scrape_r_rational/data/cache2/7ya0ie.md

Thor's hammer

• Author: u/None *

• URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/7ya0ie/thors_hammer/

• Score: 21

• Created: 2018-02-17T22:32:23

Post:

• How much does it weigh?

• What happens if Thor puts it on a scale and somebody else tries to lift it?

• What happens if Thor puts it in an elevator and someone else makes the elevator go up?

Bonus:

• There's a train track switch that forks into two tracks. On the main track, 5 people are tied up. One person is tied up on the side track. There's a train coming. Thor's hammer is on top of the switch. Will Odin allow someone who is not Thor to lift the hammer??

Comments:

u/Menolith [+63] Unworthy Opponent (an hour later)

Assuming you're talking about the Marvel version: it's powered by Odinforce which basically means "it does whatever the fuck Odin wants it to do." That magic gives it a degree of sentience which lets it deal intelligently with people trying to find cheeky ways of moving it. The weapon doesn't ground cars and helicarriers when Thor lets it go, so it doesn't halt elevators either because it doesn't see that as being wielded. This intellect also lets it determine what, exactly, counts as "wielding" on case-by-case basis.

The hammer itself weighs more or less as much as you'd expect it to. Odin's enchantment doesn't give it additional mass, it just fixes it in place when unworthy people try to lift it. That also means that he can (and often does) use it to pin down enemies without crushing them to paste. The only way around that restriction of worthiness is to be so obscenely powerful that you can match Odin's power reserves in a slugfest and overpower the enchantment. That puts you so far up the power scale that I doubt you'd have much use for the hammer at that point.

u/None [+9] (an hour later)

Well, I hope Thor and Odin remain friends...

u/None [+29] (3 hours later)

Basically the premise of the first Thor movie was them not being friends and Thor losing his hammer because of it.

u/daytodave [+14] an altruistic conversion of calories to hedons (3 hours later)

So does Thor, which is probably the point of that whole setup.

u/harshael [+11] (4 hours later)

Thor now controls the Odin force. Yes, they could rename it, but Thor force sounds weird.

u/None [+31] (4 hours later)

Thorce.

u/None [+5] (22 hours later)

Don't you diss Beta Ray Bill

u/None [+5] (23 hours later)

I can't diss something if I don't know what it is.

u/harshael [+5] (a day later)

He's Thorse. Not Norse tho.

u/None [+3] (a day later)

Norse force?

u/harshael [+2] (a day later)

More like Nose Force.

u/narmio [+8] (6 hours later)

It's like trying to say "surface" but with a whole leek in your mouth.

u/bloodfist [+7] (18 hours later)

Still the biggest missed opportunity was not having an after credits scene with Tony and Bruce excitedly waiting for an elevator with Mjolnir in it.

u/None [+4] (15 hours later)

The hammer itself weighs more or less as much as you'd expect it to."

My expectations control it's weight? Hmmmmmmm >:)

u/daytodave [+4] an altruistic conversion of calories to hedons (3 hours later)

So if the elevator rises up into one of Voltron's hands, does the hammer suddenly crash through all the metal to the ground? Does it matter if Voltron is on auto-pilot vs. being driven by humans?

What happens if the elevator is at the top of the Sears Tower, and Jack Hawksmoor, God of Cities animates Chicago, using the Sears Tower as one of its fingers?

u/CopperZirconium [+4] (a day later)

I think Voltron could wield Mjolnir. After all, he is Defender of the Universe. Now, I don't think any of one of the five Paladins of Voltron could lift the Hammer, but the Lions only allow the virtuous to pilot them, and Voltron can only be formed when the Paladins work together, so I think it is fair to say that Voltron is likely to have similar enough values to Mholnir to be able to wield it. Especially since Vision was able to lift it in Age of Ultron.

u/kaukamieli [+1] (13 hours later)

But how do you pin people down with it? If it's fixed in place, couldn't you slip sideways?

u/GCU_JustTesting [+10] (36 minutes later)

I prefer to think of it as frame-locked. By holding Thor allows it to become unlocked.

u/None [+6] (39 minutes later)

What do you mean by frame-locked?

u/ViceroyChobani [+12] Reserve Pigeon Army (56 minutes later)

I would think that it is a fixed point in space, as the comics and previous movies would imply, but Thor Ragnarok specifically has a scene where Thor places his hammer in a dragon-ish-thing's mouth and it drops to the ground, pinned. But not through the ground, so...

