- Today we're talking about the popular series
built around a quest for a ring.
- SoFi Stadium.
Inglewood, California.
The site of Super Bowl LVI.
- The other popular series where people go after a ring.
- You're about to date the most men we've ever had.
- We're here for that!
[both laugh].
- The other other popular show about chasing a ring.
"The Rings of Power" tells the story of Middle Earth
before "The Lord of the Rings" and "The Hobbit" trilogies,
and it details how the different kingdoms came about.
Also, I'd like to point out the oliphaunt in the room.
I liked "Lord of the Rings" way before Jeff Bezos
bought the rights or The Washington Post.
Okay, now back to the show.
One of the season's high points occurs
when a henchman unlocks a dam,
sending water through a village and triggers a dormant volcano.
We find out this volcano -- spoiler alert --
becomes Mount Doom, where Sauron eventually creates the One Ring,
and the surrounding scorched countryside becomes Mordor.
But how scientifically sound is this volcanic scene?
- There's some things that they did pretty well,
and there's other things that, you know,
are a little artistic license, I would say.
- That's Mike Krawczynski,
who studies what volcanoes were like before they erupted.
He helped us parse out the actual volcano
science versus magic,
and he knows what he's "Tolkein" about.
The sequence of events begins
when the dam water rushes through the village,
setting off relatively smaller eruptions.
Turns out those outbursts are pretty accurate.
Krawczynski explained that groundwater
can come into contact with hot magma or hot rock,
which causes rapid boiling.
The change in volume of liquid to gas increases the pressure,
usually enough to cause an explosion.
This steam-driven blast is called a phreatic eruption,
and it looks a bit like that scene.
Think of it like opening a soda bottle.
If you open it slowly, gases seep out
and don't create an eruption.
But if you add pressure, the gases escape violently.
Perhaps the most dramatic part of episode six
is the explosion of Mount Doom.
A huge surge of water falls into the giant volcano,
setting off the massive explosion.
While adding surface water to a lava lake would create steam,
it wouldn't create enough pressure
for an explosion like that.
- That was what they were trying to re-create
with these steam explosions in the village right at the start,
is like a phreatic thing.
And then the water dumping in created something
that was unrealistically phreatic.
- As the volcano explodes in the show,
a shock wave is sent across the countryside.
That's actually very realistic.
That happened on January 15, 2022,
when the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai volcano
in the South Pacific erupted.
The volcano sent a shock wave around the world,
and the eruption was felt as far as Alaska,
about 5,000 miles away.
While the shock wave is realistic,
the other aspects of the explosion are not.
In an explosive event, volcanoes do eject rocks
and lava material in the air, called volcanic bombs.
They can crash to the ground and create mini craters.
But it's unlikely large chunks would actually travel
as far as they did in the show.
- There's just no way that a normal eruption,
even a big eruption on Earth,
would have enough energy to throw rocks that far.
- The most dangerous hazard from a volcanic explosion
isn't typically the lava, but the ash.
Columns of ash get launched upwards
and then immediately ride the slopes of the volcano.
This ash flow, called a pyroclastic flow,
moves very fast.
- That's what ultimately destroyed Pompeii,
was when that Vesuvian column collapsed.
It's those pyroclastic flows that went out
and buried everything.
- Overall, "The Rings of Power"
teaches us a great deal about volcanology.
One, a waterfall would not trigger a massive eruption.
But groundwater coming into contact with the hot magma
could create enough pressure for the volcano to erupt.
Two, volcanoes do eject rocks and lava material,
but not that far away in such large chunks.
And three, Mount Doom is fake.
We know there was a lot of information here,
and we're so "Galadriel" you made it.
If you want to learn more about the science in the series,
read our article in the description below.