And what are the fundamental laws of nature that need to be changed for a creature like this to exist?
In: Biology
There’s a couple different ways that this could be taken, but this one is the easiest and is somewhat universal to everything.
If you’re talking about giant cells, imagine it like this. You have a pool that’s one mile by one mile long. You have a couple of balls, and you have to take them to the middle of the pool. That’s gonna take quite a while, right? And you’re going to spend alot of energy getting them to the center.
Now imagine you have a normal sized pool, and the same amount of balls. This one is easy to get the balls to the middle of the pool. And, you spend less energy.
The smaller pool allows you to move the same amount of resources faster and more efficiently than the large pool.
Now imagine that instead of the pool, were talking about a cell. And replace the balls with sugar, oxygen, and anything else a cell might need. Just like you, the cell needs to transport those basic ingredients to it’s various parts. And, just like you, it expends energy to do so.
The larger the cell, the more energy it has to expend. The more energy it has to expend, the more food it has to eat.
However, eventually, there’s a point where the energy that it has to spend is so much, that it actually doesn’t gain anything from breaking down the sugars that it gets.
Therefore, it’s generally a better strategy to go with small cells, and be a smaller organism. The only time that really changes is when animals have to specialize for certain things. (Such as elephants and blue whales. Most animals are in the optimal range)
As far as things that would need to change for them to exist? Well, they would need to not need to eat. Or have infinite energy. That’s about it.
Okay, imagine a person twice as tall as normal, so 12 feet high. To keep it simple, just figure him as a rectangular box shape, more or less. So he’s 12 feet tall, 4 feet wide, and 2 feet thick, all twice the dimensions of a regular person who is 6 by 4 by 1 in those dimensions. The regular guy is 6x4x1 feet or 24 cubic feet in volume, and weighs say 8 pounds per cubic foot, so 192 pounds. The big guy has the same weight per cubic foot, but he’s 12x4x2 so 96 cubic feet. Multiply by eight pounds per cubic foot, and he weighs 768 pounds.
Meanwhile the big guy’s bones are twice as thick, so they have four times the cross-section. Say a regular femur is one inch in diameter, the big guy has 2 inch diameter femurs. All that pi stuff gives you answers but in essence, the bones are only four times thicker so only four times stronger, but the giant weighs eight times as much. His skeleton just doesn’t keep up with his weight, so he collapses. Same problem happens for muscles and other bits like tendons.
If you just make something two or three times as large without changing proportions, it collapses from its own weight. That applies to anything, not just animals, but it is a limit for animal size on land. Whales are big because they are supported by water.
As the surface area of an animal increases, the volume increases at a faster rate. Because body mass generates heat, and skin dispels heat, the heat cannot be lost fast enough as size grows.
If you took the body composition of a human and made them bigger, they would cook themselves.
Basically, a giant could exist, but they would not exactly resemble humans as they would need better ways of cooling themselves.
If you make something (anything) twice as big, the following happens:
– Gets 8 times as heavy.
– Gets only 4 times as physically strong
– Blood vessels need to supply blood to 8 times as much body, but are only 4 times as large
– Needs 8 times as much oxygen to live, but only has 4 times as much lung surface area.
– A whole bunch of similar stuff.
You don’t need to change the fundamental laws of nature, you just need to upgrade the materials and systems that it’s made of: stronger bones and muscles, more efficient respiration, etc. However, if you go far enough (pretty far) you will run up against the physical limits to material strength.
How big a giant are we talking about here and what are the acceptable trade-offs?
Two hundred years ago a typical person standing 5’2″ would be the norm. Shawn Bradley is 7’2″ and runs, jumps, and performs hugely coordinated maneuvers at that size. Would a two foot height difference qualify as someone being a “giant”?
If you are talking 50 foot tall monsters then that’s one thing. But what about 11 foot tall beings that were slower on their feet than humans but were strong like elephants? They couldn’t run worth a damn but give one a club and it would mess up your car.
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