Which MCU Planets Could Really Exist?

this video was sponsored by brilliant org to learn more about the natural world through solving problems go to brilliant org forward slash Simon Clark the Marvel Cinematic Universe or MCU is an unprecedented achievement of franchise filmmaking across 22 films and 11 TV shows the MCU ties together hundreds of characters and plot lines weaving a hugely complex tapestry that is somehow still understandable and ultimately emotionally satisfying in the recently released final part endgame this video will contain no spoilers incidentally so no need to stress one of the most striking aspects of the MCU is the setting of many of its stories ranging on earth from America to a condor to America to Germany to America to Nepal to America but beyond earth the MCU showcases some fantastical world's some similar to earth and others which are incredibly alien who are you dr. Hannah wake furred is a planetary scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute and an expert on planets orbiting other stars exoplanets go like this one in this video using her PhD in EXO planetary science and my PhD in atmospheric physics we're going to review every planet shown in the MCU to determine which ones could really exist first of all some ground rules we will only be using information from films in the MCU not the comics yep no thanks we'll be determining if the planet could exist as they are depicted in the films that means both physically and also biologically if that planet is shown to be habitable we can do this by comparing the MC use planets with planets and exoplanets that we've discovered as well as the laws of planetary and atmospheric science so with these rules in place and 28 planets moons and astronomical objects to consider are you ready the MCU kicked off in 2008 with Ironman the only planet to feature was our very own earth so yeah I could definitely exist Ironman was followed by the mediocre Hulk which again only featured earth as did Iron Man 2 but things got a lot more interesting in 2011's Thor features earth represented by America alongside two other planets Asgard home of the gods and Jotunheim home of the frost giants Asgard is shown to be a flat disc rather than a spheroid ie like a sphere like all planets we've observed so far most planets are slightly oblate meaning that they have an equatorial circumference larger than their polar circumference earth for example has an equatorial circumference of 40,000 and 75 kilometers and a polar circumference of 40,000 and 8 kilometers meaning that the planet isn't a perfect sphere but more reverse squashed sphere like a tangerine the flattest furrowed we've discovered so far is the star called a kinnor in the constellation of error darkness which is 64% of its equatorial diameter at the poles but to achieve this flatness it has to be spinning at 225 kilometers per second so a planet could conceivably be flat like as God is shown to be if it were very low density and spinning very very fast which is definitely not the case for Asgard so as it is shown not even getting into the seemingly infinite supply of water on the planet Asgard definitely could not exist without a strong foundation of magic now those foundations are gone sorry as well as Asgard Thor introduces Jotunheim Jotunheim seems to be a frozen planet made of ice falling apart at the time of the movie due to a lack of the magic Hannah do you want to talk about the role of magic in planetary physics now okay taking magic house at the equation then Jotunheim is pretty similar to planetary bodies we've observed for example during the New Horizons mission Pluto was observed to have mountain ranges made of ice and other solar system bodies such as Miranda Titan and Ganymede exhibit cryovolcanism cryovolcanism is the equivalent of volcanic activity on earth but in places that are so cold that liquid water behaves like lava does on earth volcanic features like lava flows volcanoes and eruptions have near exact counterparts on icy worlds with liquid water instead of liquid rock this would potentially explain several features we see on yatin height such as these hexagonal columns which appears similar to columnar jointed volcanic rocks on earth such as the Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland for this theory to work the planet would need to be extremely cold but as Guardians seem to be basically indestructible from an environmental point of view so that doesn't seem to be an issue yatin home is also shown to have a thick water filled atmosphere which would cause extensive hydrological weathering and so could explain the features such as giant caverns which we see in the film as long as the Oppenheim was located far from its star still maintaining a low surface temperature with a thick atmosphere then it could definitely exist surprise that's it for phase one apart from a brief appearance in The Avengers of sanctuary palaces asteroid looking home which we see more often guardians of the galaxy this is an interesting one because we see features like sanctuary all over the place in our solar system every gas giant in our solar system has rings of rocky or icy material around them most famously