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An accomplished director like Ron Howard knows very well how to build suspense among fans. Even more so now that he's directing the yet-untitled Star Wars Han Solo spinoff.

SEE ALSO:Either the Death Star is in the Han Solo movie or Ron Howard is messing with us

After teasing Lando's costume and the Death Star, Howard tweeted a mysterious, dark-toned image of what seems to be the entrance of a cave or mine of some sort with just a word: "Spicey?"

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Setting aside any possible reference to the former White House spokesman, people on Twitter immediately jumped to the conclusion that spicey + mine = spice mine = THE KESSEL RUN!

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If you have some familiarity with the Star Wars universe, you're probably aware the Kessel Run is one of the most debated questions surrounding Han Solo.

In Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope, Solo, captain of the Millennium Falcon, boasted with Obi Wan Kenobi and a young Luke Skywalker on their first encounter that his ship "made the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs" (Obi Wan then furrows his brow in scepticism).

Solo was a smuggler, and smugglers were bragging a lot about the Kessel Run, a hyperspace route used to illegally move spice from the spice mines of Kessel for a drug cartel, the Pyke Syndicate.

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But there's one obvious problem with Han Solo's claims. The term "parsec," formed by the union of "parallax" and "second," is a unit of distance, not time.

So Solo's claims don't really make sense. The Kessel Run is a 18-parsec route, what does it mean that he made the run in less than 12 parsecs?

Naturally, it could just be an oversight in the screenplay. But in Star Wars: The Force Awakens a startled Rey asks Han Solo on the Millennium Falcon:

"This is the ship that made the Kessel Run in 14 parsecs?"

To which an annoyed Solo replies: "Twelve!"

Hardly an oversight.

Star Wars fans and astronomers obsessed over the years in a bid to find a scientific explanation to the cheeky smuggler's words. There's even one plausible theory that explains how Han Solo could actually be a 40-year-older time-traveller.

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TopicsStar Wars