Tuesday, February 19, 2013

How Fast Can Thor Fly?

Early February, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson tweeted that Thor's hammer weighs as much as a herd of 300 billion elephants.
That's one heavy hammer. In fact it would sink all the way to the core of the Earth if Thor accidentally dropped it.
Last week Matt Shipman reported that the weight of Thor's hammer is in fact not that heavy.  
Image: www.comicvine.com
Marvel issued a “Thor’s Hammer” trading card in 1991 which states that the hammer--named Mjolnir-- is made of Uru (fictional metal from the realm of Asgard) and weighs precisely 42.3 pounds.

That's roughly 19.19 kg.
Image: www.liberalportions.com
From the movie The Avengers we see Thor flies by first spinning and then hurling his hammer towards a target, and hanging onto the hammer strap. But the Marvel Wiki puts Thor's weight at an incredible 291 kg. So can a 19.19 kg hammer take a 291 kg demigod to the sky? If no, how fast should Thor spin the hammer in order to accomplish flight?

This is actually a basic physics question. Kyle Hill of Scientific American assumes that Thor can spin his hammer as fast as a major league pitcher can throw—around 100 miles per hour or 45 meters per second. We consider the conservation of momentum


19.19 x 45 = (19.19 + 291) V2

This gives V2= 2.78 ms-1
That translates to roughly 10 km/h. Pretty slow if you ask me. Not the sort of speed you would expect from a flying god.

If Thor wishes to improve his flying speed, he can either:
1) Use heavier material to construct his hammer;
2) Spin faster;
3) Go on a diet.

In fact if Thor weighs as much as I do, i.e. 54kg, his flying speed would improve to 11.79 ms-1 i.e. 42.47 km/h.
It's time to go on diet, Thor.


1 comment:

  1. "Superhuman Speed: Thor can move at extreme speeds. Thor can fly to the sun in a matter of minutes. Thor was even able to strike down a moving Quicksilver and has claimed to have fought foes faster than him.[82] He can throw Mjolnir at the speed of light[83][84] and also swing Mjolnir at twice the speed of light with his powers reduced in half.[80] It has been established that the speed of Thor's hammer transcends both Time & Space.[85] In addition, Thor can appear anywhere across the Universe or other dimensions in just seconds.[86][87] Thor could visually detect objects that move at fantastic speeds (this happened when Thor was the target of artillery fire[66] and when he saw the speedy Hermes[88]). Hela once stated that Thor is as fast as the lightning he commands. Thor can twirl his cape so fast that he creates a tornado." (Marvel Wikia)



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