Only smaller than his adult human size, but in a sub-atomic world of sub-atomic humanoids he can grow all the way back to full size or anything in-between. Antman could do the same thing, but added the ability to grow further than his ordinary human size as Giant Man. I also remember getting my introduction to the Atom with an extra long comic book titled the ‘Giant Atom’ of course.
I am curious about this. I can’t think of an obvious reason why lack of gravity would prevent clotting. Googling “blood clotting” and “zero gravity” finds me articles about things like increased risk of blood clots in the neck due to a shift in the way blood is distributed through the body in zero gravity. What am I missing?
IIRC, the tribunal wasn’t judging humanity on moral grounds but on the simple pragmatic position of “are these savages going to wreak havoc once they leave their solar system?”
The novelization of Fantastic Voyage had some technobabble about the shrinking being accomplished by a higher-dimensional displacement which made the shrunken object effectively “further away” from normal 3-D space.
A Chief Petty Officer in the Navy or Coast Guard isn’t commissioned, and, IIUC, is referred to as “Chief”; I always assumed that’s what O’Brien was.
Intravascular lood clotting, and in particular disseminated intravascular coagulation are real problems in freefall conditions and is one of the major concerns with passengers in less-than-great health or with undetected vascular or cardiopulmonary conditions. This is internal to the body, though, and not caused wounding or by any exposure to air.
With open wounds and invasive surgery the lack of prompt clotting at the wound intrusion results in ahemostasis (uncontrolled blood loss) which can be exacerbated by hemorrhagic diathesis (susceptibility to excessive bleeding through a number of causes including dilution of or malformation of platelet cells) which is often experienced by astronauts who spend a long duration in freefall. This is managed on Earth by a combination of applying pressure to the wound and sponging or suctioning blood away to facilitate the natural clotting process. Under gravity, blood can only form very small drop size before its weight exceeds the lateral adhesion to the skin, and with constriction or removal of excess blood it forms a thin layer that is exposed to air which causes platelets to promptly convert fibrinogen into fibrin (in casual language, to become ‘sticky’ and aggregate) resulting in a ‘coagulation cascade’ that stops non-arterial bleeding in small cuts or with firm pressure on larger wounds. (My apologies to hematologists who will want to respond that the process of the intrinsic and extrinsic pathways to activate clotting factors is far more complicated than that but entire textbooks have been written on that topic alone, so I’m not even going to try to summarize it here.)
However, in freefall conditions, a continuous bolus of blood will grow indefinitely from the wound site without collapsing, and with even a minor wound will bleed faster than clotting factors can activate. This means that even minor wounds require pressure bandages to staunch bleeding, and serious wounds or surgery require external hemostatic agents, pressure, and/or suction to try to stop the flow of blood faster than platelets can agglomerate. With a large enough hemorrhage, even injecting hemostatic agents might not result in fast enough coagulation to staunch a large wound. The long and short is that even wounds that would be minor on Earth can be serious in space (especially given the aseptic conditions in freefall with pathogens just flowing around everywhere rather than falling down to surfaces that can be sanitized), and serious wounds that are reducible in an Earthside clinical setting or with good field aid can progress to being life-threatening very quickly.
Stranger
Regarding blood clotting in zero gravity - Very interesting and informative. Thanks, Stranger!
Regarding superheroes who shrink, what if they are like a human TARDIS, with the ability to become smaller on the outside, but remaining full scale on the inside? (I know it’s just a new flavor of handwavium, and still fails to explain how they could breathe or see when tinier than an atom, but to me it is at least a funnier “rationalization”.)
How would this be any different then just… being on a planet? Gravity is higher for my feet than it is for my head on Earth, too - granted, its a difference that’s too small for me to detect, but if a spaceship is generating a 1g field on the “floor” of a spaceship, surely it would also be a difference that’s too small for me to detect?
Any matter shrinking ‘tech’ has such a massive host of problems in physics, chemistry, thermodynamics, physiology, et cetera that it is better to just treat it like magic and not really think about it. In fact, virtually all superhero powers and technologies are essentially impossible given even a cursory knowledge of physics, and trying to rationalize them will just make your head hurt, or send you on a psychedelic mind trip.
The original cast movies (II through VI) had unique uniforms for commissioned officers and enlisted personnel (the officers had the double-breasted maroon jackets with wide leather belts and bloused black trousers with a stripe, enlisted had tan and red jumpsuits). The Next Generation didn’t have big distinctions although after they switched from the original one-piece suits with shoulder piping to two piece with solid black shoulders, the ‘old’ uniforms were occasionally used to indicate enlisted personnel, but the difference is so subtle most viewers didn’t get it.
