# The science in Game of Thrones **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [June 21, 2011, 3:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-science-in-game-of-thrones/586245 "2011-06-21T03:37:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Scribble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scribble/32/3317_2.png) [@Scribble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scribble)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2011, 3:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-science-in-game-of-thrones/586245/1 "2011-06-21T03:37:45Z")
I have a few questions about the science of the world in Game of Thrones. Yes, I know I need a life: **1. The solar system** What kind of whacked-out orbit does the planet have, that summers and winters each last for years? And what kind of adaptations do living things have to deal with these long periods of single seasons? How do humans manage to survive in conditions like that, especially in the north, where there’s snow even in summer? What are the global wind and water currents like? Within each summer and winter, is there a rainy season and a dry season? If so, why does it always seem to be so snowy by the wall, but never rainy at King’s Landing? **2. Plant assemblages** All right. So, we’ve seen maples and birches in the forest. I think we’ve also seen something in the chestnut family, and what looked to me like some ferns. What other plants are there? Where are the farms, and what plants are the main food source for the people on this weird planet with its multi-year growing seasons? And what family is the godswood tree in? **3. Dragons** _A. Dragon evo-devo questions:_ When Drogo gives Dany the dragon eggs, it’s clear they have scales on them. Why do the eggs have a layer of ectoderm on the outside? In the last episode, when we see baby dragons, we see that the structure of the dragon wing is much like that of a bat; the thumb is made into a hook, and the wing itself is a dermal membrane stretched across four elongated fingers. What clade of the Reptilia is this, such that it independently evolved basically the same wing structure as that found in the Chiroptera? What’s a dragon’s skull structure like? Are dragons anapsids? _B. Dragon physiology and ecology_ What organ makes that shrieking noise? What’s the incubation period for the eggs? Apparently, the eggs were sitting around for a long, long time before their environment got either hot enough or dry enough (or both) to get the eggs to hatch. What’s the environmental cue that gets the eggs to hatch, and how do the baby dragons inside the eggs stay alive while waiting for that cue? In what environment did dragons evolve? Are dragons a bit like bristlecone pines, in that they’re adapted to dry forests with periodic fires? What’s the expected biogeographic distribution of dragons at this point? Are they globally extinct in the world of Game of Thrones, or are they merely locally extinct within the Seven Kingdoms? How many species of dragon are there, anyway? ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2011, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-science-in-game-of-thrones/586245/2 "2011-06-21T03:45:08Z")
> [@Scribble](#): > > What kind of whacked-out orbit does the planet have, that summers and winters each last for years? All you need is a slower wobble. The Earth doesn’t have winter and summer because of our orbit, it has it because the equator doesn’t stay aligned with the Sun. > [@](#): > > And what kind of adaptations do living things have to deal with these long periods of single seasons? How do humans manage to survive in conditions like that, especially in the north, where there’s snow even in summer? Presumably in the same way that Eskimo, Sami, etc. do. > [@](#): > > What are the global wind and water currents like? Within each summer and winter, is there a rainy season and a dry season? If so, why does it always seem to be so snowy by the wall, but never rainy at King’s Landing? Wind isn’t particularly affected by the wobble of the Earth, I don’t believe. ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2011, 3:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-science-in-game-of-thrones/586245/3 "2011-06-21T03:53:04Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > All you need is a slower wobble. The Earth doesn’t have winter and summer because of our orbit, it has it because the equator doesn’t stay aligned with the Sun. That’s not correct. Our seasons are a combination of (a) the earth’s axial tilt, and (b) its annual orbit around the sun. The Earth doesn’t “wobble”; it rotates on the same axis, tilted 23.4 degrees from the “ecliptic plane” (the plane which the Earth follows as it orbits the Sun). > **[Axial tilt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_Axis#Obliquity)** > > In astronomy, axial tilt, also known as obliquity, is the angle between an object's rotational axis and its orbital axis, which is the line perpendicular to its orbital plane; equivalently, it is the angle between its equatorial plane and orbital plane. It differs from orbital inclination. > At an obliquity of 0 degrees, the two axes point in the same direction; that is, the rotational axis is perpendicular to the orbital plane. > The rotational axis of Earth, for example, is the imaginary line t... Both of these are constant, and the combination of these are what produces the predictability of the Earth’s seasons – it’s why winter, in the Northern Hemisphere, always starts around December 21st, and spring always starts around March 21st. Those seasons always occur in the same places in the Earth’s orbit around the sun. ---
