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25th Sep 2017

A very important Game of Thrones question may have been answered

Paul Moore

It’s destined to happen in Season 8.

Ned Stark dies. Come on, surely we’ve moved past the spoiler alert process at this stage? Ok, if you’re still catching up with the events of Season 7, consider this to be your warning.

The Seven Kingdoms is a big place, but it’s not big enough for three dragons that seemed destined for a collision course.

As we know, the Night King has resurrected a dragon as his own steed and now that the Wall has been destroyed, Westeros look set to descend into fiery carnage.

As the credits rolled on the season finale, The Wolf and the Dragon, plenty of fans had questions that needed to be answered but one of the biggest ones concerned what the Night King’s dragon, Viserion, was actually breathing. Was it ice or fire?

Jeremy Podeswa directed the episode and during an interview with  The Huffington Post he revealed that the dragon was actually breathing a new form of mystical fire from his mouth.

“The way I looked at it was, when the Sept burned down [in the season six finale], that was green fire, and so then the dragon is going to have some kind of blueish fire. It’s certainly still fire — it has the ability to burn the Wall and melt snow. But it’s going to have a different kind of magical quality to it, because it’s coming from an undead dragon” Podeswa said.

Ok, we knew that already but with so many epic showdowns to come in the final season, one spectacle has the potential to top them all. We all want to see Drogon vs Viserion, Daenerys vs The Night King, Fire vs Ice. The ultimate fight.

While no details are known about what’s in store for the final six episodes, we would be incredibly surprised if this showdown didn’t happen and if it does, who do you think would win?

In an effort to provide an answer to this question, Neil deGrasse Tyson has got the Maesters of the Internet talking about thermal physics.

Basically, the world of science has answered which dragon would spit the more powerful fire.

Apparently, blue flames are generally hotter than orange, yellow, or red ones, and this difference in temperature is due to the type of fuel that feeds the fire. As anyone that studied science for their GCSEs will know, there are two elements that are required for combustion to take place: fuel and oxygen.

The red/orange flames that Drogon and Rhaegal produce are actually an example of incomplete combustion. This is what happens when a fire doesn’t burn as hot as possible. Basically, there isn’t enough oxygen available to create a scorching flame. Granted, it’s still hot but it’s not the hottest that it could be.

As Inverse explain, blue flames are far more deadly because they “can only occur when there’s plenty of oxygen available to allow a flame to get super hot, and the fuel being burned doesn’t release too many additional chemicals during pyrolysis (the thermochemical decomposition of organic material at elevated temperatures in the absence of oxygen) that might lead to a different colored flame.”

Yes, this all sounds incredibly geeky, niche and scientific, but it could prove to be vital in Season 8.

In a nutshell, if the Game of Thrones creators abide by the laws of thermal physics, Viserion would kick Drogon’s ass in a flame-fight.

DRACARYS!