10 Mind-Blowing Facts You Didn't Know About The MCU

In the run-up to Infinity War, we all expected Thanos to be one of the best, most deadly foes our heroes have ever faced. And he absolutely delivered on that front.

Intimidating, powerful, determined, clever and with a damn fine collection of chin-grooves, the purple perpetrator showed the Avengers why he wasn't someone you should mess with when he kicked the crap out of the Hulk a mere five minutes into the movie. It was an incredible display of strength, and yet, amazingly, Thanos would be capable of a lot more physical exertion should the situation call for it.

Infinity War will hardly be lauded for its scientific accuracy, but after watching the moment where Thanos crushes the Tesseract with his bare hands, Steven Cranford - an engineering assistant professor and Marvel super-fan - decided to do a bit of research, as documented by The Washington Post.

Intrigued by the notion that Thanos had the power to pulverize the magical cube like it was a melon, Cranford crunched some numbers (assuming the Tesseract is made of carbon, and working out how much force you'd need to crush it) and came to the conclusion that the Mad Titan could lift as much as 120 million pounds - 10 million pounds more than the Titanic's weight.

Of course, this is based on a movie that might need its characters to have varying levels of power from one scene to the next (if he could lift the Titanic, wouldn't that punch to Steve's head have done more damage?), but regardless, it's clear that Thanos doesn't need the Infinity Gauntlet to cause some serious pain.