Comments on: Some Thoughts on Aquaman #21

By: plunge

plunge — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 22:46:35 +0000

No weight bearing exercise? I would think being under that much pressure all the time would put plenty of pressure on the skeletal system: maybe too much. Wouldn’t long term exposure to high pressure cause joint problems in normal humans?

By: Dotan Dimet

Dotan Dimet — Mon, 18 Oct 2004 15:43:41 +0000

Returning to your point about the gills, say that the genetic difference between humans and Atlanteans isn’t gills but something in their hemoglobin, which is modified in Atlanteans (or in Aquaman) to draw oxygen much more efficiently from the water (similar to the fluorocarbon blood in The Abyss?)
This would (as a sidenote) explain how the mad scientist picked up the water-breathing gene from Aquaman’s DNA – it’s located exactly where the human genes for hemoglobin are found.
But if I recall correctly, a fetus expresses a different type of hemoglobin, which allows it to draw oxygen from the mother’s blood (it competes with her hemoglobin, if you will). This would cause serious problems if the mother was a water-breather and the child was an air breather, because her blood would bind the oxygen more effectively than the infant’s.

Or maybe it’s really gills that they use.

By: scott

scott — Fri, 08 Oct 2004 20:02:02 +0000

Yeah, he may not touch it, but he’d still be swimming in the meconium.

I suspect there would be increased osteoporosis in an aquatic environment. There’s still gravity, so it wouldn’t be as much as astronauts, but the quasi-weightlessness would still cause problems.

By: Avril

Avril — Fri, 08 Oct 2004 19:45:48 +0000

Maybe the doctor is wearing gloves because he doesn’t like the feel of new-baby slime? (vernix, meuconium, etc.)
Would the people underwater suffer from the same loss of bone mass as astronauts? (due to lack of weight bearing exercise). Combined with low sunlight, would there be an increase in osteoporosis as well as rickets?

By: Jon Silpayamanant

Jon Silpayamanant — Thu, 07 Oct 2004 23:44:14 +0000

very nice!