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<blockquote data-quote="spiney" data-source="post: 179766" data-attributes="member: 192438"><p>What's quite interesting is, how things change, as you go up or down through "powers of ten".</p><p></p><p>For instance, animal size is limited, both directions. Getting bigger, there's the famous relationship where volume increases as size cubed, but surface area only as size squared. So, elephants are the largest land animals, and have VERY thick legs! As you go smaller, this ratio means more heat loss, and animals need to have a faster metabolism, hence have shorter lives (rodents, birds, etc). The limits to smallness are set by single celled creatures, as life can't get any less complex!</p><p></p><p><a href="http://www.iiap.res.in/outreach/appendix3.html" target="_blank">www.iiap.res.in/outreach/appendix3.html</a> .</p><p></p><p>After Rutherford came up with his "solar system model" of the atom, sci fi writers - before there was sci fi! - got busy, and did stories about entire universes inside atoms, a "solar systems inside solar systems" infinite regress, but unfortunately this is impossible, as things change a lot when the scale alters!</p><p></p><p>The universe used to be tiny! Roughly 100 years apart, Bruno then expanded it outwards (and got burned at the stake as a heretic), and later Hooke expanded it inwards.</p><p></p><p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giordano_Bruno" target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giordano_Bruno</a> .</p><p></p><p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micrographia" target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micrographia</a> .</p><p></p><p>(Note that Micrographia is full of amazing illustrations! if you Google for "micrographia" images you'll get quite a few. The entire book is downloadable free at Project Gutenberg, although I haven't tried that for myself!).</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="spiney, post: 179766, member: 192438"] What's quite interesting is, how things change, as you go up or down through "powers of ten". For instance, animal size is limited, both directions. Getting bigger, there's the famous relationship where volume increases as size cubed, but surface area only as size squared. So, elephants are the largest land animals, and have VERY thick legs! As you go smaller, this ratio means more heat loss, and animals need to have a faster metabolism, hence have shorter lives (rodents, birds, etc). The limits to smallness are set by single celled creatures, as life can't get any less complex! [URL="http://www.iiap.res.in/outreach/appendix3.html"]www.iiap.res.in/outreach/appendix3.html[/URL] . After Rutherford came up with his "solar system model" of the atom, sci fi writers - before there was sci fi! - got busy, and did stories about entire universes inside atoms, a "solar systems inside solar systems" infinite regress, but unfortunately this is impossible, as things change a lot when the scale alters! The universe used to be tiny! Roughly 100 years apart, Bruno then expanded it outwards (and got burned at the stake as a heretic), and later Hooke expanded it inwards. [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giordano_Bruno"]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giordano_Bruno[/URL] . [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micrographia"]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micrographia[/URL] . (Note that Micrographia is full of amazing illustrations! if you Google for "micrographia" images you'll get quite a few. The entire book is downloadable free at Project Gutenberg, although I haven't tried that for myself!). [/QUOTE]
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