The Season 7 of Game of Thrones culminated in an unanticipated scenario of the Night King’s army assembling near the Wall. Shortly thereafter, he descended from the skies and suddenly attacked the Wall.
He was emboldened by the fact that he had got one of the Dragons of Daenerys’. During her rescue of Jon and his group, Daenerys lost Viserion to the Night King although she managed to save the stranded party.
The Night King’s Dead Men retrieved him and he was then converted into a Wight Dragon by him.
He used Viserion to attack the Wall and the Wight Dragon didn’t face much difficulty to melt it. The Dragon atomized the Wall and that made large portions of it tumble down. This created a passage for the Dead Army into Westeros.
This incident has created a great point of debate among the GoT fans. What was it that Viserion was breathing? Did he breathe Ice or Fire? The problem was finally solved by Neil DeGrasse Tyson when he came on Twitter. Initially he talked about the brilliant handling of the physics that went into the making of Drogon and his flight style.
Thereafter, he tackled the burning question about what exactly did Viserion breathe? While some of the fans have been calling him an Ice Dragon, others call him a Wight Dragon. He is indeed a Wight Dragon, but, several of the Game of Thrones crew members refer to him as ‘Ice Dragon’ and it is also to be noted that he mouthed blue flames.
“Whereas common dragons (considering that Dragons can ever be common) breathe flame, ice dragons supposedly breathe cold, a chill so terrible that it can freeze a man solid in half a heartbeat.”
However, one look at the impact of his breath makes you believe that it has to be something extremely hot or else the Wall won’t have gone down tumbling like that.
This is what Paula Fairfield, the person who put in place the audio on the first frightening flight of Viserion, had to say about the topic:
“He’s just going at it and slicing with this. .it’s kind of like liquid nitrogen. It’s so, so cold. So imagine if that’s what it was, but it’s so cold it’s hot. That kind of thing.”
However, all the confusion was ultimately cleared by Tyson. As per his tweet:
“Intriguing Thermal Physics in #GameOfThrones: Blue Dragon breath would be at least a factor of 3X hotter than Red Dragon breath”
So that’s it guys! The bluer the flame, the hotter it is.
“cherry, clear” red flame burns at 1,000 °C (1,800 °F) and the oxyacetylene process (which you might have seen if you have used some blowtorches) “produces a [blue] flame over 3,000 degrees C, by combustion of pure oxygen and acetylene.”
