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Watch 'Titanic' director James Cameron test if Jack could fit on the floating door

The director puts the highly debated scene to the test

It's the biggest unanswered question from the 1997 film 'Titanic' - wouldn't Jack survive if Rose made room for him on the floating door?

The crucial scene has been hotly debated for 25 years since the film's release, and in honour of the 25th anniversary, director James Cameron has recreated the scene and finally put that infamous theory to the test.

As part of a special National Geographic special 'Titanic: 25 Years Later With James Cameron', the director and a team of scientists re-staged that final scene of Jack to test the theory that he could survive on the door next to Rose while floating on "dangerous levels of freezing water."

They tested four different scenarios: first Jack and Rose held onto the door with their legs hanging off the side.

"Jack and Rose are able to get on the raft, but now they're both submerged in dangerous levels of freezing water," James notes.

The second scenario saw the two bringing their knees onto the board so their torsos were above the water.

"Out of the water, [Jack's] violent shaking was helping him," James Cameron finds. "Projecting it out, he could've made it pretty long. Like, hours."

Their closest recreation saw Jack and Rose recreate the "fight" Jack had with another passenger to physically exhaust them and measure their likelihood of survival. They even added an extra variable of giving Jack a life jacket for protection, which did not occur in the actual movie.

Watching mock Jack's vitals, James mentions that the final version seems most "stabilised."

"He got into a place where if we projected that out, he just might've made it until the lifeboat got there."

"Jack might've lived, but there's a lot of variables."

Without the infamous scene though, would there have been as great of a film love story between Rose and Jack?

"I think his thought process was, 'I'm not going to do one thing that jeopardised her,' and that's 100 percent in character."