**Author:** ![NAF1138](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/naf1138/32/3245_2.png) [@NAF1138](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NAF1138)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2011, 3:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-science-in-game-of-thrones/586245/4 "2011-06-21T03:59:01Z")
> [@Scribble](#): > > What kind of whacked-out orbit does the planet have, that summers and winters each last for years? Not the answer you are looking for, but not threadshitting I swear. GRRM has addressed this, sort of, and the answer is…a magical one. The book isn’t SciFi and makes no attempt to have good science behind the central conceits. It’s a fantasy, and if any explanation is ever given for the odd things like the seasons it will be a magical and non scientific explanation. Carry on with the rest of the speculation for fun, but this is more or less the authors answer so it should probably be in the thread somewhere. The world works primarily like Earth, only with magic and fucked up seasons. Summer is summer, winter is winter and they are what you would expect of summer and winter. Long winters are particularly bad, long summers particularly nice. There is no real rhyme or reason (as far as the characters know and that’s all the audience ever gets to find out) for why the seasons aren’t a fixed length. Living through the long winter is hard and many don’t survive, but the winters don’t kill everything and summer comes eventually and life starts anew. Ok, since that isn’t really any fun for the purpose of the thread I will hop off in some other direction. ---
**Author:** ![blue\_infinity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/blue_infinity/32/2817_2.png) [@blue\_infinity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blue_infinity)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2011, 4:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-science-in-game-of-thrones/586245/5 "2011-06-21T04:09:07Z")
> [@Scribble](#): > > What kind of whacked-out orbit does the planet have, that summers and winters each last for years? If their sun was significanly hotter than ours, then the habitable zone around that sun would be further out. Jupiter’s orbit is ten of our years long, Saturn’s is thirty. So if Westeros is orbiting somewhere in that range, they could have decade long summers, winters. ---
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2011, 4:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-science-in-game-of-thrones/586245/6 "2011-06-21T04:14:05Z")
> [@Scribble](#): > > What kind of whacked-out orbit does the planet have, that summers and winters each last for years? A wizard did it > [@](#): > > And what kind of adaptations do living things have to deal with these long periods of single seasons? A wizard did it > [@](#): > > How do humans manage to survive in conditions like that, especially in the north, where there’s snow even in summer? A wizard did it > [@](#): > > What are the global wind and water currents like? A wizard did it > [@](#): > > Within each summer and winter, is there a rainy season and a dry season? A wizard did it > [@](#): > > If so, why does it always seem to be so snowy by the wall, but never rainy at King’s Landing? A wizard did it (And so forth.) ---
**Author:** ![Omniscient](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/omniscient/32/3290_2.png) [@Omniscient](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omniscient)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2011, 4:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-science-in-game-of-thrones/586245/7 "2011-06-21T04:33:15Z")
> [@NAF1138](#): > > Not the answer you are looking for, but not threadshitting I swear. GRRM has addressed this, sort of, and the answer is…a magical one. The book isn’t SciFi and makes no attempt to have good science behind the central conceits. It’s a fantasy, and if any explanation is ever given for the odd things like the seasons it will be a magical and non scientific explanation. > > Carry on with the rest of the speculation for fun, but this is more or less the authors answer so it should probably be in the thread somewhere. The world works primarily like Earth, only with magic and fucked up seasons. Summer is summer, winter is winter and they are what you would expect of summer and winter. Long winters are particularly bad, long summers particularly nice. There is no real rhyme or reason (as far as the characters know and that’s all the audience ever gets to find out) for why the seasons aren’t a fixed length. Living through the long winter is hard and many don’t survive, but the winters don’t kill everything and summer comes eventually and life starts anew. > > Ok, since that isn’t really any fun for the purpose of the thread I will hop off in some other direction. In the books do they establish a timeline for the seasons? I’ve only seen the shows, but they say that winter comes unexpectedly and for an unknown period of time. Is that really true, or is it’s just outside of the knowledge of the uneducated in the books? Do the Maesters of the Citadel have a catalog of the seasons going back thousands of years? Could they identify a rhythm if they were smart enough to? Is it possible that you could fanwank a astronomical explanation for the seasons outside of magic? ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2011, 4:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-science-in-game-of-thrones/586245/8 "2011-06-21T04:43:12Z")
