gollum lord of the rings falling into volcano

Okay, let’s try a bigger hole, about the size of the opening to the Mount Doom chamber in the movie. Obi-Wan Kenobi and Darth Vader duel on Mustafar. A small hole will provide minimal heat loss. How hot is it in the cave? Well, it’s still the temperature of the magma, throughout the entire cave, including all rock surfaces and the air. But let’s ignore that and pretend there is no pressure differential and, thus, no eruption. In the real world, what you get is a volcanic eruption as the pressure on the magma is released and it boils away exactly as what happens in a shaken soda-can when suddenly opened. How hot is the air above the magma? It is still the same temperature as the magma: there’s no where for the heat to go (technically, there is heat flow through the rock but it is very low.) Now, let’s cut a tiny window into this cave. Let’s expand that pocket of gas to the size of, say, the Mount Doom cave. How hot is that pocket of gas? Why, just as hot as the magma because it will be heated by the magma and can’t dissipate much heat into the insulating rock. Now, imagine a small gas cavity at the top of the magma. In fact, it will start altering and melting the adjacent rock, an effect you can see at the edges of granitic intrusions (plutons) that have weathered to the surface. Everything in that pool of molten rock will be pretty much at the same temperature (about 700 to 1200 degrees C, per Wikipedia.) This is because it’s a very hot body enclosed in a very good insulator (lots of rock). Shouldn’t really be too hot, should it? Alas, Sam, Frodo and Gollum would have been cooked the moment they stepped into that cave, unless there was some magical protection that was unmentioned in book or movie.Īs a thought experiment, imagine a magma chamber underground. They were sweating but the bridge is high and the cave is large.

Remember the scene inside Mount Doom where Frodo and Gollum wrestle for the ring? In the movie, they are in a mostly enclosed space, on a bridge high over the lava.

the climb isn’t hard, but it’s a long way up a pretty steep slope of loose ashes and rubble not the most enjoyable terrain to hike on. the famous “tongariro crossing” hike goes past it but not to the top. Mount Ngauruhoe aka Mount Doom n the lord of the rings movies, this is a very regularly shaped active volcano in tongariro national park.

Gollum lord of the rings falling into volcano