MCU Thor & Bifrost Gravitational Lensing

[NameyMcname2024]

In Thor 1, Jane refers to the Bifrost as producing gravitational lensing capable of revealing multiple constellations that are native to Asgard's region of space.

Gravitational lensing is a real-world occurrence that astrophysicists use to view otherwise too distant galaxies. Gravitational lensing of the magnitude to reveal multiple constellations -- which at minimum cover hundreds of light years in diameter -- requires at least a small-galaxy-level of mass energy equivalent.

Specifically 140 million solar masses, as explained below.

In Thor 4, Gorr tanked the full pull of the Bifrost for the entire time it was open on the Shadow Realm. This is the only time anyone in the MCU ever fully resisted the full pull of the Bifrost. Meanwhile, Thor fought evenly with Gorr on the Shadow Realm, at one point overpowering Gorr with Stormbreaker's lightning.

This would place Gorr and Thor at galaxy level. This would not affect scaling for any other character, since it occurred after Thor's L&T exercise regimen workout and would place them above the power levels of Loki, Odin, Hela, Malekith, Kurse, Surtur, base Thanos, etc.

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Thor 1 dialogue:

https://transcripts.foreverdreaming.org/viewtopic.php?t=37719

Between timestamp 33:27 and 34:00, Jane and Erik have this conversation:

ERIK: You don't think this was just a magnetic storm, do you?

JANE: Look, the lensing around these edges is characteristic of an Einstein-Rosen Bridge.

ERIK: An Einstein-Rosen Bridge is a theoretical connection between two different points of space-time.

JANE: It's a wormhole. Erik, look. What do you see?

ERIK: Stars.

JANE: Yeah, but not our stars. See, this is the star alignment for our quadrant this time of year, and unless Ursa Minor decided to take a day off, these are someone else's constellations.

Jane accurately describes gravitational lensing here. The Bifrost operates as a straight line energy beam, positioned directly between Earth (Jane’s point of observation) and Asgard’s region of space which otherwise is too far away even for Earth’s telescopes to view. In this scene, Jane’s telescope is visible.

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The comic book tie-in Marvel's The Avengers Prelude: Fury's Big Week has Coulson say "the activity has intensified to where there are now atmospheric flares, all of which resulted in large-scale gravitational lensing."

https://books.google.com/books?id=1...in large-scale gravitational lensing"&f=false

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IRL science / MCU Science:

The Einstein Field Equation (EFE), which is the mathematical basis for both general relativity and gravitational lensing, appeared in Iron Man 2, along with the full derivation of Newton's law of gravity, when Tony Stark was reading Howard's notes, while Tony was actively reading them to try and save his own life. (timestamp 1:13:32 to 1:14:43)

That means these physics exist in the MCU.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein_field_equations#The_correspondence_principle

"Gravitational lensing occurs when a massive celestial body — such as a galaxy cluster — causes a sufficient curvature of spacetime for the path of light around it to be visibly bent, as if by a lens. The body causing the light to curve is accordingly called a gravitational lens. According to Einstein’s general theory of relativity, time and space are fused together in a quantity known as spacetime. Within this theory, massive objects cause spacetime to curve, and gravity is simply the curvature of spacetime."

https://esahubble.org/wordbank/grav...hen a,accordingly called a gravitational lens.

In Thor 1, Jane references the absence of Ursa Minor when talking about Asgard's constellations. Ursa Minor has stars that are as far apart from each other as 683 light years. The stars in the smallest known real world constellation, Canis Minor, are separated by 138 light years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ursa_Minor#Features

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canis_Minor#Features

Since Jane said "constellations" plural, at minimum the stars in Asgard's region of space should be taken as double the size of Canis Minor, or 277 light years.

The smallest real world galaxy, the dwarf M60-UCD1, is 154 light years in spatial distance and 140 million solar masses. This is the minimum spatial distance and mass energy equivalent the Bifrost produced.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M60-UCD1

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Finally, a corroborating piece of evidence from Thor 1:

The Bifrost produced auroras on Earth while its entire energy beam was light years away, going from Asgard to the other Realms and nowhere near Earth. Jane and Selvig confirm this at the start of the movie with this dialogue (timestamp 1:32 to 2:08):

https://transcripts.foreverdreaming.org/viewtopic.php?t=37719

ERIK: Jane, you can't keep doing this.

