Astronomers Find Exoplanet In the Same Place as Star Trek’s Vulcan

In the Star Trek universe, the beloved character Spock hails from the planet Vulcan. This planet is, of course, entirely fictional. However, Star Trek producers eventually associated Vulcan with a real star near Earth called 40 Eridani A. New observations have revealed a planet in orbit of 40 Eridani A — our very own real-life Vulcan. The presence of pointy-eared aliens with green blood is not yet confirmed.

Early in the existence of Star Trek, it didn’t matter much where exactly Vulcan was in the cosmos. All we needed to know was that it was close to Earth on a galactic scale. Later, the expanding of technical background details necessitated accurate connections to the real world. In 2002, an officially licensed book called Star Trek: Star Charts pointed to 40 Eridani A as the Vulcan system. These charts also showed up in Star Trek: Enterprise, which aired on TV around that time. That makes it canon in the Star Trek universe.

In real life, 40 Eridani A is slightly smaller and cooler than the sun, with an orange-ish color. At a distance of just 16 light years, you can look up in the sky and see 40 Eridani A without a telescope. The star is about the same age as the sun, and it has a similar pattern of sunspots. That could mean its solar system is conducive to life.

The planet is a so-called super-Earth with an estimated mass eight times that of our planet, which doesn’t match the fictional Vulcan as far as we know. The exoplanet is also orbiting very close to its star with a year of just 42 Earth days. 40 Eridani A is cooler than the sun, but astronomers still believe the exoplanet will fall outside of the habitable zone. Although, Vulcan itself was largely desert.

Astronomers with the Dharma Planet Survey detected the planet via the radial velocity method. That we can infer its presence from small wobbles in the star caused by the orbiting planet. It’s unclear if the unnamed exoplanet transits in front of its host star from our perspective. If so, we may be able to characterize its atmosphere and verify the physical characteristics.

A past study detected something strange with 40 Eridani A’s radial velocity, but that team was unable to verify a planet. The new study has additional data to makes its case. It’s still just a candidate planet, though. More observations are needed. I think we can all agree that we have to name the planet “Vulcan” if other studies verify its presence around 40 Eridani A.

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