For nearly 40 years, the phrase “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away” has resonated in popular culture—forever linked to the iconic opening credits of Star Wars. When I watched the movie for the first time in 1978, at the tender age of ten, I was instantly entranced by its visions of alien worlds, lightsaber battles and the mysterious Force that “binds the galaxy together.”
Star Wars wasn’t the only reason I became an astrophysicist, but it certainly played its part. And so here I find myself four decades later, surveying 13 billion years of cosmic history and mapping events that really did happen a long time ago, in galaxies far, far away.
So how does the real universe compare with what we see on the silver screen? It would be easy to unpick all those places where the science in Star Wars doesn’t hang together, but then few sci-fi and fantasy films would fare well under that kind of forensic analysis.