Saturn has a large flat ring system we also have multiple large asteroid belts in our solar system so geologically sanctuary is absolutely possible however the density of material and the surface gravity shown in the films is much too high for a small body such as an asteroid and because this the atmosphere on sanctuary would definitely be too tenuous to breathe if it exists at all that said the MCU showcases artificial gravity technology on spaceships and it's not exactly clear what the requirements are for Loki and the others physiology so with some biological hand-waving and treating it more like a ship than a planet sanctuary might possibly exist phase two of the MCU kicked off in 2013 with Iron Man 3 which again only featured earth however things got a lot more interesting in Thor the dark world said no one ever this film features seven planets of which we've already met earth Asgard and Jotunheim leaving Sparta prime vanaheim Muspelheim and Niflheim smart all time is the home of the Dark Elves a blasted planet with a thick rolling atmosphere with tinges of orange it also has a rather unique looking star every time it's shown its eclipsed an eclipse occurs when one astronomical object appears directly in front of another on earth the Sun appears eclipsed 20 between Earth and Sun by some cosmic fluke the Sun and Moon actually appear to be the same size in the sky on earth while the Sun is 400 times larger than the moon it's also 400 times further away that means that the moon neatly blocks out the Sun leaving only a corona visible around the edges spot all time seems to experience an eclipse permanently that means that it needs not one but two cosmic flukes a moon that is the right size least approximately and also that has a very particular orbit in order for the moon to constantly block out the Sun it would need to orbit the planet at the same rate that the planet orbits the Sun such that it constantly appears in the sky in the same location as the Sun even a slight mismatch of these orbits would result in the phenomenon being temporary the odds of this happening are astronomically small but the universe is a big place we can't categorically rule out that it couldn't exist so yeah Sparkle time might just be possible vanaheim is an earth clay a terrestrial planet with temperate atmosphere and the extras from Game of Thrones sitting around nothing terribly interesting here it's so similar to earth that it could definitely exist useful home and Niflheim are only very briefly shown in the sky over London during the convergence event and there's really not enough to go on to rule on feasibility useful home appears in greater detail in thor ragnarok though so we'll come back to it there we are briefly stuck back on earth with Captain America the Winter Soldier before things go completely nuts in by god they actually learned how to make a nice-looking movie after Peter quill is picked up from Earth we're introduced to three new planets Morag Xander and nowhere which isn't technically a planet but we'll roll a bit more Ike is the planet where star-lord who picks up the orb containing the Power Stone and seems to be very similar to earth but with several moons or other planets looming large in the sky this may seem like pure fantasy but we've actually observed planetary systems with planets so close together that they would appear this large in the sky Trappist one for example is a star with seven planets orbiting so close to one another that if you were to stand on the surface of one of them other planets would appear in the sky overhead even if only briefly during their orbits we'll come back to this topic in a little bit when talking about another movie Morag however very possible the Xander the planet they paid Glenn Close to be on is an earth-like planet in a triple star system that is with three stars orbiting each other and in turn orbited by planets multiple star systems are surprisingly common with our nearest stellar neighbour the Alpha Centauri system containing three stars finding a planet in a triple star system is less common but in 2016 just such a system was discovered in the constellation Centaurus the planet koechli named HD one three one three nine nine a B orbits one star which is in turn orbited by a pair of stars this unusual configuration suggests that planets with multiple Suns may exist across the galaxy so Xand are very possible that leaves nowhere no where is the severed head of a celestial avatar an ancient being rather than a planet it's so huge that it might as well be though however while it might be the size of a planet it does not obey the laws of planetary science if it were made of rock it would have collapsed under the force of gravity and its own a stirrer st that is how unfair it is planets like to be spheres or steroidal accounting for rotation because it's the way of combining a lot of rock together with the least possible potential energy if a planet had a more complicated shape than rock further from the center of mass could fall to a location closer to the center of mass gaining kinetic energy if everything is equally far away from the center of mass are you a sphere then nothing can fall anywhere