Scientists say the Ewoks in 'Star Wars' should have suffered a gruesome fate when the Death Star exploded

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.

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.

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The "Endor Holocaust" fan theory dates back to 1997, when it first appeared on a website called TheForce.net. Curtis Saxton, an astrophysicist and "Star Wars" super-fan, wrote it as part of a technical series that analyzes the movies frame-by-frame with scientific rigor.

Source: TheForce.net

Saxon's 10,000-word essay about the Endor holocaust claims that the doom of Endor and the cuddly, warmongering Ewoks who live there "is an inevitable consequence of observable facts."

The rebels' attack on the Death Star turns it into fine metallic bits, Saxton argues. The debris then rains down on Endor, burns up into a toxic sooty fallout, and sparks global firestorms.

But many of Saxton's various measurements are open to interpretation, since depictions of the Death Star, Endor, and other details are inconsistent from one scene to the next.

Source: TheForce.net