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Neil deGrasse Tyson expanded his scientific knowledge on Sunday when he took to Twitter to demystify Tom Cruise’s Top Gun: Maverick.
He introduced the topic and began, “Late to the party here, but in this year’s @TopGunMovie, @TomCruise’s character Maverick jumps out of a hypersonic plane at Mach 10.5, before crashing.”
“At that airspeed, his body would splatter like a chain mail glove smacking a worm. Just say,’ the astrophysicist, 64, shot away.
Smart! Neil deGrasse Tyson expanded his scientific knowledge on Sunday when he took to Twitter to demystify Tom Cruise’s Top Gun: Maverick; seen in 2020 at UCLA
Tyson noted the film’s incredible opening scene when he said in his first tweet that Tom’s character “survived without injury.”
He continued his series of tweets detailing the 60-year-old actor’s most successful film to date, adding: ‘At supersonic speeds, the air can’t part smoothly for you.
“You have to pierce it, which largely explains the difference in fuselage designs between subsonic and supersonic aircraft. For this reason, if the air on your body is ejected at these velocities, it might as well be a brick wall.”
Neil, the longtime host of the show Star Talk, even added an image of an airplane to demonstrate his points.
First post: He introduced the topic and started: ‘Late to party here, but in this year’s @TopGunMovie @TomCruise’s character Maverick jumps out of a hypersonic plane at Mach 10.5, before it crashes’
The former student at Columbia University went into more detail about his subject knowledge and expanded his knowledge even further.
“When Maverick shot out of the sky at Mach 10.5, he was traveling at 7,000 mph, which gave him 400 million joules of kinetic energy – the explosive force of 100 kg of TNT,” he typed to his 14.8 million followers.
He said the stunt was “a situation for which human physiology is not designed to survive.”
Concluding the comments, he added, “So no. Maverick is not running away from this. [He’d] being dead. Very dead.’
Fact: He continued his series of tweets to break down the 60-year-old actor’s most successful film to date, adding: ‘At supersonic speeds, the air can’t part smoothly for you’
Another brainiac, Tesla founder Elon Musk, added his voice to the conversation.
He echoed Neil’s statement when he tweeted in response, “Indeed, those scaling kinetic energy by the square of velocity is not well appreciated!”
“A sealed escape pod with a heat shield would probably work,” he suggested, garnering nearly 20,000 likes.
Later in the day, the scientist came forward again to add another thought to the discourse: “In this year’s @TopGunMovie, they fly precariously under the radar, through a narrow, twisting chasm to destroy a target, leaving they have multiple banks of surface-to-air missiles.
“But why not take out the missile banks first? Could then fly without daring maneuvers. Just sayin’.’
Expertise: The former Columbia University student went into more detail about his subject knowledge and went even deeper into the details
Last month, the Cruise-led sequel replaced Disney and Marvel’s hit Black Panther as the fifth highest-grossing film of all time.
The film was already the highest grossing film of the year, surpassing $700 million for Labor Day.
Additionally, Top Gun: Maverick became the best-selling digital title in the United States in its first week of availability on online services.
In addition to Cruise, who reprized his role as Mitchell and served as one of the film’s producers, the cast included Miles Teller, Jennifer Connelly and Jon Hamm.
Final Thoughts: Later in the day, the scientist reappeared to add one more thought to the argument