Skip to main content

marvel - How much would Thor's hammer (Mjolnir) weigh?


All of the sites I looked at said "heavy" or "a lot" or "42.3 pounds." Mjolnir was forged from a collapsed star (a white dwarf or a neutron star). This means it is insanely dense.


Worthiness aside, given its size (as seen in the movie) how much should it weigh?


Perhaps I should clarify. Given the average density of a collapsed star, if you took enough material to construct the hammer, how much would that item weigh on Earth?



Answer



There are two problems answering this question. One - what is the volume? Two - what form of collapsed matter are we talking about? The difference between the density of a white dwarf and neutronium is 7 orders of magnitude (factor of 10,000,000).


So let's assume, for the sake of making it possible to compute a number that the weight of 42.3 pounds was computed for some volume of mostly iron. 42.3lb would be 19.187kg which, would be 2.437l of iron (density is listed as 7.874 g/ml).


2.437l of white dwarf material (approximate density 1,000,000 g/ml) would be 2,437,000kg or about 2,686 US tons.


The Wikipedia article on white dwarfs lists a range of densities for neutronium. We'll use the low end (8.4 e13 g/ml) and this would give 225.6 billion US tons.



Obviously, as was pointed out, the hammer is routinely placed on top of ordinary objects that are not immediately crushed, if the hammer weighed that much. So either:




  1. The hammer was forged of ordinary material and it's weight and/or mass are adjusted in real time by some magic to produce the desired effects.




  2. The hammer really does have a massive weight but it's effective weight and/or mass are adjusted in real time by some magic to produce the desired effects.




The effect is the same, so it really doesn't matter, though one could suppose that the magic to reduce the weight of an object might be simpler than the magic to magnify it (or vice versa). If something like that were true, then my best guess is that Uru is something formed in the heart of a white dwarf and the actual weight is in the neighborhood of 2,000 tons.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

harry potter - Do the Kwikspell courses work?

In Harry Potter we are introduced to Kwikspell course in The Chamber of Secrets (and never hear about it again). We see Filch taking courses, presumably by mail. The descriptions of Kwikspell make me think it is for people who are weak in magic (kind of like how Neville was supposed to be when he was younger), but had magic in them nonetheless. However, Ron's comments later in the chapter make it sound like it is mainly for Squibs to learn magic. However, it is strongly implied through out all the books that Squibs are essentially Muggles, and will never be able to do magic. How then is a Kwikspell course supposed to work? Do we have any information to know if it works at all? Is it a scam? An answer from any level of canon is welcome. Answer Kwikspell courses are (probably) useful to some wizards, but not to squibs. The Kwikspell course literature comes with two testimonials. Madam Z. Nettles of Topsham writes: ‘I had no memory for incantations and my potions were a family joke...
Post a Comment
Read more

futurama - How much time is lost in 'Time Keeps on Slippin''

In time Keeps on Slippin' , Farnsworth creates a basketball team which he matures by abusing Chronitons. This leads to time skipping forward by random, but ever increasing amounts. How much time was skipped in this way? Answer Unfortunately, I don't think a good estimate can be made for this, for two reasons: Many of the time skips move forward by an indeterminate amount of time. At one point, the Professor mentions localized regions of space skipping forward much more than others. We then see two young boys on the street below complaining about having to pay social security, only to suddenly become senior citizens and start complaining about wanting their money. Thus, each individual could have experienced a different amount of time skippage.
Post a Comment
Read more

languages - Do we ever see written English in the Star Wars films?

In Empire Strikes Back , we see a transcription of what R2's beeps and bloops mean, but it's not English (sorry for the low quality, it's from the 2004 DVDs): I'd assume it's what Basic looks like when written, but is there some point in the the Star Wars films we see written English instead? (This sort of spun off from a discussion in How do people understand astromech droids? .) Answer At one point there was English but it has been phased out in subsequent versions of the films. Chris Gould at DVD Active did a comparison of all versions of each of the Star Wars films, and in his comparison of Episode 4 , there are a couple of screenshots showing how the power gauge for the Death Star tractor beam was changed. I imagine there are probably more to be found in his other comparisons but I haven't got around to reading those yet.
Post a Comment
Read more

Was the "pure soul" of Harry's what had really hurt Voldemort?

In the Order of the Phoenix, Voldemort possesses Harry, and it hurts. Greatly. I think that Dumbledore explained that it was because Voldemort's rotten soul was incapable of assimilating Harry's pure soul, that Voldemort didn't understand the love and friendship etc that Harry has in his heart. But, I think it was a lie. Remember that in Deathly Hallows, while looking for information regarding Horcruxes, it is discovered that it is in fact possible to merge a soul fragment back, but that the process was extremely painful. Now then, if Voldemort tried to possess Harry, and Harry had a fragment of Voldemort's soul, I think that it could have been the true cause of Voldemort's pain: the fact of having his soul so close of another fragment. I think that Dumbledore knew that fact, but had to lie to Harry because it was inappropriate to let him know that he had one of Voldemort's soul fragments at the moment. Is that right? Or was it truly the pure soul of Harry's...
Post a Comment
Read more