Scientists Argue Over Weight Of Thor’s Hammer

Remember the episode of The Big Bang Theory where the girls get into an argument over Thor's hammer. Well, now something similar is happening in real life as scientists are now arguing over the weight of Thor's hammer. The whole thing started when astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson tweeted, "If Thor's hammer is made of neutron-star matter, implied by legend, then it weighs as much as a herd of 300-billion elephants."  Of course, the mass media jumped all over this important revelation in the world of superheroes, but now a program manager in the materials science division of the U.S. Army Research Office and adjunct materials science professor at NC State is saying not so fast. According to Suveen Mathaudhu in an article on NC State's The Abstract, Neil deGrasse incorrectly assumed "that Mjolnir was forged of the core of a dying star, when it was actually forged in the core of a dying star." Mathaudhu points out that Thor's hammer is actually made out of a fictional metal called Uru, and he points to a 1991 Thor's Hammer trading card as proof. The trading card even gives Thor's hammers precise weight as 42.3 pounds. Based on the trading card data, Mathaudhu applied some more mathematics to Thor's hammer and determined its density makes it even lighter than aluminum. In order to explain how something so light could be so strong, Mathaudhu theorizes, "Perhaps Uru is the 'holy grail' of high-pressure physics: a form of metallic hydrogen. Some predictions of the density of metallic hydrogen fall into this range, it requires extreme conditions to form, and could be a tremendous energy source. It's thought to be present at the core of planets, such as Jupiter, and at the core of suns – which are stars, after all."