{"id":1817,"date":"2026-07-24T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bkbc.net\/index.php\/2026\/07\/24\/science-word-of-the-day-parsec\/"},"modified":"2026-07-24T08:00:00","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T08:00:00","slug":"science-word-of-the-day-parsec","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bkbc.net\/index.php\/2026\/07\/24\/science-word-of-the-day-parsec\/","title":{"rendered":"Science word of the day: Parsec"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Science word of the day: <\/strong>Parsec<\/p>\n

Pronunciation:<\/strong> PAHR’-sek<\/em><\/p>\n

What it means: <\/strong>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<\/u><\/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

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: <\/strong>The 2018 movie “Solo: A Star Wars Story” tries to retcon Han Solo’s brag about parsecs<\/em> 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, <\/strong>Chain Word<\/strong><\/u><\/a>?<\/strong><\/p>\n

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<\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/article>\n

Source: Latest from Live Science<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Science word of the day: Parsec Pronunciation: PAHR’-sek What it means: Ah, the humble parsec, thorn in the side of George Lucas. In 1977, Lucas’ […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1818,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bkbc.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bkbc.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bkbc.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bkbc.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bkbc.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1817"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bkbc.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1817\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bkbc.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bkbc.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bkbc.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bkbc.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}