it's the minimal energy configuration nowhere however is very much not a sphere in that it's a skull but as such it's made of some unspecified alien material that we don't know the properties of and because we can't assume the physical properties will be like those of rocks that make up the planets that we've discovered so far we can't definitively rule out its existence citing how the rocks would fracture and fall apart into the sphere so it could exist sure why not skipping over several films that again only feature earth taking us from phase 2 to phase 3 we find ourselves back with the guardians in and things are about to get a bit crazy Guardians 2 features the most planets of any movie in the MCU a staggering 12 we've already met earth but the rest of them are completely new the first of these is sovereign which isn't a single planet that rather a collection of planets that resemble Donald Trump's apartment orbiting so incredibly close together that they cast shadows on one another while we saw earlier that more act similar to the Trappist 1 system could have planets orbiting close by close enough to see there's a limit to how close planetary bodies can orbit one another without tearing each other apart specifically this is known as the Roche limit this is the distance from an astronomical object that a satellite such as a moon can orbit without being torn apart by tidal forces tidal forces are forces inside a satellite caused by a strong gradient in the local gravitational field the side of a satellite closer to the object it's orbiting will experience a stronger gravitational pull than the side further away because the satellite isn't a single solid object this will act to pull the satellite apart far away from the object it's orbiting this will be a negligible effect but get close enough go past the Roche limit of the object and the satellite will be torn asunder assuming that the planets comprising soverign are made of the same material and so have the same density the Roche limit is given by this simplified equation in other words if a planet is orbiting another larger planet in sovereign and to distance less than one and a quarter the radius of the larger planet it will be inside the Roche limit that is definitely the case for the planets shown here and so they are too close to each other to exist in a stable configuration so the planet system could not exist as shown yeesh after leaving sovereign with the harbor Larry batteries the guardians are pursued for an asteroid filled with a bit of quantum mechanics thrown in the quantum asteroid field appears similar to the asteroid belts that we have in our solar system but the asteroids are blinking in and out of existence we've never seen anything like this and for good reason quantum mechanics is the fundamental theory explaining some of the smaller scale interactions in the universe between fundamental particles like electrons and photons at a key component of the theory is the randomness inherent in physical systems known as quantum indeterminacy the quantum asteroid field exhibits indeterminacy in the position of each asteroid one moment an asteroid is here the next it's there there is a major problem with this however and that's the size of these asteroids quantum mechanics applies on small scale such as when you're describing individual atoms describing objects larger than atoms results in quantum effects being lost as the object interacts with its environment a process called quantum decoherence think of it like this quantum effects are lost over time as an object interacts with its environment in much the same way that energy is lost in a mechanical system due to friction the larger the quantum object the faster quantum effects are lost like in a system with a lot of friction energy is lost very quickly so while a quantum object exhibiting indeterminacy could be as large as an asteroid it would not stay a quantum object for more than a fraction of a second as such the quantum asteroid field could not exist as shown which is a shame because it looks bloody awesome after this the movie features a baffling array of planets some of which we learn very little about because they only feature on screen for a few seconds so quick fire around [Music] bear hurt the planet where the Guardians crash basically an earth plane with four moons seems possible to meet contracts EA the icy planet with a slight cameo a terrestrial ice planet much like Hoff in Star Wars actually go check out our video on planets in star wars 4 wide that one could exist seasick where ego starts an aggressive expansion honestly too little information to go on our ego 7 same problem color which first features in this film and then more extensively in Captain Marvel as the kre-o well an earth-like planet again we have so little to go on that there's nothing to suggest it couldn't exist how about rear ok this is an interesting one in the clip we see a murky atmosphere and some of rora which are orange rather than blue red and green we see on earth the color of the aurora on a planet is due to the chemical composition of its atmosphere almost entirely oxygen and nitrogen on earth which gets excited by energetic particles