Star Wars fans will understand that the epic weapon, the Death Star, has met its final doom in Return of the Jedi. This is the epic conclusion to the original Star Wars saga.
The colossal superweapon was orbiting the forested Sanctuary moon of Endor and, after it's blown up, the Rebel Alliance and the Ewok celebrate their victory against the Galactic Empire.
However, according to Business Insider, physicists from our end of the screens have a much darker reality that they want us to consider.
Others are saying that the Ewoks are simply dead. People who answered Business Insider's e-mails all have the same conclusion, meaning the Endor Holocaust was inevitable and is a threat to the plausibility of any future movies.
The Endor Holocaust is a fan theory way back in 1997, when it appeared on TheForce.net by astrophysicist Curtis Saxton.
It was a part of an initiative to analyze the movies frame by frame with scientific rigor.
His 10,000-word essay elaborated that the Endor holocaust will make sure the destruction of the Death Star ensured the doom of Endor and everyone who lived in it.
The rebels' attack on the Death Star will destroy it but debris will then rain down on Endor. It will burn up into a toxic fallout and cause giant firestorms.
Of course his measurements are open to interpretatio ngiven the Death Star and Endor's depictions are always inconsistent.
Regardless, Business Insider asked 11 physicists and only one gave a positive response.
Planetary scientist Sarah Stewart said that Endor may survive after some environmental cleanup of the fallout. The forest moon may return to its idyllic state.
The rest had grim analyses. For instance Martija Cuk, who studies orbital dynamics, said the reactor will blew up the satellite in a second. Meaning this ejects huge chunks of debris at 220,000mph or six times faster than our speediest craft.
The energy carried by the debris would not be enough to destroy the moon, but it would erode the side facing the Death Star.
This means the Millennium Falcon and Luke's shuttle would be goners. After the radiation bath, high-speed debris would hit the ground. This will throw rocks to the far side of the moon.
Planetary physicist Erik Asphaug, who studies giant impacts with moons and planets, refused to believe most of the Death Star would vaporize or turn into tiny bits upon exploding.
Asphaug emphasized that nuclear explosions in rock will tend to vaporize stuff nearby, melt stuff a bit further away, and then break stufff farther mechanically. So there may be huge chunks of Death Star on the planet at an impact big enough to make craters.
Although he emphasized another big problem was fire - a lot of it. If thousands of wildfires go off at once, pretty much all of the surface will be ruins.
Dave Minton gave Business Insider a four-page treatise in 2015. He explained that using details he found in the movie, everyone will be dead.
Of course this is under the assumption that everyone - Ewoks, troopers, rebels - move the way they do on Earth and Endor has the same gravity as Earth.Given that the Death Star is maintained in its position, there may be some sort of anti-gravity repulsor lifts in place. If the shield generator on Endor is destroyed - which protects the Death Star - then it might mean the repulsor lifts will get destroyed as well.
This means the Death Star may not be "vaporized" but is instead shattered into a field of loose rubble.
More or less the entire mass of the Death Star will fall onto the location of the shield generator, given there's no anti-grav to support it. The impact of the Death Star towards Endor would look like what happens if a colossal asteroid hit the Earth.
The Death Star-mass ball of fragments may leave behind a crater at least four times larger than the one in Mexico associated with the dinosaur extinction. The atmosphere may be so heated up that every body of water would be flash heated to steam and every forest ignites into a firestorm.
Although it's not that all bad. Another fan (although not a physicist) named Gary Sarli analyzed the explosion. He said the blast has imploded inward instead of flying outward. Meaning a wormhole formed as the reactor of the Death Star blew, rapidly transporting almost all of the debris of the Death Star to another part of the galaxy.