The Dumbest Star Wars Trope Is Also Somehow The Most Scientifically Accurate
Missing planets? That literally happens all the time.
When, in 2023, Star Wars: Ahsoka made it clear that much of the plot would hinge on finding missing pieces to the astronomical map, Star Wars fans heaved a collective deep sigh. Here we go again. In 2015 the MacGuffin of the map to Luke Skywalker dominated The Force Awakens, while 2019’s The Rise of Skywalker required our heroes to locate a specific compass to help them find the hidden Sith planet of Exegol. Then, in Skeleton Crew, it happened again: The central storyline was all about kids from a fabled planet of At Attin that didn’t appear on anyone’s star maps.
And, before George Lucas purists get all upset and point out that this trope just comes from the post-2014 Disney era of Star Wars, never forget: Obi-Wan Kenobi’s entire mission in Attack of the Clones (2002) was caused by the erasure of the planet Kamino from the archive memory, which caused Yoda to quip, “Lost a planet Master Obi-Wan has.”
But, just how realistic would it be for interstellar travelers to have inaccurate maps, leading to missing or hidden planets? When you dig into the the actual science of star mapping the answer is, somewhat surprisingly, very realistic. In fact, the trope of missing planets or inaccurate star maps might be the most realistic thing in all of Star Wars’s fanciful faraway galaxy.
“It’s absolutely realistic,” Patrick Johnson tells Inverse. He’s the author of the 2017 book, The Physics of Star Wars, and an instructor at Georgetown University. “ There are people who think there may even be a 9th planet in our Solar System that we just haven't detected yet. Yes, lots of Pluto defenders will say there is already a 9th planet in our Solar System, but there may still be a large planet out there.”
Everybody was able to find Naboo easily enough. But what about other Star Wars planets?
What Intergalactic Map?
Part of the reason hidden, or hitherto unknown planets are a believable trope in Star Wars is because of one somewhat shocking fact: There is not currently a U.S. government agency, or part of NASA that is specifically tasked with star mapping. Senior Scientist for Advanced Astrophysics Concepts at NASA, Harley Thronson also concurred that from a speculative point of view, the idea that, in a large, interplanetary status quo, erasing a planet on a star map could happen with relative ease. “To answer your question, has any [star mapping] been done? Yes, it has been, by various institutions” Thorson tells Inverse. “I think NASA may have been supplying the information. But no, I don’t know of any centralized NASA organization having done that [creating agreed-upon star maps.]”
Let that sink in: As of right now, there are, of course, people mapping the stars. But there’s not one centralized, government-run “stellar cartography” division. If we were to instantly gain hyperdrive tech from Star Wars, the probability that we would face the missing planet Star Wars trope is highly likely. In fact, any hypothetical faster-than-light travel would just make star mapping problems more complex than they already are right now.
“We wouldn't want to have to jump to the star system to just make those measurements ... to maintain an accurate map.”
“If you’re asking about how FTL travel allows us to visit many stars, and that adds to the number of things we have to track, then yes. That's a separate problem,” Johnson says. “Sure, we'd have the same chaos problem we have in any star system, but we'd also have to keep updating our measurements of the positions of distant stars and their planets to maintain an accurate map. We wouldn't want to have to jump to the star system to just make those measurements, so we'd have to either set up a system where merchants who travel to different star systems would also bring updated measurements to different star systems as they traveled or have very accurate telescopes.”
In real life hiding At Attin wouldn't even require this much work.
In Skeleton Crew, the idea that the coordinates to At Attin are a secret relies on the idea that in a sprawling galaxy, it makes sense that not all maps could possibly be the same, nor would all those maps agree with one another. Somewhat hilariously, many major Star Wars story points revolve around poorly remembered history or data in general, which is partially because government bodies are fairly unstable, making information passing from one generation to the next somewhat spotty. Generally speaking, Star Wars focuses on the social and political implications of these info gaps: Luke has hazy knowledge of the Clone Wars, an event that concluded the year he was born, while Rey is fuzzy on the historical fact of the Rebellion just 30 years after it happened. But, just like history is hard to keep straight, the perpetual political upheavals in Star Wars also create the perfect explanation as to why all the maps are so faulty. As Johnson points out, it would be “very difficult and expensive” to maintain. This detail is key and makes the lack of good mapping systems in Star Wars not just feasible, but extremely realistic.
In Skeleton Crew, the biggest reveal in the series is that At Attin is running on an AI with outdated information about the rest of the galaxy. In the Star Wars prequels, the Emperor works in secret to defund tons of useful aspects of the Republic, which culminates in the destruction of the Jedi. Yes, the Jedi are famously the guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic, but what the various books in the High Republic have made clear is that the Jedi also established various outposts throughout the galaxy, which, naturally, would have helped establish a lot of these hyperspace routes and map locations. So, with the elimination of the Jedi alone, we’ve got a ton of resources taken away from maintaining accurate maps of the galaxy, which, was already a difficult task anyway.
How To Lose A Planet In Plain Sight
But the Star Wars trope about missing planets isn’t just about the data being out of date, it’s also about coordinates getting hidden, in the case of Attack of the Clones in 2002, having an entire planet getting erased from a databank. And, from Thorson’s point of view, this is extremely realistic.
“I don't think that's at all crazy. In fact, it’s very crazy that I'd never thought about it,” Thronson says. “Because even today, most of the information that we have on star location, astronomical information is all on computer. So sure, I could see that in some far future, some planet wants to disappear, so they hack it into the computers. So, you’d need to still have the analog. The books and the maps.”
Our best method for discovering exoplanets is to watch the brightness of a star dip in regular patterns as the planet passes in between the telescope and the distant star.
Again, the very nature of the constant wars in Star Wars presents an ongoing problem for astrogators and would-be map-makers to create accurate records. And, on top of that, in various Star Wars stories (like Skeleton Crew or Attack of the Clones), specific individuals exploit this instability to make entire planets disappear.
Obi-Wan enlists Yoda’s help to find a missing planet in ‘Attack of the Clones.’
But, even in the calmer epochs of Star Wars history, the task of mapping the entire galaxy is a daunting one. “There are loads of other star systems where we've detected a planet or more but likely haven't detected all of the planets for one reason or another,” Johnson says. “One possible reason is that we are looking at the star from a perspective where the planets don't eclipse the star from our point of view. Our best method for discovering exoplanets is to watch the brightness of a star dip in regular patterns as the planet passes in between the telescope and the distant star.”
Some, in real life, the problems with star mapping just come down to a trick of the light, no massive space war or the power of the Force is required. Fighting in the stars would certainly be hard and inadvisable. But mapping the entire cosmos is a job that even the Jedi couldn’t handle.
