Science word of the day: Parsec<\/p>\n
Pronunciation: PAHR’-sek<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n What it means: Ah, the humble parsec, thorn in the side of George Lucas. In 1977, Lucas’ “Star Wars: Episode IV \u202a\u2014\u202c A New Hope” script had Han Solo bragging that the Millennium Falcon completed the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs<\/a>. The problem? Parsecs are a unit of distance, not a unit of time. This has caused angst among Star Wars fans for 49 years and counting.<\/p>\n But when we hit you with this definition, you’re going to forgive Lucas for assuming the parsec was some sort of extra-fancy space second. Here it goes: A parsec is a unit of distance required to cause a heliocentric parallax of one arc second. Ouch.<\/p>\n Let’s break it down. Heliocentric parallax is a way to measure the distance to a far-off object, such as a star, by measuring how it appears to move in comparison to another distant object (usually another star). An arc second is a fragment of an angle of an arc equal to 1\/3600 of a degree.<\/p>\n You may like<\/p>\n This means a parsec is a unit of distance that makes a star seem to move 1\/3600 of a degree compared with another distant star. It turns out that this equals 206,265 times the distance of Earth to the sun, or 3.26 light-years.<\/p>\n How to use it in a sentence: The 2018 movie “Solo: A Star Wars Story” tries to retcon Han Solo’s brag about parsecs by claiming he was talking about distance all along \u202a\u2014\u202c but we’re not sure we’re buying it.<\/p>\n Can you crack our science word of the day puzzle, Chain Word<\/a>?<\/p>\n TOPICS<\/p>\n