@nomenloony @TheBreadmonkey @cy @SRLevine
ELI5: if a dragon fly was 1,000 times the size of a normal dragon fly with the exact same proportions and made of the exact same materials, would it still be able to fly?
or any other flying bug or bird.
I'm just curious if flying bugs or birds could fly with the exact same dimensions but being much larger creatures.
Would gravity have a larger effect? etc...
"Size" is ambiguous, so let's say it weighs 1000x as much. Mega-dragonfly isn't any denser than normal dragonfly, so 1000x the volume, also. 1000x is convenient, because it's a cubic number: 1000=1e3. So every dimension is 10x as large. Instead of 6 inch wingspan, 60 inches (5 feet). A dragonfly 1000x the normal size would weigh something like 5 pounds -- more than most hawks.
Wing area is an area -- a square number. So making the dragonfly 10x larger in each dimension makes the wings 100x larger in area. But they have to carry 1000x more weight. 10x more weight loaded per area of wing. Could a regular dragonfly carry around 9 others? I don't think so. It would not be able to fly.
Strength is a material property -- you can only make muscles stronger by making them thicker. Like the wings, the muscles and exoskeleton have cross-sectional area that has only increased 100x and have to carry 1000x the weight. That's 10x the structural load. Ants famously can carry very large objects relative to their body size, but this is because they're tiny, and have lots of material strength left over. Scale up to 1000x, and that reserve strength is all depleted. A mega-dragonfly's legs will probably collapse under its own weight.
The biggest problem for any mega-insect, though, is going to be respiration. Insects don't have lungs or complex circulatory systems. They rely on openings in their skin to allow gas exchange, and diffusion to spread oxygen to their muscles. If the dragonfly is 10x as large in every dimension, those crude functions will break down. There's no way enough oxygen is passively diffusing over that much volume. It would suffocate immediately.
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1j74cw/eli5_if_a_dragon_fly_was_1000_times_the_size_of_a/
sorry, Nömenlōony; no mega-flies.
In 1999, Elijah Snow, a reclusive centenarian and former adventurer with cryokinesis powers, reluctantly accepts recruitment by the field team of Planetary, an organization that investigates the "secret history" of the twentieth century. The field team, also made up of superhuman Jakita Wagner and a technopath called only the Drummer, is supported by a network of global offices, specialists, and equipment, and unconditionally funded by an unidentified, unseen patron called the "Fourth Man." On their missions, the field team encounter concepts from speculative fiction in the flesh, such as pulp magazine heroes, superheroes, kaiju, wuxia and gun fu, a superspy, B movie monsters, Jules Verne's imaginary technology, and interstellar starships. The team embraces the fantastical nature of their findings, embodied by the mantra: "It's a strange world; let's keep it that way."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_(comics)
#comics