You might as well ask for scientific explanations for LOTR. ASOIAF is explicitly, overtly fantasy. It has magic in it. The magic is much more subdued than what we’re accustomed to in fantasy - it’s rare and muted enough that even a lot of the characters are skeptical about its existence, but it’s there. GRRM says it’s there, and you either accept the premise or you don’t. There’s no point in trying to fanwank sci-fi explanations, though. That’s not the genre. It’s not our universe. ---
**Author:** ![Kamino\_Neko](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kamino_neko/32/34_2.png) [@Kamino\_Neko](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kamino_Neko)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2011, 5:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-science-in-game-of-thrones/586245/9 "2011-06-21T05:11:18Z")
> [@Omniscient](#): > > Do the Maesters of the Citadel have a catalog of the seasons going back thousands of years? Could they identify a rhythm if they were smart enough to? I’m only about 1/4 of the way through Clash of Kings, so I can’t say for sure but, with that caveat… It’s entirely possible that they _can_ - they’ve almost certainly got the records, though it’s less certain they actually LOOK at them (but I’m judging this by the state of the Night’s Watch’s library…the Citadel and most holdfasts probably keep theirs up better) - but if there is a discernible pattern, nobody in the books (including the various Maesters) has seemed to look into it any more closely than they need to to learn the signs that the seasons are about to change. But, the general consensus in-universe seems to be that there’s no pattern - whether that’s the result of looking and not finding, or if they simply decided so and never bothered looking, I don’t know. ---
**Author:** ![JSexton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/96bed5/32.png) [@JSexton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JSexton)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2011, 5:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-science-in-game-of-thrones/586245/10 "2011-06-21T05:20:18Z")
The world has essentially a scientist caste with obsessive record keeping. If there was a historical pattern to summer and winter, we would have seen references to the Maesters Almanac. Since we haven’t, ergo one does not exist. Ergo, there is no pattern. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2011, 7:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-science-in-game-of-thrones/586245/11 "2011-06-21T07:36:48Z")
> [@kenobi\_65](#): > > it’s why winter, in the Northern Hemisphere, always starts around December 21st That’s Midwinter, not the start. There is seasonal lag, but it’s better to say it starts anywhere from 1 Nov (Samhain) to 1 Dec (it starts 1 June here) depending. Samhain is good for the “least daylight hours” version, 1 Dec is better for the “3 coldest months of the year” definition. But it makes no sense to _start_ Winter at the solstice (even if that’s the US standard practice) ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2011, 8:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-science-in-game-of-thrones/586245/12 "2011-06-21T08:29:34Z")
I suppose they could have an irregular variable star, although those tend to be giants. ---
**Author:** ![Spectralist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Spectralist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectralist)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2011, 9:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-science-in-game-of-thrones/586245/13 "2011-06-21T09:19:44Z")
> [@Omniscient](#): > > In the books do they establish a timeline for the seasons? I’ve only seen the shows, but they say that winter comes unexpectedly and for an unknown period of time. Is that really true, or is it’s just outside of the knowledge of the uneducated in the books? The seasons lengths do vary. A specific range is never given but I got the impression that a 5 year summer was about average. With 3 and 10 years being unusually short and long but not enough so to seem odd to the educated. And the winters are usually of a length similar to the summers that preceded them. The lengths of spring and autumn are never discussed that I can recall. Winter doesn’t really come unexpectedly though. We haven’t learned how but the Maesters study the weather/sky/something and can discern that the seasons are about to change. ---
**Author:** ![Bridget\_Burke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7cd45c/32.png) [@Bridget\_Burke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bridget_Burke)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2011, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-science-in-game-of-thrones/586245/14 "2011-06-21T15:47:14Z")
> [@](#): > > Winter doesn’t really come unexpectedly though. We haven’t learned how but the Maesters study the weather/sky/something and can discern that the seasons are about to change. In the books, it appears that we’ll be learning more about the Maesters. Which I will find very interesting. However, so far we’ve been given no scientific explanations for why that world is what it is. ---
