Space and Physics
PUBLISHED
11
Since the crew of the Titan submersible were killed in a catastrophic implosion as they aimed to explore the Titanic, there has been some confusion as to how exactly they died.
The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.Right now, the US Coast Guard is investigating the cause of the implosion, but that hasn't stopped online speculation, and a lot of it isn't great. One widely-seen video posted on TikTok and Twitter claims that as an implosion happened, temperatures in the submersible would have been as hot as the Sun.
“The hull would immediately heat the air in the sub to around the surface of the Sun’s temperature," a caption on the video explains, "as a wall of metal and seawater smashed one end of the boat to the other, all in around 30 milliseconds."
But is the video, which made its way into the New York Post, correct? In short, no. Implosions do produce heat, but temperatures inside the sub would not reach 5,500 degrees Celsius (10,000 degrees Fahrenheit), as seen on the solar surface.
"The collapse of the composite or metal structure would just produce theoretical heat energy due to friction," associate professor of mechanical and marine engineering at Plymouth University, Jasper Graham-Jones, explained to Newsweek, "but this is very low and would not be visible or measurable with the mass of cold water around it."
The video led some to speculate that the passengers could have been killed by the heat, but that is extremely unlikely.
"Implosions like explosions are very violent. As the hull breaks apart under the huge external pressure, a large amount of energy is released, and the five occupants would have died instantly," Arun Bansil, professor of physics at Northeastern University, explained in a piece for Northeastern Global News. "The occupants would not have experienced pain or realized what hit them."
[H/T: Newsweek]
