>The Death Star was constructed in space, a realm where massive things (moons, planets) tend to take on a spherical shape due to gravity. But when Orlin did the

>The Death Star was constructed in space, a realm where massive things (moons, planets) tend to take on a spherical shape due to gravity. But when Orlin did the calculations, he found that the size at which objects take on the shape of a sphere is about 400 kilometers in diameter, which is significantly larger than the ~160km Death Star.That's why Orlin's hypothetical Imperial team physicist keeps insisting the Death Star should be more lumpy, shaped like an asteroid. Orlin's conclusion: "The Death Star is not nearly big enough. But maybe Imperial steel is very, very dense and thus goes spherical much faster." So the death star isn't big enough to collapse into a sphere by itself, except that's totally irrelevant because it's an artificial construct and not a natural object. The author of this book cannot possibly be as much of an idiot as the article is making him sound.