Neil deGrasse Tyson: Thor's hammer weighs 300 billion elephants

Beloved astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson is no stranger to the world of comic book superheroes, having already found the location for Superman's home planet. He has now turned his keen scientific mind to the Marvel world and the issue of just how much Thor's mighty hammer weighs.

Thor's hammer Mjölnir is said to be made of neutron-star matter. Tyson did the calculations and determined the hammer must therefore weigh as much as 300 billion elephants. That's not a common form of weight measurement, so we have to do some further calculations to translate elephants into pounds.

Tyson didn't specify what kind of elephants or how much they each weigh, so I'm going to make some assumptions here. According to Wikipedia, African elephants weigh 8,800-15,000 pounds. Let's split the difference and say 11,900 pounds. Multiply that by 300 billion and we get 3.57 quadrillion pounds. That's a pretty hefty hammer. Chris Hemsworth must be in really great shape.

more here: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57568456-1/neil-degrasse-tyson-thors-hammer-weighs-300-billion-elephants/