  The rapid collapse of a polymer, due to external forces or changes in
solvent, yields a long-lived `crumpled globule.' The conjectured fractal
structure shaped by hierarchical collapse dynamics has proved difficult to
establish, even with large simulations. To unravel this puzzle, we study a
coarse-grained model of in-falling spherical blobs that coalesce upon contact.
Distances between pairs of monomers are assigned upon their initial
coalescence, and do not `equilibrate' subsequently. Surprisingly, the model
reproduces quantitatively the dependence of distance on segment length,
suggesting that the slow approach to scaling is related to the wide
distribution of blob sizes.
