Neil DeGrasse Tyson's 'Star Wars' Comments Turn Fans Against Science Star Who Demoted Pluto

Shortly after Star Wars: The Force Awakens came out last December, rock star astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson took to Twitter to basically say that new favorite droid BB-8 is a physics impossibility. Of course, fans took it to heart and now he's about as hated as Jar Jar Binks is you listen to some, just when people had gotten over his role in demoting Pluto to a dwarf planet.

According to Polygon, the iconic science guy visited Conan O'Brien's show earlier this week, when he discussed how much hate he'd gotten over his comment about BB-8 last month, saying that fans were all over him for it.

"This is just physics! Don't shoot the messenger," Tyson told O'Brien, also mentioning that the saga's fans were "prickly" and didn't take any criticism.

However, if that had been the only thing he'd said about George Lucas' story, fans might have let him be, but he committed one of the biggest sins any Star Wars fan can: he dared to say that Star Trek's Starship Enterprise would beat the Millennium Falcon in a race.

Of course, Star Wars fans weren't about to forgive the astrophysicist for that (even though Star Trek fans were delighted by the comment).

Tyson has turned into something of a science superstar over the past years, but he has been on the receiving end of a lot of hate from people just the same. Years back, the star of Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey was the most famous responsible party for the demotion of Pluto as a planet to the dwarf planet status, which caused uproar, including a painfully adorable series of letters from children.

As published by Mental Floss back in 2013, kids from all over the world wrote to the scientist to demand why Pluto had been demoted and whether there was any chance he could change his mind about it.

Last year, when NASA's New Horizons reached Pluto after nine years of space travel, Tyson seemed like the only person who wasn't excited about it, as pointed out by Stephen Colbert.