Compressive failure of a carbon nano-tesseract: Sci-Fi inspired materials and the strength of thanos

Inspired by the super-materials of science fiction (“sci-fi”), here we probe the stability and strength of a proposed all-carbon nano-tesseract or hypercube projected into 3D space, a so-called hypercubyne. The nanostructure is compared to other, similar carbon geometries of similar size, including a fullerene, a hypercubane, and a pentatope. The hypercube configurations provide high compressive strength and elastic toughness with an open lattice structure. For the all-carbon hypercubyne, initial failure is characterized by a buckling instability. Using the ultimate strength of hypercubyne as a basis, we proceed to predict the lower bound of the strength of the supervillain Thanos, who has been depicted destroying the Tesseract in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Thanos has a minimum grip strength of over 40,000 tons, which is approximately 750,000 times that of a typical man. While such comic-inspired analysis is whimsical by design, the study sheds light into the behavior of future exotic carbon constructs and geometries, and illustrates the potential field of “sci-fi” inspired materials.