physics - How did the cookfire get hot enough to melt gold in Game of Thrones?

In the television series A Game of Thrones, Khal Drogo melts gold in a cookpot over a seemingly ordinary fire, and then pours the melted metal on Viserys' head. How could the cookfire get hot enough to melt gold?

Wikipedia says the melting point of gold is nearly 2000 degrees F.
_{Reference: "Gold" on Wikipedia}

Answer

Khal Drogo's melting of gold in what appears to be a simple cookpot, without the application of some sort of magic or a carefully stoked furnace, the melting should not have happened at all. Pure gold is simply too tough to melt with an ordinary fire.

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  Pure gold has a melting point of 1945 degrees Fahrenheit.

  
  
  


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  The average cooking fire even with good coals can reach approximately 650 to 700 degrees Fahrenheit.

  
  

So under this premise, it would be impossible to melt gold over a cooking fire with a standard cooking pot.

• Impure gold can be melted at lower temperatures but the lowest quality gold at 10K yellow gold, still needs around 1600 degrees Fahrenheit. Hauser & Miller

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  a primitive blacksmith forge with the right kinds of coals, bellows and additives can easily reach 1400 - 2000 degrees but it takes skill, practice and the proper tools.

  
  


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  the melting points of a variety of metals which could have been used and heated over a cooking fire limits the potential metals to tin (449 degrees Fahrenheit), lead (621 degrees Fahrenheit), a magnesium alloy (660 degrees Fahrenheit) or an aluminum alloy (at 865 degrees) Cooking at temperatures over a fire at temperatures higher than 650 degrees means most food burns beyond recognition.

  
  


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  If you want to be generous and make his fires raging bonfires using oaken wood (which I don't remember seeing that night) he might be able to reach 1200 degrees, but he would need a bellows and a means to raise the temperature of the fire significantly the same way a blacksmith does. At 1200 degrees he would be able to possibly melt poor quality, low-grade, golden alloys.

  
  



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  I am not sure why everyone is so emotional over this? The nature of writing is sometimes a writer (even if he is George R.R. Martin) is WRONG. Either through a lack of research, or an overwhelming desire to have a scene look a particular way, they may make a decision to write something and NOT care if it is physically possible. It's a choice the writer makes, it does not stop it from being outside the realm of physical possibility, nor does it make the awesomeness of the scene any less awesome. Hand-wave it away and call it "suspension of disbelief" and keep enjoying the series.

  
  

This is a failure of both the writing team and the scientific support team on the set. While the scene invokes the Rule of Cool trope, it fails and instead highlights "How Is That Even Possible" trope.

Using Magic

Is there magic that would be capable of making flames hot enough to melt gold? Yes, but it is highly unlikely Khal Drogo would have had access to anyone or any technology capable of producing heat of such magnitude as easily as he did.

All Valyrian magic was rooted in blood and fire. It said they could set dragonglass candles to burning with strange, unpleasantly-bright light. With the obsidian candles, they could see across vast distances, look into a man's mind, and speak with one another though they were half the world apart. It is often said that the old wizards of Valyria did not cut and chisel stone, but worked it with fire and magic as one might work clay.

There are other users of fire magic such as the Priests of R'hllor or the warlocks of the House of the Undying Ones in the old city of Qarth. But given the Dothraki disposition toward magic overall, it is unlikely magic was used.

Witches, or maegi, are reviled as evil and unnatural.