(Upbeat Music)
- The Marvel character Thor
is as defined by his mighty hammer as by anything.
Even his...armor.
So in the new film Thor: Ragnarok, when it shatters,
it's going to be devastating for him.
But it would be devastating for us too,
because if Thor's hammer actually shattered,
something really, really bad would happen.
(Upbeat Music)
To destroy enemies and allow the god to fly,
Thor's hammer, Mjolnir, appears to be able to
make itself impossibly heavy at will.
A power that comes from both Asgardian enchantment and...
- [Thor] A special metal from the heart of a dying star.
- [Kyle] So, what would really happen if the magic faded
and the metal from a dying star broke apart?
Now, I've always held that the reason
that Thor's hammer can make itself heavy
is that it can control the emission of graviton particles
from itself, effectively changing its own mass.
But since Thor himself is saying metal from a dying star,
we'll take him at his word this time.
We can take dying star to me either white dwarf star
or neutron star, both of which contain exotic matter,
and both of which would mean certain death, ooooh.
When a start with mass like our sun's starts to die,
starts to run out of hydrogen fuel to use,
the outer layers will get brighter,
and hotter,
and expand,
while the core starts to contract.
Eventually in the very complicated
death throes of nuclear fusion,
these outer layers are thrown off into space,
about half of the star's mass.
And all that's left is an ultra-dense,
ultra-small core of oxygen and carbon
that will do nothing but cool until it fully goes dark.
This is a white dwarf.
Inside a white dwarf star though,
the material is unlike anything you'd ever find on earth.
Inside the material has been compacted so close together,
that what's fighting gravity,
keeping the star from collapsing further,
isn't thermal pressure but so-called
Electron Degeneracy Pressure which comes from
electrons' inability to occupy the same state
as one of its neighbors.
So quantum mechanics is keeping this thing
from collapsing further because the electrons
have run out of room to move around atomic nuclei.
If Thor's hammer was made from this
electron degenerate matter, it would both be
incredibly heavy and incredibly dangerous if shattered.
How could I possibly see if this was happening?
Any material that is supported by
electron degeneracy pressure,
material that is electron degenerate matter,
is going to be extremely dense.
If I had just a cube of it, literally this much,
it would weigh a metric ton.
And so, if...wait...
...it...
...takes a second sometimes.
It should get here...whoa!
Comin in hot!
If Mjolnir has a volume of around five liters,
then the white dwarf version of this weapon
would weigh over five million kilograms.
But white dwarf star material only stays this dense
because of the immense pressures inside of the star.
And so if you took a chunk out of that star,
and made a hammer out of it,
and then shattered that hammer
and whatever magic was holding its material together,
whatever planet you are on probably would not have
the pressure differential to keep the 100 octillion pascals
of pressure from wanting to erupt from these pieces.
Which means...(frightened sound)
...shattering this version of Thor's hammer
would result in explosive decompression
that would throw millions of kilograms of 100,000 degree
oxygen and carbon plasma out in expanding
bubbles of destruction that would vaporize
everyone in the immediate area!
But another interpretation of "dying star"
be a neutron star.
And if you shattered a neutron star-based Mjolnir,
no protection is gonna save you because it might
destroy the planet you're standing on.
When a star with much more mass than our sun starts to die,
it also becomes brighter and redder,
but instead of then just sloughing off its outer layers
and forming a planetary nebula, it...
To me hammer! Destroy this star!
Oh! (chuckles)
The outer layers are thrown off in a massive explosion
we call a supernova.
And during this explosion, with the help of gravity,
the core is compressed beyond the density
of a white dwarf star to the point where electrons and
protons are literally forced together to become neutrons.
A neutron star.
Now what's resisting gravity is Neutron Degeneracy Pressure
as opposed to the electron degenerate matter
in a white dwarf.
But it takes a lot of mass and a lot of gravity
to squish material down this far.
We're talking black hole territory here.
And so because neutron stars
are only a few kilometers across
they are very, very dense.
The densest material known to man.
And so, if you took Thor's hammer,
and took a chunk of neutron star out to make it,
it would weigh 10 quadrillion kilograms.
Now, if this shattered and the magic that was
holding the material together faded,
we would still have the expansion problem,
except that would not be the worst part.
Because once the neutrons start escaping this environment,
they start to decay.
When a neutron decays, it turns about a tenth of a percent
of its mass into pure energy according to e=mc squared.
And so, if neutron star-based Thor's hammer
were shattered
and the magic holding it together faded,
the pieces would immediately start to decay
and the neutrons would release the same amount of energy
as in Tsar Bomba, the largest nuclear device ever detonated,
except every single nanosecond.
After 10 seconds this expanding sphere of neutron-based doom
would have released enough energy to boil
all of the world's oceans away.
And this would continue until
all of the neutrons had decayed.
In total, almost enough energy to blast
the crust of the earth off into space.
All of it.
It would be one of the most catastrophic events
to happen to our planet ever,
And life as we know it would probably end.
Bad.
So depending on what kind of dying star
Thor's hammer was made from,
if the magic surrounding the hammer faded
and the weapon shattered, it would either destroy
everything around it or everything that we care about.
You know like, everything on the surface of our planet.
The Avengers should be very happy then,
that Asgardian "magic" exists.
Because, science.
Oh, I...
I miss it.
(Upbeat Music)
I mean, that's what would really happen.
But what's gonna happen in the movie probably,
you know, it's Hollywood,
it's just gonna shatter and there's gonna be
a little bit of an explosion
and then he's just gonna get another hammer
in the next film! Oh!
Two hammers! (heavy metal scream)
[Heavy Metal Music]
Serious gamers need seriously tricked out systems
like Dell gaming's new line of PC's designed specifically
with gamers in mind.
We've had some of them in the office this week
and I have been owning Chobot.
She is bad at video games
and these PC's helped me do it.
So good luck keeping up with these
lightning fast specs, Chobot.
Get better at stuff.
No matter what your skill level,
amateur or pro,
if you are itching to get your hands on
one of these sweet PC's, you're in luck.
You can purchase them right now.
Check out the 48-hour Level Up event on dell.com/gaming
for some sizzling pre-Black Friday deals
on gaming systems and accessories.
It's time to stop playing and start gaming.
Thank you so much for watching, Katie.
Follow me on Instagram and Twitter under the same handle.
You can check out the S.P.A.A.C.E. Program at
ProjectAlpha.com and you can check out Muskwatch,
my other show with Dan Casey.
And a special thanks to Dr. Ethan Siegal,
who just wrote this book, Treknology,
which is very cool and very interesting,
and I recommend picking it up.
Thank you for all your help in this episode, you nerd.