Star Wars Planet Based on Reality

Some of our more esoterically minded folk might describe it as life imitating art. Other, more down-to-earth people might term it science fiction becoming science fact. Neither description is apt in this case.

Here's one that is: The Truth is out there, and we now have proof!

See, George Lucas knew exactly what he was talking about when he "placed" Luke Skywalker on Tatooine, a planet that had two suns. Lucas didn't make this up: He knew it to be true! And it's taken us this long to uncover what he has known all along.

It's not often that such a landmark image seared into the memory patterns of a few generations of people is so stunningly revisited in the realms of reality, yet here comes news of Kepler-16B, a "wanderer" 200 light-years away from Earth — a "wanderer" that is orbiting a binary pairing of stars.

This planet is closer to the stars than we are to our Sun, by about a quarter of the distance. The planet's orbit is 229 days. The planet is larger than Earth — about the size of Saturn, actually, but much more dense. The stars are smaller than the Sun: One is 20 percent as big, and the other is 69 percent as big.

Astronomers have trotted out the word circumbinary to describe this planet, but I prefer to refer to it as Lucasian.

Now, the scientists are saying that the planet is uninhabitable — at least in terms of life as we know it. But that doesn't rule out entities like R2D2 or Chewbacca or Yoda. We're still waiting for confirmation of the existence of those three, but one of them is a bit closer to reality than the other two are.

Speaking of reality and what else George Lucas knows, I think we're all right on balance if every one of his creations turns out to be science fact, since both Darth Vader and the Emperor ultimately met their fates (in similar ways, it turns out). I wouldn't mind at all if Ewoks were discovered to be real creatures, either. In fact, I'll go out on a limb and say that finding out that Jar-Jar Binks was a real creature would be OK with me, provided that I didn't have to spend too much time with him.

I do hope, however, that we don't discover that the Terminator films were based on reality.