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The Lucas Loophole
01/07/2005 . Source: Mark R. Leeper 
I read a review of the "Star Wars" series that complained about the absurdity of the whole thing. The author had a number of complaints about characters and motivations, all very much matters of taste. Only one complaint had real substance. The writer complained that the whole idea of a galactic civilization is absurd. The distances are too great. People seem to flit around between star systems as if they were states in the United States. That seems on the face of it absurd. Buy George Lucas in the USA - or Buy George Lucas in the UK  Actually the complaint is as well aimed at "Star trek" and BABYLON 5. Of these big three, "Star Wars" needs the assumption the least. For any of these series to work it is necessary to have faster-than-light travel. And the writers of space opera seem by mutual consent agree that they will not be bound by the strictures of relativistic physics. They hand-wave with magic like wormholes and space warps. "Star Trek" seems to assume that space can warp space like a fold in a sheet of paper and they can take shortcuts. Even if that were possible, the existence of warp engines implies that they can bend space and generate shortcuts wherever they want at will. This is nearly pure fantasy. "Star Wars" does have a hyper-drive, but they don't explain it as warping space.
Another claim made in "Star Trek" and BABYLON 5 is that you have special passageways called wormholes that work like the diagonal passageways in the game "Clue". You pop into a black hole here and pop out someplace else in the universe unharmed. Various sources these days say this process probably would crush you, spaghetti you, or incinerate you. Wormholes do not seem like a reasonable mechanism for faster than light travel either. We accept them in stories to allow the telling of the stories. We willingly suspend disbelief. Fine, but it is still rather fantastic.
At this point you probably are thinking I am an idiot. "Star Wars" has faster-than-light hyperdrive. We see it in the film. The thing is that we are told that what we are seeing is faster than light travel, but the story does not require it. In "Star Wars" rapid travel between the stars would be possible not by wormhole but by loophole. There is a very big loophole that Lucas has (probably) unknowingly left himself that could make "Star Wars" compatible with Einsteinian physics. It may not be consistent with other physics, giving us sound in space and having ships maneuver as if they were in atmosphere, but "Star Wars" does not necessarily have to assume faster than light travel.
The loophole that Lucas has left himself is the phrase "A long time ago in a galaxy far away...." Part of the implication is that while this is apparently a very human-like race we are seeing, they are not us. We are not them. They may not be like us in all respects. They seem to be able to travel across their entire galaxy in a very small fraction of their lives. Does this require faster-than-light travel? Not at all. What it requires is a lot of time. It could be that we are talking about a race that is very long lived. Perhaps it is a race that lives long enough to cross a galaxy in a fraction of their lifetime at sub-light speeds.
Of course, they do not appear to be long-lived in our terms. Luke Skywalker appears to age in a short time. They do not seem to have very long lives compared to ours and they do not perceive their lives as long, but that is a question of their internal clocks. They also could be on planets whose rotation to us would be so slow we almost could not see the rotation since they do seem to have night and day at intervals that seem to us like our interval of night and day. But then Mercury in our solar system has a very long but not infinite day.
It has occurred to me that of earth life forms, trees would make a better space-faring race than humans since they live so much longer than us and so the distances of space would not be as great for them. The races of "Star Wars" could have a galactic civilization, but probably only if they all live so slowly that Earth civilization could come and go in a blink of one of their human-like alien eyes. A set of very slow races like this could have a galactic civilization in which species come together like they do in the Imperial Senate.
This is all speculation because Han Solo does claim the Millenium Falcon can travel at hyper-light speeds. That is not as fanciful as wormhole travel, but it is still in the realm of fantasy. Still, if one ignores that one line, Lucas's polyglot universe is possible. Galactic civilizations are possible. There can be such universes. Sadly, just not for us Earth people.
P.S. Great minds think alike. National Geographic is also thinking about the technical problems of the Star Wars universe. They discuss faster-than-light travel being necessary so I don't think they have thought about the possibility of super-slow life-forms. If you are interested you can look at http://tinyurl.com/ceh2n
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