The White Council

Re: Dragon Breath

Tolkien and Inklings Discussion

: : Thank you for your physics discourse. Now, as an encore, would you care to describe the creature, known as 'dragon', that could possibly contain and exhale flame at the temperatures you define? 'No magic involved' (your stipulation, not mine). : : Or are we maybe overthinking this a bit?

: I wasnt' trying to be fasicous in the least. Just trying to wrap tangibles around an otherwise untangible idea of just how hot things would have to get to melt metal. Let's just say that I like facts to support the "otherworldly" and not cast about in the dark. I did the same thing in an earlier post for the dwarves mining in Khazad Dum to figure out how much ore the dwarves could reasonably mine. Turns out the Professor has a pretty tightly wrapped universe that adheres to the greater laws of physics, and that almost everything that happened is not just a fantasy concotion but entirely conceiveable.

: However, I did come across a potential discription of dragons and how they breath fire and fly. It works something like this (though the physics is shaky at best):

: A dragon is built a lot like a bird, in that their bones are very light, very strong and very hollow. Within the dragon's stomach lining are pouches like a hot air ballon, which is made to trap gasses. Dragons devour gem stones and some other mineral which are esentially a carbonites (i think) and when mixed with stomach acids forms a lighter then air gas that is trapped in the stomach pouches. Thus the dragon is able to lift bulky weight off teh ground and propel itself with less then adequate wings. The description went on to say that in order to descend, and avoid rupturing something, the dragon would esentially belch out the gas. The author devised a sorta electrical outlet in the roof of the dragons mouth called "Thor's Thimble". As we are all aware there is a small amount of electricity running through every living creatures body. In the dragon, Thor's Thimble acts as a catalyst for the gasses and ignites them, thus dragons breath fire. When you consider that there are fire-breathers in side show acts who don't get harmed in belching fire, the idea is pretty much the same thing.

: Now, I don't know if belching gasses and igniting them with electricity would result in temperatures as those described in my previous post, but then, this description wasn't mine. Though it does make a kind of logic.

: Any other requests?

: -RobRoy

This theory, though conceivable, is not 'critic proof', as an alternative solution, one concept comes to mind: Supernatural Maedhros