Neil DeGrasse Tyson reviews Star Wars: The Force Awakens
By David Rouben
Famous physicist and Cosmos star Neil DeGrasse Tyson weighed in on the latest Star Wars chapter on Twitter.
It should come as no surprise that Star Wars: The Force Awakens was a massive box office success in its opening weekend. Globally, it grossed $529 million this weekend, breaking the previous record of $525 million held by Jurassic World.
One of the people who watched Star Wars this weekend was Neil DeGrasse Tyson. His opinion has become gospel in the science world because of his encyclopedic knowledge in the field of astrophysics, and many people were curious to see what he thought of The Force Awakens. Unsurprisingly, he loved it, but he still took to Twitter to offer a couple of scientific inaccuracies about the movie. He has done this in the past with Gravity and Interstellar.
(Warning: If you somehow haven’t seen The Force Awakens yet, mild spoilers lie ahead)
In @StarWars #TheForceAwakens, BB-8 is waaaaay cuter than R2D2.
— Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) December 21, 2015
In @StarWars #TheForceAwakens, BB-8, a smooth rolling metal spherical ball, would have skidded uncontrollably on sand.
— Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) December 21, 2015
While the first point is debatable, the second can hardly be disproved.
In @StarWars #TheForceAwakens, if you were to suck all of a star’s energy into your planet, your planet would vaporize.
— Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) December 21, 2015
In @StarWars #TheForceAwakens, the energy in a Star is enough to destroy ten-thousand planets, not just a few here & there.
— Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) December 21, 2015
In other words, the First Order’s weapon should’ve been much more powerful than was actually depicted.
The Force Awakens also made a subtle callback to A New Hope when Rey, realizing she’s on the Millennium Falcon, brings up that it made the Kessel Run (fictional) in 14 parsecs before Han corrects her saying that it was 12. Tyson explains what a parsec means:
Unashamed of inanity, #TheForceAwakens repeats the Millennium Falcon boast of completing the Kessel Run in "under 12 parsecs"
— Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) December 21, 2015
( A Parsec is an obscure unit of distance in Astrophysics, equal to 3.26 Light Years. Neither has anything to do with time. )
— Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) December 21, 2015
DeGrasse Tyson posted one more tweet, proving that he does actually know how to have fun, when he spoke about the inability to understand Chewbacca.
In @StarWars #TheForceAwakens, once again I felt isolated and inadequate for not understanding Wookiee-speak.
— Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) December 21, 2015
With Star Wars: Episode 8 currently in production, director Rian Johnson would probably benefit from Neil’s input.