JANE: The last 17 occurrences have been predictable to the second.

ERIK: Jane, you're an astrophysicist, not some storm chaser.

JANE: I'm telling you, there's a connection between these atmospheric disturbances and my research. Erik, I wouldn't have asked you to fly out here if I wasn't absolutely sure.

DARCY: Jane? I think you want to see this.

JANE: What is that?

ERIK: I thought you said it was a subtle aurora!

This is the first time Jane and Selvig saw the Bifrost, so all previous 17 occurrences were just auroras during Asgardian trips to other realms.

This happens again at timestamp 1:35:32, when Loki aims the Bifrost from Asgard to Jotunheim.

At timestamp 1:17:15, SHIELD's equipment later detected the Bifrost producing gamma radiation and gravity. (Gravity being needed for gravitational lensing.) In real life, GRB gamma ray bursts generate physical effects on Earth from light years away, and are caused by multi-solar mass supernovas / black holes.

"The energy in gamma-ray bursts is almost incomprehensible: In a few seconds they can emit as much energy as the sun will over its entire 12-billion-year life span."

https://www.scientificamerican.com/...urst-ever-recorded-rattled-earths-atmosphere/

Auroras and magnetic storms come from solar flares.

https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/ProtonOzone

GRB gamma radiation from light years away can produce effects in Earth's atmosphere that resemble solar flare activity."GRB 221009A produced a sudden ionospheric disturbance so significant that it had a solar-flare sized signature on the day-side ionosphere."

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2515-5172/ac9d2f#fnref-rnaasac9d2fbib3

This means that the Bifrost also normally casually produces supernova star level ambient energy.

 

[ByAsura]

I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that gravitational lensing is only common of galactic clusters because of our perspective on Earth. Galactic clusters are so massive, yet so visually small from hundreds of millions of light-years away, so a lens effect is much more pronounced (diagram to illustrate my point). Apparently, the same effect can potentially be accomplished with the Earth's mass at a distance of >15,000 AUs (about 1/4th of a light-year), and we're currently observing lensing from supermassive black holes that are thousands of times less massive than galactic clusters.

Since they enter planetary atmospheres, Bifrost bridges wouldn't need the same mass as a galactic cluster, they'd just need a small angular distance and very high gravity.

As for the GRB section, emphasis on from light-years away. The Bifrost isn't hundreds of millions to billions of light-years away in this scenario, it's well within the night sky or even directed at Earth, so replicating some of the same effects wouldn't mean it's on the same level.

 

[Suigetsuhyugs]

Wanna see where this is going

 

[NameyMcname2024]

I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that gravitational lensing is only common of galactic clusters because of our perspective on Earth. Galactic clusters are so massive, yet so visually small from hundreds of millions of light-years away, so a lens effect is much more pronounced (diagram to illustrate my point). Apparently, the same effect can potentially be accomplished with the Earth's mass at a distance of >15,000 AUs (about 1/4th of a light-year), and we're currently observing lensing from supermassive black holes that are thousands of times less massive than galactic clusters.

Since they enter planetary atmospheres, Bifrost bridges wouldn't need the same mass as a galactic cluster, they'd just need a small angular distance and very high gravity.

As for the GRB section, emphasis on from light-years away. The Bifrost isn't hundreds of millions to billions of light-years away in this scenario, it's well within the night sky or even directed at Earth, so replicating some of the same effects wouldn't mean it's on the same level.

The link you gave about using a planet as a gravitational lens is referring to hypothetical scenarios. It says "If we want to work with the lensing potential of planets, we’ll need major advances in antenna and imaging technologies to overcome the weak signatures the planets provide." The link I gave about gravitational lensing refers to actual occurrences. Plus your planet lensing link refers to finding other planets, which are much lower mass than stars, and was not about finding multiple stars spread out over hundreds of light years at the same time. Your link even admits the uncertainty of its proposition: "How many extrasolar planets would fall inside this moving magnifying lens? Well, we don’t know nowadays"

Your link about a supermassive black hole actually states that scientists used the mass from a galaxy to find a supermassive black hole. From your link: "The team, led by Durham University, UK, used gravitational lensing—where a foreground galaxy bends the light from a more distant object and magnifies it—and supercomputer simulations on the DiRAC HPC facility, which enabled the team to closely examine how light is bent by a black hole inside a galaxy hundreds of millions of light years from Earth. They found an ultramassive black hole, an object over 30 billion times the mass of our sun, in the foreground galaxy—a scale rarely seen by astronomers." Recall that I used the smallest known galaxy as the mass energy equivalent for the Bifrost, based on the minimum area for multiple constellations.