Perhaps it is that Thor directed it to the ground, and then it remained fixed there?

u/None [+18] (59 minutes later)

Maybe Thor has total mental control over the hammer and just pretends that it has somewhat-consistent rules, while in reality he can make his hammer fly through the air and kill you from ten feet away.

u/daytodave [+36] an altruistic conversion of calories to hedons (3 hours later)

I like the idea that the hammer holds a copy of Thor's judgement for resolving edge cases. And when he touches it, it updates with answers to any new munchkin scenarios he's had to think up because of all these goddam nerds.

u/None [+13] (3 hours later)

damn rationalists, always messing with his hammer

u/Sonderjye [+5] (3 hours later)

It is more complicated that that. If the hammer was fixed in location it wouldn't have followed Earth when Earth moved around the sun.

u/None [+5] (3 hours later)

why can't it be fixed relative to Earth?

u/daytodave [+6] an altruistic conversion of calories to hedons (3 hours later)

This is much simpler than my idea.

Edit: But why would Odin and Thor fix the hammer relative to a planet they don't live on. It should be fixed relative to Asgard!

u/Chosen_Pun [+6] The Chosen Ones (5 hours later)

Asgardian society's ability to govern their Nine-Realm Empire relies a lot on World Science; I'm sure Mjolnir can, in principle, anchor itself to Midgard, or wherever Thor happens to be princing around at any given moment.

u/EthanCC [+2] (5 hours later)

Whenever Thor isn't on Earth it would go flying off at over the speed of light. You have to have it fix itself to the planet (nearest gravity body?) and have some ability to resolve what is worthiness and what is lifting (like how it doesn't bring down the helicarrier) and at that point it's easier to just say it has some intelligence that solves these things.

u/xeroxedechidna [+1] (2 days later)

If Thor is on a spaceship with his hammer, and an explosion that destroys the ship happens in between the Thor and his hammer, does the hammer get blasted away as if it were a hammer mass, does it continue in the now destroyed space ships reference frame, does it continue in Thor's reference frame, or does it latch onto some other reference frame?

This is made even more interesting by the fact that the center of mass of the debris from the ship (including both Thor and the hammer) should continue on its previous course. This means that which course of action the hammer chooses to take changes the path through space that Thor takes.

One last caveat. How would this change if the explosion was an automatic process versus an attempt to move the hammer by a sentient unworthy being?

u/EthanCC [+1] (2 days later)

I think you might have mistyped the end of the second to last paragraph: if the hammer continues on with respect to the center of mass of the ship then it should change based on where Thor is not the other way around.

I would imagine that the hammer is at least semi-sentient and can react to the situation. The simplest explanation is probably that the hammer acts as a hammer normally but when someone it sees as "unworthy" tries to intentionally move it it exerts a force to counteract whatever they're exerting on it. Otherwise you get weird edge cases like what you described, which doesn't really fit what we see (not that we see it outside of a gravity well anyway) since when Thor lets go of the hammer it doesn't hang in midair motionless. If it just latches onto the greatest source of gravity exerted on it (I had this whole thing typed up about strength and distance until I realized I was basically describing Newton's law of gravity) then there's a chance it would go flying off if Thor's spaceship is ever destroyed, which would be funny. It would be pretty neat if Thor throwing the hammer is him putting its position relative to some other object. Superluminal hammers?

u/bloodfist [+2] (18 hours later)

Hmm how about: It is fixed in alignment to whatever mass applies normal force. So if it is resting on a helicopter or airplane, the earth, or a bad guy's chest, it will maintain its relative position to that object.

I'd say it bonds to the mass underneath it, but we see it stuck in dirt, so that doesn't work because it would just lift the dirt.

The question my answer raises though, is: could you dig under the hammer, and drop it into a wheelbarrow or something and then be able to move it around?

u/xeroxedechidna [+2] (2 days later)

I think the hammer divides all forces into sentient applied and not sentient applied. All not sentient applied forces affect it as if it were a normal hammer. All sentient applied forces are further sorted into unworthy and worthy. Worthy forces act as if it were a normal hammer. Unworthy forces do not apply at all.

