Can science explain Mjölnir’s powers?

Thor’s hammer, Mjölnir, from Marvel movies and comics, is one of the most versatile and interesting fictional weapons.

It possesses numerous abilities, including being impossible to lift by the unworthy, being able to return to its owner, generating lightning, and allowing the user to fly.

Trying to explain its functioning from a scientific point of view may prove to be an interesting as well as instructive task.

Many, if not all the powers it has, can be surprisingly traced back to the single ability to alter its own weight and concentrate its gravitational pull in a single direction.

Gravity, like all fundamental interaction, is mediated by particles called bosons. They differ from matter particles (or fermions) primarily because they have integer rather than half-integer spin (intrinsic angular momentum).

Gravity’s mediator would be a hypothetical particle called graviton, whose exchange between fermions creates the gravitational attraction we all know.

If Mjölnir were somehow able to adjust its emission of gravitons, it could effectively increase its own weight as needed.

This one feature suffices to make all his other powers scientifically possible.