Well, maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration—but Tyson did stir up quite a few Star Wars fans after he made some Twitter comments criticizing the "science" in the sci-fi space saga's new installment, The Force Awakens. In the past, Tyson had angered Star Wars fans when he claimed that the starship Enterprise from Star Trek would "wipe its a**" with the Millennium Falcon. Tyson doubled down on the Star Wars criticism in a series of tweets a week after The Force Awakens was released when he called out several inaccuracies that he felt the Star Wars development team got wrong. His criticisms included the sound that TIE fighters make in space versus the sound they make in an atmosphere, the apparently slower aging displayed by Wookiees when compared to humans, and the implausibility of Starkiller Base. Ignoring the fact that Star Wars is a sci-fi franchise based on fantasy, not our current state of physics, Tyson definitely riled up some fans of the series with these comments.

Perhaps most controversial among his tweets was when Tyson claimed that BB-8, being a spherical metal object, would "skid uncontrollably" in a sandy environment like that found on Jakku. The official Star Wars Twitter account replied to correct Tyson with a production video that showed BB-8 was a real robot (including a remote-controlled model) produced by their team and which was used during their desert filming. Of course, the debate didn't end there. Fans on YouTube have produced tests of their own using the Sphero BB-8 toy version of the robot, with some tests showing success on sand and others failing miserably. Obviously, the debate will continue—unless Disney releases clear footage of their full-scale BB-8 model moving under its own power in the desert—but Tyson will likely stay out of it from now on. The astrophysicist told Conan O'Brien in an interview that fans of the sci-fi series are "prickly people," and that some of them have "lost their minds" over his criticisms of the saga. "I wonder if I should continue to tweet about movies," he pondered. "People seem to be deeply upset by it."