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Science! Don’t like the Ewoks? Well, that’s ok, they’re all dead any way

December 31st, 2015 by Irwin Fletcher Comments

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I remember having a very large debate with my little brother about who the bad guys of Star Wars really were. There is no lie the Rebel Alliance was a terrorist movement against the Galactic Empire. The question was, were their actions warranted and was it more beneficial to stop the Empire than let it remain? Destruction of one Death Star, let alone two, would have had massive repercussions on the galactic economy and population. These are problems it would have caused for not just the empire but every location it functioned from.

Fans have speculated for many years what such fallout from a destroyed Death Star would actually do to nearby planets, particularly the Endor moon. In short, very bad things would have happened to the lovable teddiebears. Planetary Scientist Dave Minton has released a paper on what would have happened. In short, there is no way the Ewoks would have survived.

Basing his findings of the scale model hologram used in ‘Return of the Jedi’, he argues that the impact of the Death Star II’s remains hitting Endor would be similar to a colossal asteroid striking Earth.

Tech insider summed up his findings as such: “When the rebels and Ewoks destroy the shield generator on Endor — a device that protected the Death Star — Minton assumes the repulsor lifts there got destroyed, too. He also figures the Death Star is not vaporized and mostly shatters into a field of loose rubble.

But wait! We saw it be vaporised into nothingness. This may be true, but the fragments will still be there. Instead of one big mass it would most likely have been a swarm of asteroids smashing down onto Endor’s surface: “Striking Endor at more than 6,000 mph, “a Death Star-mass ball of fragments will leave behind a 700 km diameter crater,”Minton said. “This is almost 4 times larger than the Chicxulub crater in Mexico that is associated with the dinosaur extinction.”

Nothing would have survived.

Minton goes on to argue that the atmosphere of Endor would have heated so much that large bodies of water would have become steam and the forest would be in flames. This would be a bush fire on a massive scale.

Minton isn’t the first scientist to theorise this. The Ewok Extinction Theory was created in 1997 by Curtis Saxon who coined it as an Endor Holocaust.

Tech Insider also asked a group of twelve physicists what they thought of Minton’s ideas. Where there were some disagreements, they nearly all believed that the destruction of the forest moon was inevitable and the Ewoks would have all be wiped out.

I admit that the Galactic Empire did terrible things but we cannot ignore the fact that crippling the galactic economy, wiping out an entire planet, destroying people who were forced into a job they could not get out of, and leaving without helping those you wronged is a pretty heartless thing for the Rebels to do.

The Rebels may not have been as good as many of us thought.

Source: The Mary Sue

I'm an LA journalist who really lives for his profession. I have also published work as Jane Doe in various mags and newspapers across the globe. I normally write articles that can cause trouble but now I write for FTN because Nerds are never angry, so I feel safe.