@deaditegonzo: Ah, yes we are getting somewhere.
Friday says that just cracking the vibranium won't be enough but I don't see how that means that Thor is too weak to destroy the city. He just wouldn't vaporize it. Did Tony really think that thor destroying the core and letting it fall would be a good plan? Tony would not suggest something like that. It makes way more sense that Friday was saying that the city would fall in too large pieces just from Thor hitting the core. Tony's plan of the atomic action doubling back sounds to me like him doubling back the power created by Thor's hit. The city falls in tiny pieces due to the atomic action doubling back as opposed to big pieces from only Thor's hit. I don't see anything to say otherwise.
Yes Thor was incapable of vaporizing the city, but not of just destroying it. Its never stated he's too weak to destroy it, just that he can't vaporize it, which makes sense considering a blunt hammer strike can't vaporize a city. The atomic action doubling back was needed to vaporize it.
Herein lies the part I was saying about speculating.
Tony may not have been able to run the calculations necessary to say what Thor's strike would do, which is why he ran it by Friday. Also, he may very well be thinking out loud, working through the process. But either way, just because Tony's suggestion sounded illogical doesn't mean it meant something different.
If you take the dialogue as it is written, it is pretty direct:
Tony: It's (part?) vibranium. If I get Thor to hit it....
Friday: It'll crack. That's not enough. The impact would still be devastating.
Thor can do no more than crack the vibranium. Cracking the vibranium means that the when island "impacts" it will cause ridiculous damage.
Tony: Maybe I could cap the other end. Keep the atomic action doubling back.
Friday: That could vaporize the city. And everyone on it.
This part clearly says that the atomic action could vaporize the city. As in [The atomic action] could vaporize the city. Now, if you believe the dialogue was simply written poorly, or that there is some hidden meaning, I guess thats fine, but the dialogue tells us exactly what happened. Also, it is shown in the movie before that Thor striking vibranium causes massive destruction. A) In the forest in Avengers 1 B) Thor, on multiple occasions, hits caps shield, instead of the ground or something else, to take out a group of enemies (like in the forest during the opening sequence of AoU, when he smacks Caps shield and it bulldozes the tank and soldiers).
If we want to speculate, I can get into the fictional physics that have been explained to us, as I see it. Namely the fact that the way vibranium works is that disperses energy outward away from itself (why Cap was able to hide under the shield from Thor's strike). In a closed cylinder, based on how vibranium is said to work, Thor's energy is dispersed, but it has nowhere to go, so it bounces back into the vibranium, making the vibranium vibrate at an even higher frequency and launching the energy away at even great force over and over again until the built up energy is too great and it vaporizes everything. Think about a trampoline, when everyone is jumping just right, the amount of bounce keeps getting greater and greater, and the interaction begins to sustain itself without the jumpers needing to exert additional energy. < This is ALL SPECULATION, it is not outright stated in the movie. The movie only tells us that Thor cannot destroy the Island, that his cracking the vibranium stabilizer would only cause the island to impact with devastating results, and that the atomic action destroyed the island. But if we want to have a speculative discussion about the fictional reason Tony's plan worked, thatd be my answer.
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