New planet could be Mr. Spock's Star Trek home world
Here's some science to go with your favorite science fiction. Elon Musk, can you get us to Vulcan?
- Co-author of two Gen X pop-culture encyclopedia for Penguin Books. Won "Headline Writer of the Year" award for 2017, 2014 and 2013 from the American Copy Editors Society. Won first place in headline writing from the 2013 Society for Features Journalism.
Mr. Spock's home world has a basis in reality.
Turns out Vulcan, Mr. Spock's Star Trek fictional home world, has a real-world counterpart. A new survey has discovered a planet located exactly where Spock's would have been.
This all takes a little explaining for those of us who aren't planetary scholars. Back in 1991, Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and three astronomers wrote a letter to Sky & Telescope magazine about where Vulcan might be located.
"The star around which Vulcan orbits was never identified in the original series or in any of the feature films based on it and so has never been officially established," they wrote. But Roddenberry's group had a candidate in mind. "We prefer the identification of 40 Eridani as Vulcan's sun."
The orange dwarf-star 40 Eridani is 4 billion years old, about the same age as our sun, they went on to say. Roddenberry and the astronomers thought that would give an intelligent civilization time to evolve -- and no one has ever denied the intelligence of Vulcans.
"Presumably Vulcan orbits the primary star, an orange main-sequence dwarf of spectral type K1," they wrote.
Now, a survey called the Dharma Planet Survey has discovered that 40 Eridani does indeed have a planet, one that's eight times the mass of Earth.
"The world is a super-Earth, the most common type of planet in the galaxy (though a type that's missing from our solar system)," Sky & Telescope reports.
Sadly, the planet is likely too hot to support Spock's family and friends, but fans found it a fun discovery anyway. One Twitter user tweeted at the cast and crew of The Big Bang Theory, writing, "I hope the discovery of the Vulcan home world (sort of) can make it into an episode of season 12."
GUYS WAIT WHOA WHOA WHOA.
— Dr. Jessie Christiansen (@aussiastronomer) September 18, 2018
I did not realise at the time because they published the star under a different name, but WE FOUND A PLANET AROUND 40 ERIDANI A.
*crickets*
THAT'S WHERE SPOCK IS FROM. VULCAN ORBITS 40 ERIDANI A.
WHAT.https://t.co/fojauzTgok pic.twitter.com/xL6imUmxfu
This new planet is much too hot to be habitable, but where there's one planet... pic.twitter.com/5RmM8LOCeH
— Dr. Jessie Christiansen (@aussiastronomer) September 18, 2018
It needs to be a desert world with a thin atmosphere so this can happen. pic.twitter.com/rETgGO5YbX
— Astro Noel (@astro_noel) September 18, 2018
To be pedantic, originally Vulcan was Epsilon Eridani, since that and Tau Ceti were on the short list of stars possibly with habitable planets.
— Winchell Chung (@nyrath) September 19, 2018
SF writer James Blish changed it to 40 Eridani in 1967 in his novelization of "Balance of Terror"https://t.co/6UhSH6sI0x
@bigbangtheory I hope the discovery of the Vulcan homeworld (sort of) can make it into an episode of Season 12.
— Shawn Riley (@CyberIntelSME) September 18, 2018
— GTFO Of My House Dammit! (@dammit_rick) September 18, 2018
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