As for the angular distance required, Jane said the Bifrost's gravitational lensing revealed multiple constellations, which were in Asgard's region of space, which Jane also said is not in Earth's quadrant of the galaxy. As stated in the OP, the area of coverage for multiple constellations is a diameter of hundreds of light years, and that is more than the area of coverage for the smallest known galaxy.

Finally, the Bifrost created auroras on Earth when the entirety of the Bifrost beam was light years from Earth, because those auroras occurred when the Bifrost went from Asgard to other non-Earth planets. For example, that is exactly what Jane and Selvig refer to at the start of Thor 1, and what they see again at the climax when Loki tries to destroy Jotunheim. The fact that SHIELD detected that the Bifrost produces gamma radiation means that the Bifrost produces gamma radiation (GRB) whenever it is active, including off Earth.

 

[Qawsedf234]

High 4-C Bifrost has been brought up and rejected before. I'm not seeing anything different, especially when the effects of the Bifrost does not match up at all with the proposed power output.

 

[NameyMcname2024]

High 4-C Bifrost has been brought up and rejected before. I'm not seeing anything different, especially when the effects of the Bifrost does not match up at all with the proposed power output.

Thor 4 shows the Bifrost access the higher dimension of Eternity's realm. Since VSBattles says "Eternity is the living embodiment of the universe, representing all time in it" with "higher-dimensional existence" then Thor, Gorr, and Jane were outside the universe and outside time itself, so in a higher dimension, when they were in front of Eternity. Based on VSBattles higher dimensional power tiering, wouldn't Thor (the only living member of that trio, and possessor of Stormbreaker / Bifrost) have been physically large multi-solar system level in size based on his comparative size to Eternity? Especially since Loki S2 confirms that raw time can convert into physical matter, and Eternity's body has stars and planets visible in it? Also wouldn't the Bifrost have higher dimensional power tiering as a result?

 

[ByAsura]

The link you gave about using a planet as a gravitational lens is referring to hypothetical scenarios.

Microlensing is still a thing, even if you want to be this pedantic.

Plus your planet lensing link refers to finding other planets, which are much lower mass than stars

That's literally my entire point. You don't actually need galactic clusters to produce gravitational lensing, that's just the most convenient method we have of seeing it under normal circumstances.

Your link even admits the uncertainty of its proposition: "How many extrasolar planets would fall inside this moving magnifying lens? Well, we don’t know nowadays"

That doesn't admit the uncertainty of this position, it admits that they don't know the full extent. That's nowhere near the same thing, and isn't really even directly related to the effect.

Your link about a supermassive black hole actually states that scientists used the mass from a galaxy to find a supermassive black hole.

Fair enough.

As for the angular distance required, Jane said the Bifrost's gravitational lensing revealed multiple constellations, which were in Asgard's region of space, which Jane also said is not in Earth's quadrant of the galaxy. As stated in the OP, the area of coverage for multiple constellations is a diameter of hundreds of light years, and that is more than the area of coverage for the smallest known galaxy.

A) Seeing different constellations doesn't mean that it covers those constellations. It just means, at a minimum, that constellations were visible through the aperture of the portal. Try holding a grain of sand up to the sky, and you'll occlude an area of space that covers tens of thousands of galaxies.

B) That's still totally incomparable to galactic clusters.

Finally, the Bifrost created auroras on Earth when the entirety of the Bifrost beam was light years from Earth, because those auroras occurred when the Bifrost went from Asgard to other non-Earth planets. For example, that is exactly what Jane and Selvig refer to at the start of Thor 1, and what they see again at the climax when Loki tries to destroy Jotunheim.

The entirety of the beam doesn't matter. In fact, how would that even work when the other end of the beam you're talking about is separated from the Earth by distance, not dimensions?

Edit: I meant dimensions, not distance.

The fact that SHIELD detected that the Bifrost produces gamma radiation means that the Bifrost produces gamma radiation (GRB) whenever it is active, including off Earth.

Gamma radiation =/= gamma ray burst.

