This is an I-Hart podcast.

Guaranteed Human.

If humans ran as many body lengths per second as a mite, we'd generate a sonic boom.

What are the factors that determine how fast a critter can go zoom?

Creatures in movies grow too fast, grelins and aliens just aren't plausible. But let's do a thought

experiment. Could you design a creature to grow as fast as possible? Do smaller animals have

shorter lives because of the curve of space and time?

And if they lived long enough, would Daniel and Kelly ever get good with rhyme?

No.

No.

From solved.

But whatever questions keep you up at night, Daniel and Kelly's answers will make it all right.

Welcome to Listener Questions Episode 44, featuring Dr. John Hutchinson.

Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist who likes to think about aliens, and I'm still growing in all the wrong directions.

Same. Hi, I'm Kelly Wiener-Smith. I study parasites and space, and I've never been fast. No one has ever said, will Kelly break a speed record?

The answer is no. I'm also not very fast, and my wife, she's fit, but either of us are speed demons. However, we somehow birthed a child who is very athletic and is now like running in college,

and I don't know what happened.

Cosmic Ray mutations swap at the hospital, something.

Biology is really complicated and life tells us that.

Exactly. Will your kid be like you? It depends. And you hope not.

For their sake. For their sake.

You hope they get all the best of you and all the best of your partner. That's right. And today we're going to be marrying our knowledge with the knowledge of Dr. John Hutchinson, who knows a lot more about evolutionary biomechanics than we do.

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