It looks like Lucasfilm's misused the word "parsec" again.
The studio just recently released a new trailer for its upcoming Star Wars live-action series by Jon Favreau, and in the new video for The Mandalorian fans get to hear that Pedro Pascal's titular character being called "the best in the parsec."
Fans couldn't help but notice how the show mistook the usage of the word.
Parsec, in its dictionary definition, is a portmanteau of "arcsecond" and "parallax." Parsecs come from the triangulation used to determine the distance of nearby stars – it is a term which refers to the distance to a star with an apparent position which shifts by 1 arcsecond in the sky after the Earth orbits halfway around the sun. A parsec comes up to about 3.26 light-years. That's 19.2 trillion miles or 30.9 trillion kilometers in distance.
Despite its definition as a unit of distance, Star Wars has used the word to refer to time. In Star Wars: A New Hope, fans get to see Han Solo bragging that the Millennium Falcon actually "made the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs."
Fans would debate whether or not parsec meant a unit of distance or if it meant a unit of time. Because if they would stick by the word's dictionary definition, then Han's boast would make no sense. Solo: A Star Wars Story fixed that little problem by revealing that Han really meant distance – the Millennium Falcon traveled through 12 parsecs in a tumultuous cosmic maelstrom when the safest version of the Kessel Run would have been at 20 parsecs.
Now, it seems like The Mandalorian is misusing "parsec" again – unless the show means that The Mandalorian is the best hunter within a certain range.
Star Wars: The Mandalorian is set to premiere on November 12, 2019, on Disney+.
Read: New Promo Star Wars: The Mandalorian Shows Tumult in The Galaxy
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