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spaceSpace and Physics

Neil DeGrasse Tyson Finds Fault In The Science Of "Star Wars"

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Katy Evans

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278 Neil DeGrasse Tyson Finds Fault In The Science Of "Star Wars"
If you haven't see it yet, go. Go, right now. Anime Nut/Flickr CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

"Star Wars: The Force Awakens" may be universally adored by science-lovers and sci-fi fans, but this doesn’t mean that the science in the movie is actually correct.

Neil deGrasse Tyson, famed astrophysicist and host of "StarTalk" on the National Geographic Channel, has admitted he’d rather be a "Trekkie." He told Rolling Stone, "There's a promise of actual science going on in 'Star Trek' – but not so much in 'Star Wars,'" although he conceded, "I applaud the fact that it has people thinking about space."

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In fact, Tyson seems to have been rather enjoying pointing out the flaws in the science of the global blockbuster on Twitter. For instance, he pointed out that the droid BB-8 (the new R2-D2, but possibly even cuter), which is a smooth, rolling spherical ball, would have struggled moving around the sandy terrain of the planet it finds itself on.

 

 

He also found frustration with the repeated use of the term ‘parsecs’ to show off the Millennium Falcon’s speed – as in, it can "complete the Kessler Run in under 12 parsecs." It turns out that a parsec is not actually a unit of measuring time, but rather an obscure measurement of distance equal to 3.26 light-years.

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Since we don’t want to give away any more spoilers, if you haven’t seen "The Force Awakens" yet, go right now and then, if you really deem it necessary, see how many scientific impossibilities you can find.

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Main image: Anime Nut/Flickr CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

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[H/T: NBC News]


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