10 Things Everyone Always Gets Wrong About Star Wars
9. Starships Travel At Lightspeed
Everyone is familiar with the iconic visual of a starship flying off at lightspeed. Ever since Star Wars graced the silver screen, viewers have been obsessed with the image of the stars themselves pushing back as Han and Chewie punched the hyperdrive. However, a lot of those people interpreted this incredible form of space travel in the wrong way entirely.
Most viewers saw lightspeed and assumed it was the ship moving across the galaxy faster than light, but that's not what happens. Instead, the ship jumps in and out of an alternate dimension known as hyperspace. So rather than travelling across the "real" galaxy at breakneck speeds, you simply jump to this alternate plane of existence and jump back out where you need to be.
As a form of fast travel, this is the best way to do it. Travelling at lightspeed would undoubtedly move you places, but in the vastness of the universe, even a ship travelling faster than light would be a stone's throw in the ocean.
The movies themselves even corrected this by switching from calling it lightspeed to hyperspace. But, the confusion still remained.