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Sunday, November 14, 2010

The science of Godzilla

I've mentioned this before, but it's too much fun not to return to. Dr. Darren Naish has updated his exploration, abetted by two other paleontologists, of the scientific problems with the greatest of the giant monsters. One of the fun points is that, while the American film Godzilla looks much more reasonable as a real animal, the titanic (impossible, really) demands of gravity on any such beast make the Japanese type, with his tree-trunk legs, at least a little more practical. The American version does win a point for eschewing the atomic bad breath.
COMMENT: This stuff is endlessly fascinating to me, even if we know none of the giant creatures would work. If Godzilla is impractical, we can certainly forget about the spindly yet even bigger Cloverfield monster. Peter Jackson's King Kong looked marvelous, as Jackson took a gorilla and meticulously scaled him up by a factor of 4 (some sources say 4.4) but Kong, too, would suffer from impossible weight-bearing demands on his skeleton, among other things.
But in the end, who cares? Just enjoy.

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