Science of Star Wars is a new little series that I will be doing here, which will outline some of the science that goes into Star Wars. I know that Star Wars is considered to be more fantasy than Sci-Fi by many, but there is still a lot of Scientific elements in it (plus this is all just a little bit of fun).

The first topic will be “How Return of the Jedi really would of ended”. Now, I’m not a scientist myself; I just have an interest in picking things apart and finding more deeper meanings or more accurate situations from common media.

The man who really uncovered this unsettling truth about the fate of Endor is Planetary Scientist, Dave Minton of Purdue University, he has written a paper which has confirmed that the old “Endor Holocaust” rumor, which first arose, so many years ago, on TheForce.net.

So what was this theory? Well, the complete death of Endor and it’s inhabitants of course! Do you remember how Vader got that Jedi funeral at the end of Return of the Jedi when he was burned on a pyre? Yes, well it would be like that except, everything and everyone would be on fire. Okay so let’s find out why.

Endor’s diameter in kilometers is 4,900km, the second Death star was 7% the size of Endor, making it around 343km. The center of Endor and the center of the Death Star II are exactly 2,190km apart, which means, Death Star II should be 480km above the surface of Endor. Now that we have acquainted ourselves with the position of the two objects, let’s talk about Endor — well the Forest Moon of Endor. As said, it is a massive Forest, essentially. When watching the movie, the characters seem to move normally on Endor, just as the machines do, so we can assume it has a similar gravity to Earth (1G).

Mr.Minton, then does some math and clocks in some numbers for a formula to learn Endors density — I doubt you want to see it and I sure don’t want to write it, so lets get straight to the punchline. Endor is about 15% as massive as Earth and it’s estimated density is 14,350 kg/m^3, which is a strange density, but not an impossible one; Uranium is denser.

Now when they are all being briefed about the mission, we can clearly see that the Death Star II is in a synchronous orbit of Endor, similar to a satellite orbiting Earth, but due to the Death Star’s size, it can be assumed it is kept in place by using some anti-gravity technology — something available in Star Wars.

Now we speak about the most important part, the explosion. The second explosion is a lot more gentle than the first explosion. The second Death Star also needed more precision and more goals are needed to be reached to destroy it, as it was more advanced than the first. The explosion, however, took long enough that Wedge Antilles and other pilots, could then escape the inside of the Death Star and the surrounding blast zone.

This brings Minton to come to the conclusion, that there is little vaporization of materials and that the chunks, from the Death Star, would still be floating. Now another formula works out, that the Death Star II was orbiting Endor once a day and the speed needed to keep the fragments in orbit would be 4.5km/s, but the fragments, however, are moving much slower than that, so the only viable option is for them to fall onto the location of the Shield Generator.

Mr.Minton then claims to have used his own crater simulation software to estimate that the crater left on Endor from the fragments would be around 700km in diameter, that is 4 times the size of the crater left from the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs, on a planet 38.5% the size of Earth.

Conclusion: All Ewoks would be wiped out, all bodies of water would become steam and all the trees and forests, would be engulfed in flames. Not so happy as the actual ending.

Second conclusion, is of course, that it’s fiction and obviously fiction doesn’t need to be accurate. This of course, was all just-a-bit of fun and I hope you enjoyed it.

Féadfaidh an Fórsa Bí Le tú,

Andy

The Cantina Cast

The wretched hive your Jedi Master warned you about!

*As always, if you want to discuss anything Star Wars related or geek related, then you can find me at