By: Andrew Lu
Grogu – more commonly called Baby Yoda – is green, cute, and adorable. But what you might not know is the fifty-year-old creature isn’t as babyish as you think – he might have hitched a ride to an unknown planet. What if you were given the task – like Din Djarin, the famous Mandalorian – to find Grogu hiding not only in the Star Wars galaxy but in the Milky Way?
First, as vast as the Star Wars galaxy is, it only contains 50 million systems. But there are 100 billion (or more) habitable planets in the Milky Way. Even if I gave you a starship with a hyperdrive and a tracking fob, it will take you a lifetime just to get a clue of where he’d be hiding.
Actually, you’d probably better think like Grogu, a toddler that enjoys frog eggs and can lift ferocious Mudhorns into the air.
Where could he be hiding? It would most likely be a planet similar to Dagobah, where Yoda spent his final years in exile. It could also be a desert world, like the famous Tatooine, the home planet of many great Jedi Knights. Or could he be on an Earthlike planet?
“Yes, R2, we’re going to Dagobah.” Doesn’t that sound familiar? But why Dagobah? First, it could be a good environment for the Yoda species. They might like the harsh and humid climate. Next, it would be far from Imperial Reach – that’s pretty nice, especially when the cruel Imperial Moff Gideon is after you. Finally, Yoda spent his years there, so why shouldn’t Grogu?
But, theoretically, you can’t find very boggy and wet planets like Dagobah in the Milky Way. You’d have to have lowlands in order to do that. But that’s impossible to find on Dagobah, which doesn’t have many geographic features.
And yet another Star Wars planet impossible to find is a cold gas giant like Bespin. Let alone the floating cloud cities, the air would be too thin for Grogu to breathe.
But there are better places to search. Remember, Grogu has an extremely high midi-clorian count or high sensitivity for the force. Maybe Grogu would be found on a planet with a high force presence.
Your next stop, Tatooine – right on Boba Fett’s doorstep. There might be a Milky Way version of Tatooine – Kepler-16b, which revolves around twin suns. But actually, Kepler-16b is just outside of its star’s Goldilocks zone, so it would probably be a frozen chunk of junk the size of Saturn. So we wouldn’t be finding Grogu there, either.
We actually have a version of Tatooine or Jakku here in the Solar System. Desert planets are not uncommon in the Milky Way, but Grogu won’t be hiding there. Desert planets can be dry but cold – like Jedha (Mars). Scientists aren’t sure if bacteria can survive here, let alone Grogu.
So maybe we’d go somewhere like Coruscant, the galactic republic’s turf. Planets like Kepler-452b, which is 1.6 times greater than Earth. The planet itself is warming up, so any civilization there would have to be extremely advanced to survive.
And I doubt that Grogu would like Hoth, a frozen planet near the Tatooine system. Our Milky Way has a similar planet, OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb, which has a surface temperature of -220 Celsius. That’s colder than Pluto! But it could support life – just not Wampas and Tauntauns.
So we’ve eliminated most of the possibilities. Where could we find Grogu? That’s right, Earth. Where else would we find lifeforms like Grogu? Earth is the only planet that we know of that can support life forms like Grogu – and us. We must protect our planet because it’s one in a million. Maybe even one in a trillion. After such a long journey through our galaxy, are you convinced that Earth is the only place where Grogu can be found! Actually many similar versions of Grogu live on Earth – just not green.
And remember, “May the force be with you – always!”