from the Sun which causes the aurora orange aurora would be possible if the atmosphere on rio was comprised of calcium gas calcium's one of the most common metals in the universe though it's not a gas that we see in large concentrations in EXO planetary atmospheres it's rock forming element rarely seen on its own so unless calcium was being outgassed somehow through some unknown chemical process I'd actually go if not possible on this one ok so what about a con a con has some funky looking pink vegetation and it orbits a blue star this is most likely in O or B type star which is some of the hottest and fastest live stars in the universe the whole live hot daeyoung thing really started in the stars the question here then is would there be enough time for complex life to evolve on that planet considering that the star doesn't have a long life cycle and the planet would be bombarded by strong UV and x-ray radiation from its star way more than we have here on earth for a Khan to be habitable as well as evolution happening quickly the atmosphere would need to contain strong UV and x-ray absorbers similar to ozone in the Earth's atmosphere this could shift the peak wavelength of the stellar light to the so you might result in redder looking vegetation so I'd say it's plausible but a particular string of requirements must be met for this to work still though possible that then leaves egos planet which is well if it's a planet that's also a person who's a god small geez surface gravity aside this one is outside of our expertise and firmly in the realm of fantasy so much like with nowhere we'll have to concede that with some celestial materials it could possibly exist after the madness of guardians - we briefly returned to earth in spider-man homecoming before heading over to possibly the weirdest planet of all in flash thordan wait I mean [Music] Sekar is a planet made of trash the planet forming from the excretion of lots of portals most famously the devil's anus the materials different but the gradual accumulation of matter is exactly how one of the ways the planets can form planets form from sticking together rocky material initially dust and then later rocks and larger planetesimals this is the material left over from the formation of star so car seems to be the end result of the same process but instead of being accumulated dust around a star it's the central point of rubbish shot from wormholes in otherwise empty space the film seems to show objects traveling out of the portals at low ie collisional speeds which would result in sticking together rather than shattering on impact over time the garbage from the portals would most likely form a planet of some kind there are a few questions though Sekar experiences both day and night which implies that rotates near a star yet this isn't clearly shown in the film and isn't implied by the Disneyland ride thought goes on maybe Sircar is actually a layer of garbage on top of an existing small planet around a star perhaps the Grand Master isn't totally reliable as a narrator in addition though a nearby star would subjects a car to harmful radiation and energetic particles that we are shielded from on earth by our planet's magnetic field that magnetic field is created by our planets molten iron core it acts like a giant magnet if Sekar is made of trash then it's highly unlikely to have a strong magnetic field unless the metal pieces of trash that landed there all sank to the core of the planet and formed a molten layer which would potentially generate a magnetic field perhaps the portals also have a magnetic moment but additionally the atmosphere of the planet would be the result of outgassing of the material that collected there it would be a concentrated version of the air inside rubbish dumps - the oxygen while it would have an atmosphere it would be incredibly toxic and quite possibly extremely flammable was it snowing so a trash plant like Sekar could physically exist but it definitely wouldn't be habitable and so without getting into the weird flow of time on Sekar we're gonna have to say it couldn't exist as Shane we're not done with thor ragnarok yet though we've had Jotunheim we've had slaughter of home we've had nifflheim and now we have Muspelheim and anaheim wait no sorry hell hell is actually only briefly featured and appears to be like earth but with a thick atmosphere and slow motion so it seems very possible Muspelheim on the other hand actually looks like hell somewhat confusingly it actually looks just like Earth during the Hadean period which we also covered in our Star Wars video however given we're dealing with an Asgardian for the point about habitability in that video doesn't really apply here the GOG scene in the movie is also very similar to volcanic regions on earth with volcanic columns as seen for example in Fingal's cave in Scotland so both hell and moose boeheim could really exist skipping over earthbound black panther that brings us up to Avengers infinity war which is largely sat on planets away from Earth we've already covered nowhere but the others are new to us Vermeer is the planet where the soul stone is kept and probably the most visually striking world in the MCU