In general, the rank structure and duty assignments of Starfleet make little sense; on Next Generation the ship’s second officer often takes the helm station even though it is otherwise staffed by an ensign. Department heads are of various ranks from Lieutenant Junior Grade to Commander, and almost nobody gets promoted and moved to other assignments over a ~7 year period, which means that other junior officers aren’t getting opportunities to develop and more experienced officers aren’t being best utilized for their development. Scotty somehow ends up being the “Captain of Engineering” which is not a thing in any navy, and Kirk’s ‘punishment’/reward for saving the entire planet from the Whale Avenger is being reduced in rank back to Captain and assigned command of what at that point must be one of the older and less capable ships designs in the fleet after nearly getting his previous ship destroyed in an obvious sneak attack and then hijacking and destructing the ship in the next film.
Stranger
I think if the Enterprise was the Starfleet equivalent of Golgafrinchan Ark Fleet Ship B, they wouldn’t have armed it with phasers and photon torpedoes. The Earth is part of an interstellar civilization (The Federation) in a galaxy teaming with other civilizations (some quite hostile). I don’t think they would give the Federation’s mission of interstellar gunboat diplomacy to a bunch of misfits and and fuckups. At least, no more than the typical level of misfits and fuckups that join the military.
There is also the problem that being shrunk to the scale of an atom would result in electrodynamic forces dominating over gravity, and if you “go subatomic” you’re now directly dealing with some bizarre arrangement of leptons, quarks, and gauge bosons in ways that defy everyday macroscale experience. You really just have to treat shrinking technology as some kind of magic because it can’t be made workable by any sensible physics.
On the contrary, my thesis is that they take all of the malcontents, hyperactives, and those incapable of grasping elementary particle dynamics that are normally mastered in primary school, run them through the “Academy” where they are told how brilliant they are and how important their mission is, and then chucked into spacecraft that are so obviously capable of autonomous exploration that you’d have to be virtually insensate to not appreciate how supernumerary the crew is. They’re sent off on ‘adventures’ where they interact with “strange new worlds” but told not to make contact with any culture that isn’t already in interstellar space (implying that there is a compact between all advanced societies to do essentially the same thing) and then presented with challenges and threats that, as far as an objective viewer can tell, may be completely fabricated by the ships computer using a combination of visual editing, fake scans and data, and holographic projection of “away missions”.
The inconsistency in the appearance and behavior of various alien species is just further evidence that this is all a constructed fantasy whose production regularly switches hands to people with different ideas about worldbuilding and story narrative. That ‘Q’ pops up everywhere is a further indication of an unlikely continuity that should be suspicious to any person of critical thinking but which the members of the Starfleet just take as a normal thing that happens between time warps, crystalline space monsters, extradimensional parasites, and being routinely diced into component atoms and reassembled thousands of kilometers away in what is presumably some cromulent simulacrum of the form they were copied from, presumably with any disturbing memories or independent thoughts purged so that they remain bumbling and compliant participants believing themselves to take an active role in resolving the current plot even though they are utterly dependent upon the computer to do any kind of data analysis or provide them with critical information. Don’t even get me started on Dr. Crusher, who ought to be able to regenerate or repair any injury with her advanced medical technology but struggles to diagnose a simple musculoskeletal injury and yet is still appointed to be the head of Starfleet Medical.
These are definitely “B Ark” people. Except Sisco; he’s in on the entire thing, and in fact may be using it to help write his story.
Stranger
Not in the beginning. He had lieutenant pips and was called “Lieutenant” in early appearances.
Making him officially an NCO was answering a question no one was asking.
“Transporter chief” is a job title, not an adjective-rank. Lt. Kyle was one identified transporter chief in TOS.
You can do it all with Unstable Molecules. Just ask Stan Lee.
Not to mention a Yeoman or three.
Unstable molecules might also explain Miles O’Brien’s shifting ranks 
I think it is parallel universes. Yes, that’s the ticket.
Or quantum reality. His rank is determined by the opinions of the observer. His true rank is determined by the superposition of all observers’ choices.
Well, the reason you don’t feel a difference between your head and your feet is that you are 3960+ miles away from the source of gravity - the centre of the Earth. If the gravity source was just under your feet then the gravity gradient would be much steeper.
For instance, a ten-million-tonne black hole located one foot below your feet would create a gravity field of 0.72 gees on your feet, but only 0.014 gees on your head.
This is an extreme case, but since gravity is a distortion in spacetime, you have to somehow spread the gravity source out evenly below the floor- and this leads to uncomfortable effects at the edge of the room, and the problem that people in the next floor down would be walking on the ceiling. If you try to catch an elevator down to the floor underneath the gravity generators, you will find yourself standing on your head.
I have suggested in the past that anti-gravity could be simulated by suspending an earth sized mass directly over head. For some reason I keep getting told that it wouldn’t work because of tides. I don’t see why anyone would assume it has to be a dense matter mass of some kind, or even if they do why they think it is the major flaw in this idea.
- Find earth sized mass
- ??
- anti-gravity!
Well, we have a handy Earth-sized mass nearby, called Venus. You could try suspending Venus above a chosen location on Earth, and you’d get some pretty impressive antigravity there for the few seconds before the two planets crash into each other.