weird were wolf thoughts

[thegayhare]

The recent DMFA comic, as well as the Arthronauts comic got me thinking about something.  well a couple of somethings realy

mainly mass shifting.  I  use werewolves cause in most fiction the were form is larger then the human form to some extent.  while magic would sufice to explain it I was daydreaming and thought of another possibility. 

My Idea is based on the science fiction of shrink rays.  If say a tank is shrunk to the size of a toy my most explanations I've seen it would still have the same mass , and there for the same weight as the tank this being that shrink rays work on the concept that atoms are comprised of mostly empty space and if you could some how reduce the amount of empty space while maintaining the stability of the atom you get shrinkage

so my thought is the werewolfs extra mass is hidden in it's density.  So when something shifts into a form thats larger then it it sacrifices it's density for that extra mass.  Now since most creatures that can grow are strong in the larger forms, able to endure some intense punishment that means the human forms would need to be far more dense then your average human in order to make up for all that bio mass.  How ever this would lead to some interesting problems.   one being human form   werewolves couldn't swim  simply put being that dense they would sink like a stone.  which would make for a good werewolf test,  how ever if a 5 foot tall scrawny man  weighs about 800 pounds, that would also be a dead give away and they would need to be almost constantly eating yough in a compact form they would still have all that extra biomass they'd need to fuel.  also it would be much harder to hurt a shifter in human form I think the denser bode would stand up to damage better I think,  course this wouild also make benificial things harder like surgery.  they should also be able to deal out more damage in the human form I'd think.  think about it due to there mass a punch from one would feel like getting hit with a sledge hammer. *same concept as disc world pictsies each one has the strength of a full grown man in the body the size of a gi joe"

Now I know my science isn't sound or real but I don't care this is a sciencefictional/ mad scientist explanation of a magical phenomenon  so guys what do you think? 

[Alondro]

The high-density human form would be unable to process biomolecules in a normal fashion.  Higher density requires molecular compression, meaning that the enzymes, membrane channels, and intercellular spaces would all be compacted, slowing down transport of substances dramatically, restricting blood flow, causing nerve compression, gas and bloating... basically not a pretty picture.

The 'little human into big wuff' type of werewolf is utterly impossible outside of 'a wizard did it' level explanation.  Now, the classic 1950's movie werewolf, with just some facial hair, fangs and claws, that might fit into the edges of science reality.  It'd still require vast amount of energy to complete such a rapid transformation.  And the hair and nails would have to fall out afterward, since they're composed of keratin which can't exactly retract back into the body.

[AmberCross]

As Alondro pointed out, having a very high density human just does not work on a number of levels. Plus in nearly every case I've seen, the bigger version wolf is always more powerful than the smaller version human anyway. More practical than mass conservation I think would be mass conversion to energy. When in human form, the extra mass is converted to energy that is for the most part inaccessible to the werewolf. The energy would be tapped into, triggered by the radiation bouncing off the moon, whatever to put the energy back into wolf form mass. I don't really know how the energy conversion would work, but then we don't really know how you'd change the density of a werewolf either, so I figure this theory is on par with yours for scientific detail and doesn't have any (or at least not the same) issues the high density human model would have. Tests for this kind of werewolf might be high body temperature, maybe they give off some energy signature, and a few other similar ideas.

[Alondro]

Good lord, that level of mass-energy conversion would be along the scale of matter-antimatter mutual annihilation!  Do you know how much energy can be released from just a single gram of mass converted to energy?  Several hundred kilo's worth would be enough energy release to decimate the entire surface life of the planet and vaporize all matter for hundreds of miles radius in every direction!

To keep the being alive for such a thing even once would require unthinkably intricate control of the process; werewolves would be more or less gods!

Not to mention, moonlight is nothing more than less-intense reflected sunlight.  There's nothing remarkable about it at all.

The only way the 'puny human into giant wuff' thing works is if the process is unidirection, proceeds slowly over a reasonable physiologic time-frame, and is an irreversible augmentation of physiology from human into anthro-lupine.  Once a wolfman, you're stuck that way for the rest of your life.

[AmberCross]

Yes, I am quite aware of how much energy would come from even so much as a gram. The point of this isn't to find lots of reasons why werewolves can't possibly exist because of science, but to find a way that they COULD exist. Since they can't really exist in actuality, this means looking for a sufficiently technobabbly plausible sounding reason that will get you far enough to handwave the rest of it away.