in the sky of for Mia we see another Eclipse star with an extremely active Corona jumping ahead to Avengers endgame it isn't a spoiler to say that the star is still eclipsed in another scene set on the planet that implies that the star is also permanently eclipsed like svartalfheim oh I don't know how to say that name again this would be possible if for Mia had a moon with exactly the right orbital parameters and it's implied in this one shot that it possibly has two means one with an atmosphere in fact the ring of fire surrounding the other moon may well be a backlit atmosphere by the same process that turns sunsets on earth reddy-orange the Starlight would be shifted to the red by passing through the atmosphere of the moon there is a lot to unpack in this screenshot though from the cosmic horror on the left cloud reaching the surface of the planets pole to the beam of energy coming in from the left the only thing we've observed that resembles this is a beam of energetic particles known as an Astrophysical jet fired out of the poles of massive rotating objects such as black holes for the beam to be this tight however the planet would need to be in the immediate vicinity of a supermassive object otherwise the beam would be much more spread out being in the immediate vicinity however would render a delicate balance of orbits as the moon's would need to constantly block out the Sun impossible so vomit could not exist new devaglia or never D'Elia as Thor says it sounds like a made-up word the home of the dwarf drawing a tree is a stellar forge this is neither a planet nor a star but a huge structure entirely surrounding a neutron star which is in turn surrounded by several rings it's an example of a Dyson Sphere a hypothetical structure that encompasses a star and captures its power output in this case to power a forge we don't want to dwell on this design of the forge too much or how it would operate instead we're talking about the feasibility of the physical structure here and much like nowhere we don't know what sci-fi materials this structure would be made of or how responsive it could be to small-scale changes in gravitational field of the star that unchecked could tear the sphere apart or for that matter how it would deal with external for things like being hit by debris or asteroids so assuming those problems are dealt with this is a tentative hypothetical may be possible given some incredible sci-fi technology spherical symmetry is really lending a hand here but definitely beyond us humans for the foreseeable future people are so petty and tiny that leaves Titan the homeworld of Thanos where a lot of the action in infinity war takes place someone confusingly this is not the same Titan that we have in our solar system the moon of Saturn which is on its own super interesting so we shouldn't compare the as shown to that moon what we do know about the planet is what star-lord says upon arrival it's eight degrees off its axis gravitational pull is all over the place Starwood says this as if it's incredibly unusual but earth is 23 degrees off-axis in our orbit this tilt is what causes the seasons it's not clear how a planet being eight degrees off-axis would have the dramatic effects that we see on titan compared to what Faneuil shows us it was like before in fact eight degrees is fairly small when we look at our solar system planets where the earth is tilted to 23 degrees and Venus is basically spinning backwards and upside down we have a tilt of a hundred and seventy-seven degrees what this could mean instead is that the planets experience a rapid axial precession angle of 8 degrees essentially going from tilting in one direction by eight degrees then the other by eight degrees in a circle like when a spinning top is not perfectly straight and it tilts one way than the other in one rotation drawing out a circle on the tabletop if the planets doing this quickly enough it would cause some dramatic effects on the internal dynamics of its liquid core or mantle which in turn could cause twists in the magnetic field and changes in the gravitational field that would be chaotic I'm gonna say this straight up though without a supercomputer we really don't know what effects this would cause it's a really complicated problem to solve the earth actually also has an axial precession but it's on the order of twenty five thousand years which is very long and will not cause any harm to earth or us it just changes the seasons a little bit over a long time so if we ramp up axial precession to 11 caused by some unknown event on the planet may be irresponsible geothermal energy harvesting Titan could exist but I am speculating wildly that's not it for infinity war though as the very last scene of the film is Thanos on Titan - otherwise known as the garden this is a pretty standard earth-like world with some large moons and as seen at the start of the endgame a ring of matter around it similar to Saturn while we associate rings with the large planets in our solar system it is possible for terrestrial planets to have them to the dwarf planet how may orbiting outside of Neptune's orbit has both moons and a ring of material so with this precedent and otherwise being