Star Trek’s Spock comes from the planet Vulcan, which of course doesn’t exist. But new research might give us the next best thing—an exoplanet orbiting the real-life star that Vulcan is said to be orbiting in the Star Trek universe.

In 1991, Gene Roddenberry wrote a letter to Sky & Telescope about what kind of star the planet Vulcan was likely to orbit. In that letter, he specifically picks out one such star, 40 Eridani. Later, 40 Eridani became the canon Vulcan star system featured in a handful of episodes of Star Trek: Enterprise.

In real life, 40 Eridani is a triple star system located about 17 light-years from the Earth. The main star, 40 Eridani A, is about 84 percent as massive as our sun. The other two stars in the system are much smaller and orbit 10 times as far away from the main star as Pluto orbits from the sun.

While 40 Eridani isn’t the largest or brightest star in the night sky, it is pretty close to us, making it a good target for scientists searching for planets around other stars. Recently, a group of scientists at the Fairborn Observatory working with the Dharma Planet Survey took a good look at 40 Eridani and discovered a planet circling it, just like Gene Roddenberry said it would.

The newly discovered planet probably doesn’t have logical residents with pointy ears. What we do know is that it is about twice the size of the Earth and orbits its host star once every 42 days. Such a short orbital period means that this planet is located very close to its star, making it hot and dry. In fact, it’s unlikely to have any kind of life living on it at all.

This also makes this newly-discovered planet the first ever found by the Dharma Planet Survey, which is designed to hunt planets around nearby stars. With any luck, this will only be the first of many.

Source: Monthly Notices of The Royal Astronomical Society via Space.com

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