Neil deGrasse Tyson Fact-Checked 'Star Wars: The Force Awakens'

[Warning: Spoilers ahead]

Whether you're a fan or not, you're probably aware of cosmologist/astrophysicist/author/public figure Neil deGrasse Tyson's propensity for commenting on how particular movies, TV shows, and other forms of fiction hold up to scientific accuracy (previous examples include Alfonso Cuarón's Gravity to, most recently, Pixar's The Good Dinosaur).

So it's no surprise that the most recent film to go under the microscope is none other than J.J. Abrams' box office-shattering smash Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which the scientist more or less completely tore down.

Tyson took to Twitter on Dec. 21 to tweet his criticisms and commentary about the latest edition to the Star Wars franchise, lambasting everything from the mechanical plausibility of new-droid-on-the-block BB-8 ("BB-8, a smooth rolling metal spherical ball, would have skidded uncontrollably on the sand"); to the catastrophic aftermath the First Order's Starkiller Base would actually leave in its wake ("if you were to suck all of a star's energy into your planet, your planet would vaporize"); to the misuse of the term "parsec" when referring to the Millennium Falcon finishing the Kessel Run in "under 12 parsecs" ("A parsec is an obscure unit of distance in astrophysics, equal to 3.26 light years. Neither has anything to do with time").

Despite the spate of call outs, Tyson does admit that "BB-8 is waaaaay cuter than R2-D2."

Then again, Tyson wrote in his takedown of Gravity that "to 'earn' the right to be criticized on a scientific level is a high compliment indeed" — so according to the polymath's rubric, Tyson's assessment of The Force Awakens might be the highest form of praise.

Via: Polygon

Photo: NASA | Flickr