So, I should perhaps have made it more clear in the last post, but these reviews may contain spoilers and I’m almost certainly not going to think about it or make a note when they arise.
Now, I promise that not all these reviews are going to be about superhero movies and I’m slightly apologetic to follow a(n accidental) Superman review with a review for Thor. But I guess I don’t have to justify myself, I’m basically talking to the aether and anyone daft enough to be reading.
I’m not going to question the science of a magic hammer letting you fly or even the feasibility of a walking metal fella. I’m going to have a look at the bifrost and the intergalactic portal it suggests.
Norse myth tells of the Bifrost, a rainbow bridge that links the godly realm Asgard with the human world of Midgard (Earth). In the film (and, I assume, Marvel’s comic interpretation, but I’m not reviewing that so) the Bifrost is depicted as an extremely high-tech particle-cannon-looking thing that is just off the coast of Asgard reached (appropriately) by a literal rainbow bridge.
When Thor reaches Earth, he ends up having a bit of a chat with some physicists which is quite enjoyable as there aren’t nearly enough physicsts in films generally – except, as previously discussed, physicists who become supervillains.
The physicists suggest that the ‘rainbow bridge’ this burly lunatic is yammering on about could actually be an Einstein-Rosen bridge (the writers get bonus points here for actually using a flashy science sounding name instead of the ever-so-common ‘wormhole’). An Eistein-Rosen bridge is a theoretical distortion in the fabric of space-time that, through a fair deal of terrifying math and solving the Einstein field equations, is most easily expressed as a singularity that links two otherwise disparate points in space. Nearly as soon as this concept was theorised it led to the realisation that the spatial link between these points would be circumventing the ‘true’ distance between them otherwise indicated by standard Euclidean geometry. Technically you wouldn’t contravene the speed of light, but if you travel the shorter distance that the bridge enables you can travel between two points faster than light could travel between them in conventional space.
So actually, despite the faintly ridiculous source myth (and the ridiculously brilliant helmets appearing from time to time), the scientific grounding for that one concept is relatively solid. Now, if a civilisation were to develop the technology to actually create and control a bridge like this and then were to have it operated by a orange eyed black guy in gnarly gold armour and have a big sword act as the focal instrument.. well, that civilisation is just magnificently crazy.
In honesty though, the most unrealistic ‘scientific’ aspect of the film is asking the audience to believe that physicists look like this:
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Also have to note: scientific or not, Anthony Hopkins with a big beard makes a very believable god.
