When I saw Godzilla a few years ago (the new one, based in New York), as we left the theatre, I commented to a friend on the physical improbability of it. The beast was made out of flesh and bone, yet when it brushed skyscrapers as it ran through the canyons of New York City, it tore off huge chunks of concrete and steel from them, with no apparent damage to its own body.

But even more of a problem is the thermodynamics. When you consider how much power it would take to move that much mass at those speeds, and then consider how large the body was, with a very high mass-to-surface-area ratio, it seems impossible to cool it. The thing would basically cook from the inside out.

This is one of the limits on the size of warm-blooded animals, particularly if they're very active. We now believe that dinosaurs were warm blooded, but we have no reason to believe that they moved particularly fast, at least, not the large ones like apatasaurus.

Anyway, den Beste has a similar, and entertaining, series of posts about an upcoming movie featuring fire-breathing dragons, and how they'd be no match for modern weaponry.

Asimov wrote some interesting and amusing columns on the inverse cube law. He was discussing, if you can believe it, the old Irwin Allen TV show "Land of the Giants" and what was wrong with it (form a physicist's point of view, I mean). He also addressed giant ants and lizards in other fine documentary films of the period.

He also went in the other direction, and critiqued the miniturization angle. Especially interesting, given his connection to "Fantastic Voyage."

I was about to make the Asimov comment, but I see that Stephen Skubinna beat me to it. I remember reading very similar comments by Asimov in TV Guide years ago concerning the plausibility of the giant ants in Them. Apparently, it helps to have an endo-skeleton if you want to get that big.I believed Asimov, but Them, which I have on video tape, continues to be one of my favorite sci/fi movies.

Well for one thing, heat seeking missles would be all over a dragon. I have seen adverts for that new movie, is it any good? It is always funny when clever people try to examine movies from a scientific point of view. Most movies are total bollocks, with weak disjointed story-lines, weak plots that dont make sense in any way and in many cases continuity errors. This is why I loath movies (with very few exceptions) and rarely if ever go to the cinema. At least if its crap sci-fi on TV you don't have to pay for it.

1) Why do you think Godzilla has fire breath? It's to shed waste heat. Ok, that's pretty lame.

2) Why do you think Godzilla is always awakened from a deep sleep somewhere under water? I just made that part up. But it seemed like in the Godzilla 2000 movie (seriously, I don't really care about the actual title) he spent a lot of time swimming in the ocean and in the water around NYC.

Pretty fun stuff. Beats the hell out of kicking those warbloggerwatch guys and then having to clean off my boots afterward.

In the Japanese mythos Godzilla was established as a kind of walking nuclear reactor. In the 'last' Japanese Godzilla movie, Godzilla vs. Destoyah (on a cool double DVD with the earlier Godzilla vs. Space Godzilla {I'm not making this up}) his internal system was out of control and was on the verge of a meltdown that would consume a good portion of the planet. In the end it was arranged for him to die in a manner that only caused minor destruction. His offspring was killed off earlier in the movie but a Godzilla like silhouette is seen through the fog before the final fade out.

After the US Godzilla riled Japanese audiences they decided that the final scene in the last movie was a resurrected Jr. (apparently Dad's meltdown gave him a jumpstart)and he would now take up the reins of kicking monster and Tokyo butt.

It's fun to watch people who are better informed than I am pick apart MST3000 fodder like "Reign of Fire", but wouldn't one have to apply mythical physics to a mythical creature? I don't suppose it matters one way or the other, and I can understand that the smart people are tired of having their demographic under-serviced by the entertainment industry.

The US Godzilla was awful, an inexplicable thumb in the eye of the core Godzilla audience. It is puzzling to me just how often, and how arrogantly, the show business types feel free to tear apart cultural icons. Maybe it's caused by lots of hard drugs.