Tom Cruise’s Top Gun: Maverick stunt debunked by star astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson

‘He be dead. Very dead,’ science star said of ‘Top Gun’ character’s stunning survival

Neil deGrasse Tyson, a prominent astrophysicist, has rubbished the legitimacy of a scene in Top Gun: Maverick.

Tyson, who has headed up several science-based TV programmes including StarTalk and Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, shared his opinions on the film on social media.

Writing on Twitter, Tyson questioned a scene in which Tom Cruise’s character Maverick survives a major ejection from an aircraft.

“Late to the party here, but in this year’s Top Gun, Tom Cruise’s character Maverick ejects from a hypersonic plane at Mach 10.5, before it crashed,” Tyson tweeted on Sunday (9 October).

“He survived with no injuries. At that airspeed, his body would splatter like a chainmail glove swatting a worm.”

In a series of tweets, Tyson explained that at that speed, the air would feel “like a brick wall” and would mean complete destruction for a human body.

He continued: “When Maverick ejected at Mach 10.5, he was going 7,000 mph, giving him 400 million joules of kinetic energy — the explosive power of 100 kg of TNT. A situation that human physiology is not designed to survive.”

Tom Cruise in ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ (© 2022 Paramount Pictures Corporation. All rights reserved.)

Tyson added: “So, no. Maverick does not walk away from this. He be dead. Very dead.”

Scientific accuracy aside, the film has been a massive success after its release in May and has surpassed the $1bn mark for box office earnings.