Gamma ray bursts are called gamma ray bursts because of the immense initial flash of gamma rays. They also produce every other form of electromagnetic radiation.

 

[NameyMcname2024]

A) Seeing different constellations doesn't mean that it covers those constellations. It just means, at a minimum, that constellations were visible through the aperture of the portal. Try holding a grain of sand up to the sky, and you'll occlude an area of space that covers tens of thousands of galaxies.

B) That's still totally incomparable to galactic clusters.

The entirety of the beam doesn't matter. In fact, how would that even work when the other end of the beam you're talking about is separated from the Earth by distance, not dimensions?

1. Seeing different constellations -- actually seeing the various stars that comprise them -- does mean that it covers that distance. With a grain of sand in the sky, you cannot actually see the distinct tens of thousands of galaxies it occludes. You need a telescope, and sometimes gravitational lensing, to do that. While using that telescope, the grain of sand would not be a factor. Jane actually saw the distinct stars. This is onscreen, in the printout Selvig holds here:

Again, the exact dialogue here is:

JANE: Erik, look. What do you see?

ERIK: Stars.

JANE: Yeah, but not our stars. See, this is the star alignment for our quadrant this time of year, and unless Ursa Minor decided to take a day off, these are someone else's constellations.

2. I never said the Bifrost generates galactic cluster level mass. I said at least small galaxy level mass. A galaxy cluster is a cluster of galaxies. Gravitational lensing, as you note, can be done by various mass levels. Planet level lens to reveal a farther away distant planet. Star level lens to reveal a farther away distant star. Galaxy level lens, and sometimes galaxy cluster level lens, to reveal a farther away distant galaxy or supermassive black hole. Microslensing is for revealing a single distant planet, or a single distant star. The second sentence in the microlensing link you provided says "It can be used to detect objects that range from the mass of a planet to the mass of a star, regardless of the light they emit." Bifrost reveals multiple stars spread out by hundreds of light years.

3. The entirety of the Bifrost beam does matter precisely because of the distance. The beam going from Asgard to Jotunheim at the climax of Thor 1 is nowhere near Earth. Yet the Bifrost's ambient energy creates an aurora (which occur due to solar flares) in Earth's atmosphere. As a link I provided in the OP states, multisolar level GRBs do that.

"GRB 221009A produced a sudden ionospheric disturbance so significant that it had a solar-flare sized signature on the day-side ionosphere."

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2515-5172/ac9d2f#fnref-rnaasac9d2fbib3

 

[ByAsura]

1. Seeing different constellations -- actually seeing the various stars that comprise them -- does mean that it covers that distance.

This is so completely utterly, irrelevant that I'm tempted to call it a non-sequitur.

The reason we can't see the individual stars as well as a telescope is because our eyes aren't very good at picking up objects with apparent magnitudes below 5. All a telescope does is allow us to see the same stars, at the same distance, by gathering light in mirrors. So your point makes no difference unless you mean to say that Jane Foster is somehow capturing all the light produced by hundreds of light-years of space instead of just the light that the Earth receives.

You need a telescope

Your mistake is thinking that observation methods change anything about my point.

If a portal blocks the goddamn area of space where Ursa Major is visible from, say, the edge of the Earth's atmosphere (meaning an angular distance of 48 arc seconds), are they going to see Ursa Major, or whatever is in the portal (individual stars included) through their telescopes?

I watched the movie again, and you literally see the Bifrost emanating like a tunnel from the aurora in the atmosphere itself, which was created even before the Bifrost fully came through.

• In front of her was something unlike anything she had ever seen before. It looked as if the constellations had been sucked down from the sky and had gathered in a huge cloud. The rainbow light had grown stronger, brightening the area of the desert above which the cloud hovered. - Novelisation.

Clearly it's not hundreds of light-years across, which is blatantly obvious when you consider the fact that the aperture from the other side of the Bifrost is the size of a room.

The beam going from Asgard to Jotunheim at the climax of Thor 1 is nowhere near Earth.

It's not even in the same dimension. Again, that shit is distance irrelevant.

Yet the Bifrost's ambient energy creates an aurora (which occur due to solar flares) in Earth's atmosphere. As a link I provided in the OP states, multisolar level GRBs do that.

Auroras occur due to electromagnetic radiation. You know what else creates auroras and gamma radiation? Supernovae. You don't need a GRB to do it.

