There is something gravely wrong with the ultimate fate of the Death Star, a moon-size weapon in the "Star Wars" movies, and physicists think you should know about it.
Disney/Lucasfilm
The Death Star II explodes into smithereens.
The Death Star meets its final doom in "Return of the Jedi," the epic conclusion to the original "Star Wars" saga.The colossal ship is orbiting the forested Sanctuary moon of the planet Endor and, after it's blown up, the Rebel Alliance and its hairy Ewok friends party in the trees. Everyone and everything is hunky-dory.
But ask a physicist - or a dozen, as we've done - what happens when you detonate a giant metal sphere above a lush green world. The answer is downright chilling.
"The Ewoks are dead. All of them," said one researcher and self-professed "Star Wars" fan, who wrote a white paper in 2015 that supported his conclusion.
Each scientist who responded to our emails quibbled over the exact details, yet a strong consensus emerged in support of a popular fan theory: The "Endor Holocaust" is inevitable, and that would be a threat to the plausibility of any future movies (galactic bankruptcy be damned).
Here's why.