When you spend most of your life fighting the gods themselves, you better have the weaponry to match your might. In God of War 4Opens in a new tab, your character Kratos wields an awesome new axe that not only flies around like Thor’s hammerOpens in a new tab, it can freeze enemies instantaneously. But to do that, how cripplingly cold would this axe have to be?
In my latest episode of Because ScienceOpens in a new tab, I’m using thermodynamics and a lot of math to find out how frigid the Leviathan Axe would have to be in order to freeze deadly draugr and other enemies in a blink. Given some assumptions, is there a temperature that could freeze human-like flesh in seconds? Or will science have to give way to Norse magic?
In our realm, the coldest anything can possibly be is “absolute zero,” defined as the temperature that results from atoms being as stationary as possible. The more atoms bounce around, the hotter they are, and so the coldest state these atoms could be in is the same one where they are bouncing the least. But to create frozen chaos like Kratos, even absolute zero may not be enough…
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