The No-Fun Zone

 Neil deGrasse Tyson, noted astronomer, space scientist and movie kibbitzer took to social media this past weekend to point out yet another physics issue in popular entertainment. Specifically, the issue had was with Top Gun: Maverick. Neil wanted everyone to know that if the titular character had  from ejected from a hypersonic plane at Mach 10.5, before it crashed, his body would splatter like a chainmail glove swatting a worm. Which may not have been the most questionable thing about this particular film, but this was a physics discussion, after all.

My mind raced back to all the times my older brother pointed out to me the sound of engines roaring to life in outer space. In a vacuum. In which sound cannot travel. When the Death Star exploded, it would have made quite a flash, but no noise. This was the same guy who inserted the question of carbon based life on other planets. Why should we assume that whatever life exists outside of our own planet would be a similar composition to ours? And why in this world or any other would they insist on speaking English? Why?

Maybe because these are entertainments created for other carbon-based, English-speaking life forms. We don't want to spend our time wondering what would happen to the internal organs of the Six Million Dollar Man as he runs close to sixty miles an hour. We are living in a world of imagination. Or at least we are trying to. That's the second half of "science fiction."

If, instead of hearing that cataclysmic eruption after dropping his torpedoes into the Empire's Space Station, Luke and his rebel pals had sped away from a flash of light with no sound, would we the viewers have felt the same exhilaration? There was a genre expectation that Maverick would walk away from his supersonic ejection. The story would be over and the credits would roll, and nothing heroic would have been achieved. Again, I would like to point out that this misinterpretation of the laws of physics was not going to keep this movie from being made. Quite the opposite, in fact.

That doesn't mean that I don't keep score myself of all the ways that Newton and his pals have been countermanded over the years by movies and TV. The illusion of invincibility is not limited to Superman and his Super Friends. Indiana Jones and his rescue refrigerator comes to mind. Or the city bus jump in Speed. It is truly amazing that the decision made by a cop under stress telling a woman who is not even a trained bus driver to accelerate is dubious at best, but makes for great cinema.

And in the end, a shredded Tom Cruise does not make for great cinema. Right?

That's a rhetorical question, Neil.