It would be a delight to know that our imaginations about enthralling fiction actually exist. In the fictional universe of Star Trek, planet ‘Vulcan is home to logic, learning and beloved science officer Spock’.
While Spock and planet Vulcan may remain fiction, researchers at NASA’s Exoplanet Exploration project say that star system – 40 Eridani – hosting Spock’s home planet do really exists!
According to Exoplanet Exploration project it is trinary star system which is only 16.5 light years away from Earth and its prime star could be spotted with naked eye.
“Could there be an Earth-like planet in this system? We have no way of knowing that now,” said Karl Stapelfeldt, chief scientist of NASA’s Exoplanet Exploration Program.
Among the three stars, 40 Eridani-A – the mythical Vulcan Sun – is the most massive. The rest two – 40 Eridani C and 40 Eridani B are a binary pair which which revolves around each other. 40 Eridani – C is a red dwarf and 40 Eridani B is a white dwarf star.
From the surface of planet Vulcan, “they would gleam brilliantly in the Vulcan sky,” the creator of Star Trek franchise, Gene Rodenberry says in a letter to Sky & Telescope magazine in 1991.
NASA has figured out where Spock’s home planet could be in the star system. According to fiction, the planet Vulcan occupies in the habitable zone around its largest star 40 Eridani-A.
Since it is a much dimmer star than our own Sun, it proposed that planet Vulcan should be lodged in the inner curve of habitable zone – giving it a ‘desert like quality’.
However, NASA has not yet confirmed presence of any Vulcan or otherwise exoplanets in the star system.
“We don’t yet have a way to detect it, but NASA is working on the technology to make it possible,” Stapelfeldt added while speaking about the possibilities of finding Vulcan.
It may not be long before we receive a Vulcan salute from this unknown world.