like earth the garden is very possible man after you examine a planet literally made out of garbage everything else seems so banal are you yawning skipping over Ant Man and the wasp we come to a final new planet in Captain Marvel as we previously said when talking about guardians to Captain Marvel features Halle the homeworld of the cream as well as earth and new planet Topher Topher is an earth-like planet with a thick dusty atmosphere and blue soil a thick atmosphere on a terrestrial planet is very possible and the orange color of it would make sense if the atmosphere was denser than the Earth's perhaps as a result of more extensive outgassing from more active plate tectonics or volcanoes for example the blue soil is an interesting one it could be the result of microbial life such as cyanobacteria or it's simply a result of being rich in copper copper turns blue when oxidized and when bonded with ammonia it creates a deep blue compound called a mean so our final planet topher could exist that means then that of the 28 planetary bodies considered in this video 3 we just have too little information to go on 6 Asgard sovereign the quantum asteroid field Rhea Sekar and Vermeer couldn't exist and the rest are possible to varying degrees looking at use fossil time while pretty wild the planets of the MCU still only scratch the surface of what is possible in our last video together Hannah you talked about hot Jupiters and how you'd like to see more of them in science fiction what are other possible planets that we still haven't seen in sci-fi there are so many different planets that are left to explore planets with their atmosphere being stripped off by their stars water worlds without mercy is of steam or planets with solid ice crusts and deepwater sub oceans what would life be like on the moon like Enceladus for example in our solar system which is liquid ocean between 60 kilometre ice sheets what about a giant ring system with blocks out the star periodically causing varying day/night Eclipse cycles on the planet what would that do to life then a tidally locked planet with a permanent day side in a permanent night side something which is very common in our most studied exoplanets oh clouds made of rubies and sapphires okay I'm gonna stop don't worry Hannah in this video we drew on concepts from quantum mechanics orbital mechanics electromagnetism and atmospheric physics if you've always wanted to learn more about these topics then the best way is to solve practice problems but where to start how do you find good problems with clear explanations of the subject matter the answer is educational website brilliant org brilliant has dozens of courses written by experts across maths and science which are enjoyed by over seven million users you can study all of the topics we introduced in this video and beyond in particular if you enjoyed the discussion of quantum mechanics then you should check out their excellent course on quantum computing I wish that I'd had access to brilliant when I was at school the website makes an excellent companion to study at senior levels as well as a standalone educational service for curious adults their offline courses in their apps for iOS and Android make learning a little bit each day through practice problems on your commute or in your lunch break as easy as pie sorry - get smarter at maths and science go to brilliant dog forward slash Simon Clark and the first 200 people to use promo codes Simon Clark will get to 20% off their premium annual subscription thank you for watching this video it has been a real labor of love over several months and huge thanks must go - Hannah - dr. waetford for her endless enthusiasm and expertise and frankly patience with me so thank you Hannah also thank you to dr. Thomas Preston who gave a consultation on the quantum asteroid field if you found this video interesting then definitely check out our previous video on the planets in the Star Wars films and if you'd like to see behind the curtain or if you just like to support my work then you can do so on my patreon there is an extensive behind-the-scenes video outlining how I made this how we research this video thank you so much for watching to the end and I'll see you in the next one

Channel: Simon Clark

Views: 249,062

Rating: 4.8946915 out of 5

Keywords: MCU, marvel, marvel movies, avengers, avengers endgame, endgame, infinity war, avengers infinity war, thor ragnarok, sakaar, asgard, guardians of the galaxy, guardians of the galaxy 2, iron man, captain america, avengers 4, thor, thanos, science, space, planets, steve rogers, tony stark, marvel cinematic universe, marvel studios, NASA, star wars, mustafar, earth science, atmosphere, eclipse, vormir, space documentary, movies, simon clark, dr simon clark, simonoxfphys, PhD, exoplanet

Id: Y-i2ZHddrM4

Length: 31min 18sec (1878 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 09 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/ArChakCommie]

Wow this is an awesome video!! Gotta love pop science

[u/Sir_VCS3]

It'd be a shame if this was lost in new, Simon Clark's videos are always great and I'm sure this one especially would be really interesting to this sub's members