(upbeat music)
- I'm sure if I held this up you guys would
instantly recognize it as Thor's hammer, Mjolnir.
But how much do you really know about this enchanted weapon?
(upbeat guitar music)
Hello and welcome to Comic Misconceptions,
the show that takes you into detail about the things
you think you know about comics.
I'm your host, Scott Niswander, and today
we're gonna be talking about exactly what
I said at the beginning, Thor's hammer.
Now if you haven't seen it already,
we did make a short video about Thor's hammer,
and people really seemed to like it.
So if you haven't seen it, go check that out.
It's really fun, really cool effects
if I do say so myself, and it's definitely worth a look.
But let's get right down to it.
What is Thor's hammer?
So the history of Mjolnir in the Marvel universe
has been written and rewritten a couple times,
but I think the most popular one is that Odin,
father of Thor, had asked some dwarves to craft
this weapon in the heart of a star and a magical forge,
and that's basically where we get it.
It has lots of powers, such as summoning the elements
of storms, rain, wind, lightning, obviously.
It's very strong.
It can destroy mountains and even entire planets.
It can create all sorts of different energy blasts.
It's also good at absorbing and redirecting energies.
It can even be used as a way of tracking people
and mystical objects, and it's deadly to the undead,
which is kind of a weird statement I guess, but it's true.
Thor can use it to vanquish vampires,
so there you go, they'll just burst into flames as they do.
So what is Mjolnir made of?
It is made of uru, which is a fictional metal, which,
you know Marvel and their fictional metals,
they can't get enough of them.
But it is far from indestructible.
In fact, it's been destroyed on several occasions.
It's been cut in half by the Destroyer, it's been broken
because it used too much power, it's been dissolved,
and they always come back each time
in one way or another, so it doesn't really matter.
If it gets broken, it'll be back in probably the next issue.
So I'm sure as we all know the inscription on Thor's hammer
reads: Whosoever holds this hammer, if he be worthy,
shall possess the power of Thor.
So for me that means one of two things.
Either one, the hammer is a normal hammer, a normal
weight to it, but the enchantment makes it
so you cannot physically lift it
from its spot unless you are worthy.
Or two, it could be that the hammer is so heavy that
the enchantment is, if you're worthy enough
you can actually lift it.
So I guess really the heart of this question is
how much specifically does Mjolnir weigh?
Well, Neil deGrasse Tyson used
science and that big old brain of his
to figure out that the hammer is probably about
300 billion elephants worth of weight.
Now, as impressive as this sounds, it was recently
found out to be not entirely true.
In fact, according to this trading card that Marvel put out
many years ago featuring Thor's hammer,
it is said to weigh exactly 42.3 pounds,
hardly an un-liftable amount of weight for most superheros.
But this makes sense, though, because
if it weighed 300 billion elephants
then Loki here would be crushed to death.
So it's definitely that the enchantment makes
it really hard to pick up despite it being
relatively a light amount of weight.
So that means that wherever Thor leaves this hammer,
it's gonna stay there and
there's nothing you can do to move it.
However, if Thor say, left his hammer in space,
where there's no gravity, who is to stop anyone
from just nudging it slightly?
Would it just stay where it is in space despite the fact
that there's nothing really holding it down?
Well, we have to understand the difference here
between lifting the hammer and wielding the hammer.
The inscription on it implies that people will be able
to hold this hammer, but it's only if they are worthy
that they possess the power that it comes with.
Meaning, people should be able to lift it physically,
but that doesn't necessarily mean that
they'll be able to conjure storms.
Fascinatingly enough, the conundrum of Thor's hammer
in space actually happened once.
In fact, it was Iron Man who was pushing Thor's hammer
in space, but as soon as he entered Earth's atmosphere
he was no longer able to lift it,
thus answering our question here.
In fact you are able to nudge Thor's hammer along,
but once you hit a place with
gravity, you're kind of screwed.
It's no longer in your control.
What about someone like Magneto?
Surely his power over magnetism would
let him lift a metal hammer.
Magneto has shown us a couple times that he's
been able to deflect the hammer when it's thrown at him,
so I'm sure lifting it wouldn't be that big of a problem.
I mean it is metal after all, he should be able to pick
it up using his mutant abilities,
but we again have to understand that he's just moving
the hammer physically, he's not wielding any of its power.
He's not worthy enough to possess the power of Thor,
though he is capable of moving it with his powers.
So now we reach the question, who is worthy enough
to possess the power of Thor other than Thor himself?
What other characters in the comic book universe
have been able to pick up Thor's hammer?
And there's quit a bit, actually some surprising ones
that you might not have known.
Both Captain America and Storm have been able to
pick up Mjolnir and wield its powers.
In a couple what-if storylines, which are basically stories
that don't really exist, they didn't really happen,
but they just wrote them in to see what it would be
like if these things happened.
So for example, Loki and Rogue
and Conan the Barbarian all wielded Thor's hammer.
But this one is probably the most
interesting if you didn't know it.
Both Superman and Wonder Woman wielded
Mjolnir in separate crossover events.
Hopefully you guys know a little bit more about this
awesome weapon so you can go
and impress your friends and everything,
but you know what time it is now,
it's time for the weekly trivia challenge.
(upbeat music)
So last week I asked you guys which actor would have
played Superman in Tim Burton's Superman Lives movie
that never saw the light of day,
and 130selim said, Nicolas Cage.
That is correct.
Gosh, that would have been just the worst movie.
I mean, check out what he would have looked like.
Scary.
This week's trivia question is actually very interesting,
and I think it's kind of cool and I hope you guys do too.
It's about the Transformers.
So, Optimus Prime, I'm sure we all know who he is.
Big giant truck robot, leader of the autobots,
very strong, both physically and morally.
But of course he is a robot, a self aware robot,
but robots and computers and stuff like that use data
and file systems to store information.
So this week's trivia question is: How much space would
Optimus Prime's consciousness take up
if you were to put him onto your computer hard drive?
I'm talking, how many gigabytes, how many terabytes
would his entire consciousness take,
would it fill up on your hard drive?
Kind of an interesting question, and if you think you
know the answer or want to take a stab at it,
you might be right, and if you are,
we'll feature you on the show next time.
So if you want to leave your answers down in the comments
below, or on Facebook, you can even tweet at us
at NerdSync using the hashtag CMTrivia, and hey,
while you're at it, if you want to send in your own
trivia questions, we'd love to feature your guys'
fun facts and stuff on the show as well,
so if you have some of those, feel free to send those in
using Twitter and Facebook or wherever else.
We love to hear from you guys.
So get to work on this week's trivia challenge.
(upbeat music)
That's it for this week, you guys.
I hope you learned a lot, and hey, if you liked this video
and you're a first-time watcher,
please subscribe at the bottom.
We'd love to have you guys.
We have some great stuff coming out.
If you want to learn more about comic books, you can
definitely view some of our other videos that we've made,
and of course we always have some coming out.
And once again, if you haven't seen that Thor video
that we made, go check that out, that's a fun one as well.
You can also check out NerdSync Productions
on Facebook and Twitter.
You can follow me on Twitter at TheAceConvict,
and for NerdSync Productions, I am Scott Niswander.
We'll see you guys next time.
We'll be talking about more things
that you thought you knew about comic books.
See you later.
It's very strong, can destroy mountains, and oh hey.
So I'm sure we all know the inscription, gosh.
(jumbling words)
(cats meowing)
Thanks for yelling, you guys, it's really helping me out.