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Astrophysicists have just found a planet orbiting the HD star 26965, 16 light years from Earth. Finding exoplanets is always fun, and the fact that it is in the habitable zone of the star (where liquid water could exist on its surface) is an asset. But that's not why people are particularly excited about this announcement.
See, HD 26965 also goes through 40 Eridani A – the star orbited by Spock's home world in Star Trek. That means they found Vulcan. Ok, well, they found an analog of the real world to a completely fictional world, but you can not blame Star Trek fans to be excited.
The story of a star
The star was first proposed as a possible candidate to host Vulcan in a 1968 James Blish short story collection, adapted from episodes from the original iconic series. He became canon decades later in a letter co-written by Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry published in Sky and telescope in 1991 (see page five).
From the letter: "This year we are celebrating the 25th anniversary of the launch of two major companies. One is the HK project at the Mount Wilson Observatory, where astronomers monitor the surface magnetic activity on solar-type EDO stars to understand the magnetic history of our own Sun. The other is the Enterprise spacecraft on the TV series "Star Trek". Surprisingly, both have more in common than their birthdays.
In 1966, at the same time Star Trek Project Creation – The HK project began staring at distant stars, trying to get more information on the operation of these charged gas balls. One of these stars was 40 Eridani A, a single star in a three-star system.
They also watched another star, Epsilon Eridani, who is frequently quoted in science fiction as a distant alien world. Thanks to another, 1980 Star Trek book, Epsilon Eridani was also vying to be the star of Vulcan. Here's where it gets really fun: Citing the work of the HK project, Roddenberry and three Harvard astrophysicists wrote in their Sky and telescope letter that 40 Eridani A was the best candidate for the Vulcan star since it was 4 billion years old (similar to Earth) while Epsilon Eridani was only 1 billion years old. A child compared, all the planets around Epsilon Eridani would not have had time to develop complex and advanced life forms.
We get it, you nerd. What about current science?
The data published in an article of the Monthly Notices from the Royal Astronomical Society is as cool as science fiction. To find this planet, the researchers looked for small changes in starlight, which could indicate that something was spinning in orbit.
Instead of looking for a dive into the light between a star and a telescope (called transit), these researchers observed the wavelengths of light, looking for small changes that would indicate their displacement relative to the Earth. This gives them a general idea of how often the planet revolves around its star and its size.
"The new planet is a" super-Earth "orbiting the HD 26965 star, just 16 light-years from Earth, making it the closest super-Earth to another star," said Jian Ge. "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."
But a super-Earth is not necessarily similar to the Earth – the term refers to any planet whose mass is greater than that of our world of origin, but much lower than that of the ice giants Uranus and Neptune . Researchers do not yet know what kind of planet is the real Vulcan; It could be a great version of the Rocky Earth, but it could also act from a gaseous planet, much like a Neptune.
Without more data, we will not know it. But Fortunately we are about to get more data. NASA's TESS satellite will turn to this star later this year, and if the planet transits, we could get more information on its density or atmosphere.
If TESS shows that Vulcan is more like Earth than Neptune, it does not mean that a group of green-eyed and technologically advanced aliens, with an extremely advanced and logical society, is lying on the surface. It's incredibly unlikely. We will be lucky if there is even a microbial life to track down traces of. But we can still hope. Roddenberry was right on mobile phones, tablets and automatic sliding doors clearly it means that we are 45 years old before inventing a Warp training and making the first contact. Manage.
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