The Dresden Files > DF Spoilers
Harry, Time Travel and Sue
groinkick:
--- Quote from: Kindler on November 29, 2017, 01:42:53 PM ---Conservation of mass-energy kind of gets in the way. It's one of the plot holes in Jurassic Park; a T-Rex simply couldn't have eaten enough to get that big in the amount of time since Hammond had cloned it.
--- End quote ---
How long did it have to grow? T-Rex reaches full size at around 18 to 20 years of age according to scientists.
groinkick:
--- Quote from: wardenferry419 on November 11, 2017, 12:14:58 AM ---Sue is big. But, she is not Godzilla big. Even when you toss in 1950s Godzilla. I think that is when the battleship or aircraft carrier comes in.
--- End quote ---
Kaiju doesn't always mean Godzilla. Nothing in Earth's history was that big. The foot print on the beach sounded like something big, but not Godzilla big. If Sue was used against something say 50 feet tall, she could still be used to deliver a big bite to the monsters hamstring, or ankle resulting in it either falling down, or simply drawing the attention away from Dresden so he can finish a big spell, or something.
"The models suggest that an adult T. rex was capable of a maximum bite force of 35,000 to 57,000 newtons at its back teeth. That's more than four times higher than past estimates and ten times as forceful as the bite of a modern alligator."
I don't care how big you are, something with that kind of bite force will damage you, even if it's just your ankle.
Kindler:
--- Quote from: groinkick on December 05, 2017, 07:14:54 PM ---How long did it have to grow? T-Rex reaches full size at around 18 to 20 years of age according to scientists.
--- End quote ---
No more than five years in the book. InGen clones their first prehistoric animal in 1984 (doesn't say what animal), and the Jurassic Park incident happens in 1989. A little girl is attacked in the prologue (which they used for the opening of Lost World) some time before Grant is brought in to tour the park.
To really mess with the physics, imagine a herbivorous brachiosaurus getting to be that size on only plant matter. You're talking about adding, what, a forty, fifty pounds a day to their mass for a decade or two? They're something like thirty-forty metric tons, if memory serves. You also have to deal with thermodynamics, as there's no way to prevent loss of energy during digestion.
For them to be the size they are in Jurassic Park, they'd have had to eat nonstop for years, at nearly 100% efficiency, with little room for muscular and skeletal development.
It's one of the reasons there's a big theory that none of the dinosaurs were cloned, and that Hammond was pulling a giant dog and pony show to bilk his investors. He brought on a paleontologist to see if he could be fooled. He even mentions (in the movie, can't remember if it's in the book) that his first attraction was a flea circus, and that the park was just a big budget version. (Also, how was he able to clone extinct plants? Mosquitoes wouldn't have ingested their DNA, at least not enough to replicate them, and DNA only has a half-life that's measured in centuries, not Epochs, so how is any of this possible anyway).
Too Long, Didn't Read: Michael Crichton made a rare mistake in his meticulous research, or else it was a clue to an alternate character interpretation.
wardenferry419:
I was most interested in the chaos theory parts than the genetics.
Kindler:
--- Quote from: wardenferry419 on December 05, 2017, 09:01:01 PM ---I was most interested in the chaos theory parts than the genetics.
--- End quote ---
Yeah, plus dinosaurs rampaging across a closed system is pretty boss.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version