Science Explains How The Second Death Star Killed All The Ewoks in Star Wars

In Star Wars: Episode VI –Return of the Jedi, the Rebels and the Ewoks joined forces to fight the Empire on their forest moon. Not only did the adorable teddy bear-like creatures help the Rebels defeat the Empire and destory the second Death Star, but the two groups celebrated their win with an awesome treetop party by the end of the movie. Apparently though, such a happy ending wouldn't have been possible in the real world.

Dave Minton, a physicist from Purdue University, explained in an article on the Tech Insider how the destruction of the second Death Star would have destroyed Endor and its moons, thereby causing the extinction of Ewoks.

Minton explaind:

More or less what happens after the destruction is that the entire mass of the Death Star simply falls onto the location of the shield generator.

Minton added that the reason for this is "the relatively gentle explosion" seen on the film. Apparently, such a "gentle explosion" wouldn't destroy the Death Star per se but simply knock it down, which would lead to Endor's gravity sucking the debris from the Death Star that is left floating in space.

That would leave out the survival of the Ewoks. No creature would have stood a chance surviving all that debris from the second Death Star. Minton even emphasized how the Death Star's fragments would have been four times larger than the crater of the asteroid which is believed to have ended the existence of dinosaurs.

Check out Minton's paper below:

Endor Holocaust Question by Dave Mosher

Yes, no Ewok would have survived if George Lucas stuck with science in creating Star Wars, but that's why the movie is called science fiction. Suspension of reality is pretty much one of the things that makes the entire space opera series so great. I guess Minton has a lot of time on his hands disproving the possibilities shown in Star Wars.

Check out other studies disproving movie magic in the articles below:

Read: How Harry Potter's Invisibility Cloak Is Scientifically Impossible

Read: Why Star Wars' Lightsabers Won't Work