The key here is that whether a force is sentient applied or not is completely subjective.

If Thor puts his hammer in an airplane, can the airplane take off with it? If he puts the hammer in the airplane while in flight and then jumps out, can the plane land with it? If the pilot shuts off the engines, will the plane hang from the hammer or will they both fall together? How does this change if Thor merely goes to a different part of the airplane instead of jumping out?

u/Flamesmcgee [+1] (a day later)

Not a wheelbarrow, I don't think. You could probably do a robot.

u/daytodave [+2] an altruistic conversion of calories to hedons (3 hours later)

But if it doesn't follow the Earth, it's moving relative to the Earth.

A truly fixed point would behave like an object approaching the speed of light, with time and space distorting around it to keep its speed relative to every particle in the universe at 0.

u/everything-narrative [+6] Coral, Abide with Rubicon! (13 hours later)

An excerpt from The Fall of Doc Future might elucidate some things:

Flicker, skin steaming as she cooled, skidded sideways to a halt back on the original slight hill where she’d first tried to talk, though it was a little hard to tell. In addition to the pouring rain, darkness, and strong gusting wind, everything anywhere nearby had been knocked flat. Not by her, either, which was a little unusual. All the surviving bystanders were long gone. The Thunderer stood near where he’d started as well, a little the worse for wear, though the fire in his beard had finally gone out. He looked to be getting ready to do something dramatic with his hammer again.

The brief lift in her spirits hadn’t lasted–now all she felt was a vague disgust. His first shot hadn’t gone to ground like a proper lightning bolt after she tagged it and dodged, and had gone on to hit three einherjar. The Thunderer didn’t even seem to care if he killed people supposedly on his own side. After that she had looped around behind him, just slowly enough to let each bolt track her. You’d think that after getting hit with his own lightning bolts four times in a row, he would learn, but no. So far, his response each time had been to wind up and throw another, more powerful, bolt.

Did he realize that a stronger lightning bolt wasn’t any faster? Maybe he wasn’t even capable of comprehending that someone might be literally faster than lightning. She scowled. What was he doing now, had his hand slipped? She moved closer to investigate.

Oh, now, this is just insulting. A projectile, at me?!. He’d actually thrown the hammer. He couldn’t hit her with a lightning bolt, so he decided to try something four orders of magnitude slower? Right. Maybe he was trying to get her to lose her temper–but no, he wasn’t that smart. Time to send it back, with a generous extra helping of kinetic energy. She poked at the handle with a finger to start to turn it… and it didn’t turn.

Ah ha. Now this was interesting. It seemed to have some sort of magical resistance to outside course changes in flight. She poked the handle harder, wondering where the kinetic energy she was putting in was going. Soon the hammer was glowing red with heat, which answered the question–it wasn’t going anywhere very fast. Had it turned slightly? She squinted back along the line of flight from the Thunderer’s hand, wishing she had the precise surveying and ballistics software in her visor.

So. It was tracking her, or trying, and she recalled that it would return for him to catch if it missed. He probably thought that was safer than getting hit by another one of his own lightning bolts. And it would be, except… She looked down at the hammer, and smiled. Let’s see just how much thermal energy you can hold before your containment fails.

She quickly heated it to over 10,000 K, hotter than the surface of the sun, by hand, before secondary heating made it prudent to start using projectiles. As the hammer turned, trying to follow her, she bombarded it with high speed clods of mud–there was no point wasting any rocks. She maneuvered behind and to each side of the Thunderer to be sure it would return precisely to him. She did a quick circuit of the surroundings to check for stragglers, but they had all kept running, and were on the other side of a ridge. Good. A few might get burned or deafened, but they’d live.

By the time the Thunderer’s hammer approached his outstretched hand on its return, its temperature was that of well inside the sun and it was radiating hard ultraviolet. The uneven ripples in the blazing light showed that the containment was wavering. The Thunderer stood braced against the plasma shockwaves, eyes closed, and was perhaps just starting to realize he was in trouble.

