Silly Misapplied Science - Size of Anglacon the Black

[Ethelred the Almost Ready]

On the Middle Earth Wargames facebook page some time ago there was a thread about how big was Anglacon the Black.  For some reason I was thinking about this today and decided to misapply my high school level physics.
Now Anglacon hit the mountains of Thangorodrim.  Clearly he hit the thermal exhaust port with a precise hit causing a chain reaction (sorry, wrong story??).
Anyway, the mountains are destroyed and the resulting release of energy also fractures the lands of Beleriand.
How much energy do you need to destroy a mountain?  The Krakatoa eruption in 1883 was thought to have had the force of 200 megtons.  How fast and how big do you need to be to produce 200 Mt of energy?


200Mt = 1,961,330,000,000 Newtons.
Impact force is (please note, I cannot do a superscripted 2 for squared so v2 is really v squared):
0.5x mass x v2
So:
0.5m x v2 = 1,961,330,000,000N
 If we assume the impact velocity was 1.5x speed of sound we have a velocity of roughly 514ms-1.
0.5m x 5142 = 1,961,330,000,000
0.5m = 7,423,768
m = 14,847,537 kg.

I think it would be safe to assume that half of Anglacon’s explosive power comes from his magic nature, so lets return him to 7,423,768kg.

So how long is he?
In general terms, the mass is a function of the square of difference in size (this is how Body Mass Index works).
If we use a komodo dragon as a baseline.  A male komodo can grow to 2.6m long and 91kg.
If the length multiplier is y and we assume our dragon is naturally bulkier and allowing for weight of wings we also multiply the basic komodo weight by 1.2.
The equation for the length then is (please note, in copy and pasting this the squared sign doesn't come out in superscript, so y2 is really meant to be y squared).
91y2 x 1.2 = 7,423,768
y2 = 67983
y = 260
260x 2.6 (the length of a komodo) = 676m

So Anglacon is a whopping 676m long and weighs 7,423,768kg.

There you have it!  Misapplied science for a completely fictitious character and event.

[Jacksarge]

I don't think it was anywhere near that big, check out this cool blogpost from Tolkien scholar John Garth which discusses dragon sizes in Middle Earth:

https://johngarth.wordpress.com/2015/01/18/dragon-scale-why-its-impossible-to-size-up-tolkiens-middle-earth/

[Nord]

Not sure about how big, but pretty sure he was thin at one end, much much thicker in the middle and thin at the other end.

[Ethelred the Almost Ready]

Hi Nord, you wouldn't also have a theory about barber shop quartets singing about Proust?

Now, I clearly have too much time on my hands today so I have to reply to Jacksarge's scorn that he has heaped on my well-structured theory.

So I shall give you my second theory, being the theory number two. Which is mine and belongs to me.  I will even treat you to theory number three.

Anglacon the Black theory 2.
OK, as pointed out, Tolkien was a bit funny with size and scales etc. So Anglacon can’t be taken to be that massive.  Besides, a dragon that big is just silly. So, how do we destroy a mountain and half a continent with a dragon.  Simple.  Uranium.
Anglacon’s skeleton was made out of weapons grade uranium.  This has several effects. It means he is very dense and so will have a higher terminal velocity as he plunges to earth, and much of the impact force is dependent on velocity.  The other outcome of all this is the impact crushes all that uranium together and reaching critical mass.  A nuclear explosion ensues and the rest is pseudo-mythical-history.

Theory 3
Thangorodrim was so completely hollowed out for the fortress of Angband that it was just a thin shell.  In this scenario even a falling heavily laden (African) swallow could have broken through the thin veneer of rock, hitting the main magazine of Angband and it is the explosion of this that destroys the mountain and everything else but inexplicably leaves lots of elves and men alive to take us into the Second Age.  Now, you might say that even a large nuclear explosion couldn’t possibly cause half a continent to break up.  What Tolkien doesn’t tell us is that Iluvatar wasn’t just the hottest thing on Beleriand Idol with his singing but was also an amateur chef.  He thought it would be a great idea to make the world out of meringue.  This allowed the elves to delve out Nargothrond and Menegroth easily, but just didn’t make the world strong enough to survive plummeting radioactive dragons.

[Jacksarge]

The prof is being poetical is all, bit like his classic metaphor in LotR of a "winged" Balrog. Pretty sure Ancalagon did nto smash up a whole mountain of what was effectively slag from Morgoth's tunnellings, just that when he hit it there was a mess. Can't pin the devastation wrought in Beleriand all on an oversized Uruloki, it was a combined effort from all the Valar smashing the place about. Besides I can't imagine Earendil having a fight with a dragon so humongous from the deck of his flying ship