Ability to exist a 200 meter high ice wall under physical view

Over 200 meters tall, nearly 500 kilometers long can repel the giant in the novel will soon collapse if built on Earth.

The great ice wall helps repel the giants and zombies in the movie "Game of Thrones". However, a new study showing the existence of this wall is impractical because it will soon collapse, Live Science reported yesterday.

The giant ice barrier is simply called the "wall" in the 215-meter-high, 480-kilometer film and has a large enough surface for more than a dozen horse riders to stand side by side. One of the 9 wonders of humans as described in George RR Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" series (the original of the film), the wall was built by a legendary character who was the builder of Brandon. with the help of giants. The purpose of building walls is to protect the northern border of the seven kingdoms.

The massive ice wall in the movie "Game of Thrones".(Photo: HBO).

But how big is such a large ice wall really? The problem is that the ice can flow , according to Martin Truffer, a researcher and research author at Alaska Fairbanks University.

Truffer calculates the weight of a wall of ice about 200 meters high, producing nearly 1.8 pressure megapascals on the wall. For comparison, the usual pressure for ice to flow on the glacier is only 0.1 megapascal."I just skimmed some simple equations to determine how the wall would deform under its own weight , " Live Science quoted Truffer.

While Truffer emphasized this study as a fun exercise, Truffer said it has many practical applications."Equations can be applied to examining polar ice cap behavior on Mars , " Truffer said.

The deformation wall speed will depend largely on the ambient air . "Because there are forests surrounding the wall, the temperature cannot be cold to -10 degrees Celsius. At that temperature, the wall will quickly collapse within a few months, or even days , " Truffer concluded. .

One way to keep the wall stable is to make the temperature drop sharply. For example, a temperature of -40 degrees C will help reduce the pressure on the wall to be down by about 100 times."There are some places on Earth that are so cold, like some parts of Antarctica," Truffer said.

However, even when cooled to -40 degrees Celsius, the wall will still collapse a lot within a few years."The novel says the wall is about 8,000 years old and after 1,000 years it will be flattened. I conclude that such a wall of ice is not a viable defensive measure under normal conditions on Earth. Special magic to keep its shape, even for a few days, " Truffer reported on the discovery at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in New Orleans on 11 December.