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16 light years
ABOVE VIDEO: A scientist from the University of Florida discovered the true Vulcan planet just 16 light years away from the planet Earth.
BREVARD COUNTY, FLORIDA – Star Trek TV shows have a great universe of characters and planets.
Now, the Dharma Planet Survey, in a new study by astronomer Jian Ge of the University of Florida and the team including astronomers Matthew Muterspaugh and Gregory Henry of Tennessee State University, has shown that science fiction was maybe a little less. the Dharma project has discovered what could be the famous Vulcan planet of Star Trek.
"The new planet is a" super-Earth "orbiting the HD 26965 star, only 16 light-years away from the Earth, making it the nearest super-Earth orbiting another star" Ge says.
"The planet is about twice as big as the Earth and revolves around its star with a 42-day period just inside the optimal habitable zone of the star."
The discovery was made using the Dharma Endowment Foundation Telescope (DEFT), a 50-inch telescope located atop the mount. Lemmon in southern Arizona. The planet is the first "super-Earth" detected by the Dharma Survey.
"The orange-tinged HD 26965 is only slightly cooler and slightly less massive than our Sun. It is approximately the same age as our Sun, and its 10.1-year magnetic cycle is almost identical to that of the Sun of 11 , 6 years old, "says Muterspaugh. , who participated in the commissioning of the Dharma spectrograph on the TSU 2 meter automatic spectroscopic telescope.
"Therefore," he adds, "HD 26965 can be an ideal host star for an advanced civilization."
"Star Trek fans may know the HD 26965 star by its other name, 40 Eridani A," says Henry, who collected accurate measurements of the star's brightness at the TSU's automated observatory to confirm the presence of the planet. "Vulcan was connected to 40 Eridani A in James Blish's" Star Trek 2 "(Bantam, 1968) and Jeff Maynard's" Star Trek Maps "(Bantam, 1980)," explains Henry. In a letter published in "Sky and Telescope" in July 1991, Gene Roddenberry, creator of Star Trek, and Sallie Baliunas, Robert Donahue and George Nassiopoulos of the Harvard-Smithsonian Astrophysical Center confirmed the identification of 40 Eridani. Has as host of Vulcan. The star system 40 Eridani is composed of three stars. Vulcan is in orbit around the primary star and the two companion stars "shone brightly in the Vulcan sky," they write in their 1991 letter.
"Vulcan is the original planet of the science specialist, Mr. Spock, in the original science fiction series" Star Trek, "" explains Henry. "Spock served in the Enterprise ship, whose mission was to search out new strange worlds, a mission shared by Dharma Planet Survey."
"This star can be seen with the naked eye, unlike the host stars of most known planets discovered so far. Now, everyone can see 40 Eridani on a clear night and be proud to show Spock's house, "says Bo Ma, a UF University postdoc and first author of the newspaper that has just been published in" Monthly Notices of Royal Astronomical Society ".
"This discovery demonstrates that fully dedicated telescopes driving high-speed, high-precision radial velocity observations in the near future will continue to play a key role in the discovery of super-Earths and even Earth-like planets in living space nearby. stars, "says Ge. "I am very grateful to the donor of our Dharma Planet Survey, Mr. Mickey Singer, who recognized the importance of this project and who has consistently supported this discovery and future discoveries."
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