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I recently ran across a review of the new movie "Downsizing" (starring Matt Daman and Kristen Wigg (together again from "The Martian")).
The main issue in the movie seems to be shrinking people will reduce their environmental load on the planet (smaller people use less stuff). However, as any biologist knows, smaller size means a larger surface area to volume ratio, which means more heat lose from the body among other things.
I am not concerned about the movie itself but thought it raised some interesting implications. Similar issues could have arisen with other shrinking things movies, but I am "being here now".
1)
Here are some questions I have about being small in this way:
How big would their iPhones be? If they were also shrunk, would they be able to still work? (I figure the electronic elements are approaching limits of current technology, so a reduction in size by >10x might exceed what is possible). Maybe they just would not have iPhones and such things (not clear to me from the trailer).
2)
What about their brains? Either they would be smaller, but with the same size cells, resulting in brains with significantly fewer cells, or their cell would also be shrunk to maintain cell number.
Presumably the shrunken people would maintain human's advantageous brain to body size ratio.
If they had fewer cells, how would they affect them mentally? Lose memories?
If their cells were smaller would they still be able to work on a molecular level? Cells are probably pretty size optimized by evolution.
I suspect that extremely smallified people would have some kind of reduction in brain function, but I also don't think such a question has any obvious answers.
The main issue in the movie seems to be shrinking people will reduce their environmental load on the planet (smaller people use less stuff). However, as any biologist knows, smaller size means a larger surface area to volume ratio, which means more heat lose from the body among other things.
I am not concerned about the movie itself but thought it raised some interesting implications. Similar issues could have arisen with other shrinking things movies, but I am "being here now".
1)
Here are some questions I have about being small in this way:
How big would their iPhones be? If they were also shrunk, would they be able to still work? (I figure the electronic elements are approaching limits of current technology, so a reduction in size by >10x might exceed what is possible). Maybe they just would not have iPhones and such things (not clear to me from the trailer).
2)
What about their brains? Either they would be smaller, but with the same size cells, resulting in brains with significantly fewer cells, or their cell would also be shrunk to maintain cell number.
Presumably the shrunken people would maintain human's advantageous brain to body size ratio.
If they had fewer cells, how would they affect them mentally? Lose memories?
If their cells were smaller would they still be able to work on a molecular level? Cells are probably pretty size optimized by evolution.
I suspect that extremely smallified people would have some kind of reduction in brain function, but I also don't think such a question has any obvious answers.