Elon Musk and Neil deGrasse Tyson debunk Top Gun: Maverick

SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, along with astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson have broken down the physics behind Tom Cruise's Top Gun: Maverick.

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Neil deGrasse Tyson and Elon Musk have taken to Twitter to debunk the physics seen throughout Tom Cruise's Top Gun: Maverick.

The latest installment into the Top Gun series saw the return of Tom Cruise playing the fan-favorite character Captain Pete "Maverick" Mitchell for the highly anticipated sequel, and while the movie was certainly a success at the box office, scientists such as Neil deGrasse Tyson have broken down the physics that were displayed throughout a specific scene in the movie. As with most movies, what viewers witness on the big screen isn't necessarily possible in real life, and Maverick's achievement of reaching Mach 10.5 seems to be one of those instances.

deGrasse Tyson took to Twitter to explain that when Maverick was traveling at Mach 10.5 and was forced to eject from his aircraft due to a malfunction, he was moving at 7,000 mph, which gave him 400 million joules of kinetic energy, or the explosive power of 100 kg (220 pounds) of TNT. deGrasse Tyson added that the human body is incapable of surviving this much kinetic energy and that Maverick would have certainly died in the real-world.

These points were backed up by Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who wrote that kinetic energy scales with the square of velocity and that this fact is "not well-appreciated" assumingly within the film. However, Musk decided to provide a solution for this problem that might save Maverick's life if he was to eject at 7,000 mph in the real-world.

Musk said that a "sealed escape pod with a heat shield" would "probably work". For reference, the fastest speed a human has ever traveled, according to the Guinness World Records, is the command module of Apollo 10, carrying Col. (later Lieut Gen.) Thomas Patten Stafford, USAF, which traveled at 39,937 km/h, or Mach 32. However, the members aboard the command module didn't eject and were relatively safe within the module's protective shell.

In other Elon Musk news, the SpaceX CEO recently back-peddled on his decision to purchase Twitter and has decided to follow through with the $44 billion acquisition of the world's second-largest social media platform. Musk also announced that buying Twitter is only part of a bigger plan to create the "everything app". More on that below.

NEWS SOURCE:twitter.com

Jak joined the TweakTown team in 2017 and has since reviewed 100s of new tech products and kept us informed daily on the latest science, space, and artificial intelligence news. Jak's love for science, space, and technology, and, more specifically, PC gaming, began at 10 years old. It was the day his dad showed him how to play Age of Empires on an old Compaq PC. Ever since that day, Jak fell in love with games and the progression of the technology industry in all its forms. Instead of typical FPS, Jak holds a very special spot in his heart for RTS games.

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