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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.

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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Tweet may have been deleted

Tweet may have been deleted

Tweet may have been deleted

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.

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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