George Lucas built the Star Wars saga on a story that happened "a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away," and while most fans are fine with knowing that the franchise is based on fictitious relative information, a Georgetown Universe Physics assistant professor's decided to estimate Star Wars timeframe in his new book, The Physics of Star Wars: The Science Behind A Galaxy Far, Far Away.
Wired posted an excerpt of the book on their site, and in it fans get to read about how Patrick Jonson thinks that Star Wars must have happened 9 billion years after the big bang happened.
"The first galaxies were formed around a billion years after the big bang, so that cuts out a billion years. The films depict many star systems with mature planets and intelligent life. It took the solar system about 500 million years to form, and it formed 4.6 billion years ago, so it's reasonable to assume that Star Wars is about 5 billion years after the formation of the first galaxy.
Altogether, this means that Star Wars needs to be at least 9 billion years after the big bang," Johnson notes. "This leaves plenty of years before the current time (about 4.7 billion to be precise), so it could still count as 'a long time ago,' but it is certainly closer to now than to the big bang."
That's a whole lot of thought put into the science behind a space opera. But if we'd like to think that Star Wars really would exist, it's worth knowing that a professor actually took his time to do the calculated estimations. We wonder what page Johnson tries to calculate the Force.
The next Star Wars film, The Last Jedi, is slated to release on December 15, 2017.
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