 

[Qawsedf234]

then Thor, Gorr, and Jane were outside the universe and outside time itself, so in a higher dimension, when they were in front of Eternity. Based on VSBattles higher dimensional power tiering, wouldn't Thor (the only living member of that trio, and possessor of Stormbreaker / Bifrost) have been physically large multi-solar system level in size based on his comparative size to Eternity?

No, because he went to a pocket dimension of Eternity and met an avatar as listed in the profile. Thor never interacted with Eternity's full body in our page.

Also wouldn't the Bifrost have higher dimensional power tiering as a result?

If if the Bifrost had an additional spatial axis it wouldn't change its showing or AP because it's not of significant size.

 

[NameyMcname2024]

This is so completely utterly, irrelevant that I'm tempted to call it a non-sequitur.

The reason we can't see the individual stars as well as a telescope is because our eyes aren't very good at picking up objects with apparent magnitudes below 5. All a telescope does is allow us to see the same stars, at the same distance, by gathering light. So your point makes no difference.

Your mistake is thinking that observation methods change anything about my point.

If a portal blocks the goddamn area of space where Ursa Major is visible from, say, the edge of the Earth's atmosphere (meaning an angular distance of 48 arc seconds), are they going to see Ursa Major, or whatever is in the portal through their telescopes?

I watched the movie again, and you literally see the Bifrost emanating like a tunnel from the aurora in the atmosphere itself, which was created even before the Bifrost fully came through.

• In front of her was something unlike anything she had ever seen before. It looked as if the constellations had been sucked down from the sky and had gathered in a huge cloud. The rainbow light had grown stronger, brightening the area of the desert above which the cloud hovered. - Novelisation.

Clearly it's not hundreds of light-years across, which is blatantly obvious when you consider the fact that the aperture from the other side of the Bifrost is the size of a room.

It's not even in the same dimension. Again, that shit is distance irrelevant.

Auroras occur due to electromagnetic radiation. You know what else creates auroras? Supernovae. You don't need a GRB to do it.

A supernova is still a multisolar mass event, at least 8 solar masses, which would upscale the Bifrost, Gorr's resistance, and Thor overpowering Gorr with lightning.

The Bifrost creating a portal between Earth and Ursa Minor is irrelevant because Jane says that they should be able to see Ursa Minor. That's why she said "unless Ursa Minor decided to take a day off, these are someone else's constellations."

The gravitational lens that the Bifrost creates does not have to be the same size as the further objects it makes visible. The lens the Bifrost creates just has to be the required mass to warp the light of spacetime. Per my link in the OP:

"According to Einstein’s general theory of relativity, time and space are fused together in a quantity known as spacetime. Within this theory, massive objects cause spacetime to curve, and gravity is simply the curvature of spacetime. As light travels through spacetime, the theory predicts that the path taken by the light will also be curved by an object’s mass."

https://esahubble.org/wordbank/grav...hen a,accordingly called a gravitational lens.

 

[ByAsura]

You're missing the point. You can create a much smaller event and replicate the same effects, it just has to produce a large amount of electromagnetic radiation and gamma radiation.

The problem is that you're comparing a natural phenomena to an unnatural phenomena, which doesn't even make sense if the Bifrost was multi-stellar in range, because it's not an omni-directional event.

Bruv, they're visually seeing Ursa Minor from Earth. It doesn't have to cover the entirety of Ursa Minor. She's just talking about the visible quadrant of space, which is proven by the fact that the portal exits the lower atmosphere; we don't have Starfleet to see constellations at point-blank range.

Also, I just found this, but that Bifrost activity against Jotunheim also came from the atmosphere.

• But fate had other plans for Thor, and his companions. Lightning flashed across the sky, and the distant sound of thunder boomed. But it was not a storm—it was the Bifrost. Something had followed Lady Sif and the Warriors Three to Midgard. Something much more terrifying.

 

[NameyMcname2024]

No, because he went to a pocket dimension of Eternity and met an avatar as listed in the profile. Thor never interacted with Eternity's full body in our page.

If if the Bifrost had an additional spatial axis it wouldn't change its showing or AP because it's not of significant size.

Okay cool, we can lock this thread whenever you want. Thanks.

 

[ByAsura]

Ok, I guess the argument is over, then.