**Author:** ![gallows\_fodder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/8c91f0/32.png) [@gallows\_fodder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gallows_fodder)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2011, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-science-in-game-of-thrones/586245/15 "2011-06-21T15:50:52Z")
Well, because there are none…the only explanation is, “Because GRRM said so,” and he hasn’t even done that yet. ---
**Author:** ![DigitalC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ebca7d/32.png) [@DigitalC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DigitalC)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2011, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-science-in-game-of-thrones/586245/16 "2011-06-21T16:05:53Z")
Nobody knew how to breed dragons, otherwise they wouldn’t have gone extinct. **MaxTheVool** was mostly joking but it was literally magic that made them hatch, some kind of inherent Targaryen magic backed up by blood magic. Something that wasn’t mentioned on the show was that Targaryens have been trying to hatch dragons for hundreds of years with no success, and with some disastrous results. It wasn’t just a matter of throwing them in a fire, that had been done plenty of times, even by Dany. ---
**Author:** ![awldune](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c77e96/32.png) [@awldune](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/awldune)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2011, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-science-in-game-of-thrones/586245/17 "2011-06-21T16:21:46Z")
> [@Scribble](#): > > Where are the farms, and what plants are the main food source for the people on this weird planet with its multi-year growing seasons? And what family is the godswood tree in? There are a ton of farms in the river lands. The godswood trees are “weirwoods”. They are portrayed as similar to a birch. > [@](#): > > When Drogo gives Dany the dragon eggs, it’s clear they have scales on them. Why do the eggs have a layer of ectoderm on the outside? Prop manager / art director stupidity? ISTR in the books they looked like precious stones rather than terracotta pinecones. > [@](#): > > What’s the expected biogeographic distribution of dragons at this point? Are they globally extinct in the world of Game of Thrones, or are they merely locally extinct within the Seven Kingdoms? How many species of dragon are there, anyway? They are extinct as far as we know, and we would know if there were more than a very few anywhere. ---
**Author:** ![Crown\_Prince\_of\_Irony](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ed655f/32.png) [@Crown\_Prince\_of\_Irony](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crown_Prince_of_Irony)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2011, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-science-in-game-of-thrones/586245/18 "2011-06-21T16:44:15Z")
> [@Omniscient](#): > > Is it possible that you could fanwank a astronomical explanation for the seasons outside of magic? If I were one to indulge in fanwankery, I’d posit that maybe there is a planet somewhere in the oribital vicinity of the planet of Westeros, with a strong EM envelope, and an eccentric, fairly rapid orbit, which possibly changes the axial position of Westeros periodically, on a variable interval. Of course this would likely cause a host of other issues like crazy tidal cycles, tectonic disturbances, etc. but it’s good enough for fanwankery. **If** I were one to indulge in such. As for the scaled dragon eggs - it’s a scientific fact that dragons are badass. Dragon’s eggs should look equally badass so you can take one look at them and say “Hey! Dragon egg!”, instead of “Hey! Big rock!”. There’s your science right there. ---
**Author:** ![SenorBeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senorbeef/32/2220_2.png) [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2011, 8:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-science-in-game-of-thrones/586245/19 "2011-06-22T08:34:11Z")
> [@blue\_infinity](#): > > If their sun was significanly hotter than ours, then the habitable zone around that sun would be further out. > > Jupiter’s orbit is ten of our years long, Saturn’s is thirty. So if Westeros is orbiting somewhere in that range, they could have decade long summers, winters. But the concept of the year is based off a full seasonal cycle. There’s no reason they’d rate their seasons in terms of earth-years, as in this summer cycle has lasted 700 days therefore roughly 2 years. As others have said, the length of summers and winters is variable so that also rules out this explanation. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2011, 8:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-science-in-game-of-thrones/586245/20 "2011-06-22T08:40:18Z")
Think of it as a series of years with extremely mild winters followed by very short ice ages. Interestingly, the fauna and flora of Westeros is largely North American, which is unusual in fantasy literature. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-science-in-game-of-thrones/586245.md?page=2)