Flicker sped away in a wide loop behind him, pulled a special 'present’ she had transferred from her costume out of her bag, then accelerated hard as she turned back towards the Thunderer. She’d worry about cooling later. As she reached the right spot, she threw her projectile, hard and fast, then slowed to pass to the side. And as the Thunderer’s hand tried to close on the handle of his already sun-hot hammer, she nailed its head with a quarter-kilo tungsten ball bearing traveling almost fifteen percent of the speed of light.

Mythology, meet physics.

By the standards of nuclear weapons, it was not that powerful an explosion–only about a hundred kilotons. It was enough.

Flicker slowed to cool off, the rain from the outer edges of the storm flashing to steam as it touched her skin. Then she turned and resumed her hunt, leaving the mushroom cloud pyre of the Thunderer behind her.

u/eaglejarl [+3] (20 hours later)

I do recall thinking, when I first read that scene, that it was (a) literally epic and (b) that Flicker was pretty much just faffing about with the hammer, given that she could have simply dropped the tungsten ball on the Thunderer directly. Which isn't to say it was an unreasonable thing for her to do -- it's not like she was short on time, and it was undoubtedly more interesting than running around in circles looking for the Big Bad.

u/GLBMQP [+3] (15 hours later)

I think the best explanation would be, that the hammer cannot be moved through direct exertion of force by a creature who is not either: deemed worthy by Odin, or capable of circumventing/overpowering the Odinforce.

So it would still be affected by gravity, and it would still be moved by an elevator or a plane. Since the person who is operating the plane or elevator isn't directly exerting force upon the hammer. The thing that is exerting force is not a sentient creature, hence it would behave the same as any other hammer at the same weight(I believe the official weight is 25lbs or something like that).

This would explain why Loki's chest wasn't squashed when Thor placed Mjølnir on him. And I believe it's pretty consistent with the MCU.

u/bacontime [+4] (18 hours later)

There is a scene in the first Thor movie where Stan Lee tries to move the hammer with a pick-up truck and it r ps the back of the truck off.

So that explanation doesn't quite match the MCU.

u/None [+1] (15 hours later)

So if it can be moved by elevators or planes, why can't you just wear gloves and pick it up? Has Iron Man ever tried picking it up?

u/GLBMQP [+1] (16 hours later)

If you're wearing gloves it's still the same force that you're exerting, there's just not any physical contact between you and the hammer.

u/xeroxedechidna [+1] (2 days later)

Then what about iron man. The force could be provided by the suit, not Tony.

Could I drag it with a winch that I controlled remotely? What if I set up a winch that would pull on it at a certain time. What if the winch used a randomly generated number to determine whether or not it would try to drag the hammer at a given moment?

u/None [+1] (16 hours later)

Hmm. But, I could pick the hammer up with a drone and load it onto an airplane, right?

u/xeroxedechidna [+1] (2 days later)

Even if the drone works, I don't think you could then pilot the airplane with it. It seems likely that Thor is necessary to switch the hammer to the reference frame of a given vehicle.

u/None [+1] (2 days later)

aww come on, i want an epic story of some prick stealing thor's hammer

u/None [+2] (5 hours later)

There's a train track switch that forks into two tracks. On the main track, 5 people are tied up. One person is tied up on the side track. There's a train coming. Thor's hammer is on top of the switch. Will Odin allow someone who is not Thor to lift the hammer??

Does Odin have awareness of what's happening around the hammer? How exactly does the hammer decide if you can pick it up (if it's a mind scan maybe Odin could get info from it)?

u/EthanCC [+3] (6 hours later)

The hammer is designed to judge the worth of people by some metric Odin programmed it with, it shouldn't care about the consequences of being moved or not.

u/None [+1] (5 hours later)

Hmm... Maybe if Odin is feeling good at the moment, the hammer will lift itself up and smash the single guy on the track's rope in half while you move the switch.

u/Silver_Swift [+2] (8 hours later)

Or just hold itself in place in front of the train?

u/Flamesmcgee [+1] (a day later)

There's a train track switch that forks into two tracks. On the main track, 5 people are tied up. One person is tied up on the side track. There's a train coming. Thor's hammer is on top of the switch. Will Odin allow someone who is not Thor to lift the hammer??

It's programmed to be lifted by 'worthy people'. I don't think the circumstances around the hammer apply.

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