Legolas, elven member of The Fellowship Of The Ring and decorator of millions of teenage girls’ bedroom walls, has a lot to answer for. Elitism. Oliphaunt murder. Giving Orlando Bloom a film career. And now, thanks to a few physics calculations, we can add lying to the mix.
You see, there’s a scene in the novel of The Two Towers where Legolas, displaying typical elven smugness, counts a horde of approaching riders from dozens of miles away. But the following video, produced by popular YouTube channel MinutePhysics, makes it clear that, thanks to the way light diffracts when it enters the eye, the son of Thranduil is clearly fibbing about his ocular prowess—or possibly, that elves in Middle-earth can see UV radiation. Maybe they cover that in The Silmarillion, we don’t know.
So far, there’s been no comment from the Tolkien estate about this breaking scandal, but we’ll keep you updated.
[via io9]