauroposeidon. Also we know in the past there were dargonflys with wingspans greater than 2 feet and centipedes that grew as long as a car.
Giant sauropods are basically big balloons, so that's a nice little hack around the issue. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuMHfWSyoGI
Re: 388 years ago, Galileo worked out why human giants can't exist
#10I’d heard this before, but it’s a fun reminder of how, in a sense, the laws of physics depend on what size you are. (Or rather, which laws have the most impact depends on the size of objects in question) Note that if you disable JavaScript you can read this without the nag wall.
You can also read Galileo's argument without Scientific American filtering: https://archive.org/details/dialoguesconcern00galiuoft/page/...