IN SPACE – FEBRUARY 27: In this handout from NASA, International Space Station astronaut Terry … [+]
Mr. Spock’s home planet is once again just a figment of Gene Roddenberry’s imagination.
The beloved “Star Trek” character hailed from the made-up planet Vulcan around the very real star 40 Eridani A, just 16 light years from Earth. In 2018, astronomers discovered an actual planet orbiting 40 Eridani A.
Had Vulcans really been living long and prospering this whole time?
Well, probably not, given that the real-life planet Vulcan was more likely to be a crushing gas giant world. Even worse: it now appears that the planet 40 Eridani b (also called 40 Eri b) was just a false positive that never existed at all.
That’s one of the findings in a new paper from an international team of researchers set to be published soon in the Astronomical Journal.
Astronomers had originally made the detection of a planet years back using something called the radial velocity method, which essentially looks for the fingerprints of planets in the way they subtly “tug” on their stars.
It now appears that what looked like a planetary tug was really just activity on the surface of the star.
So Vulcan is quite literally a phantom planet.
This comes as a bit of a bummer for the many astronomers and astrophysicists who — not shockingly — are hard core Trekkers.
“I had even created a public talk I gave a couple of times based on this,” veteran astronomer Phil Plait wrote in his newsletter. “I called it “The Search for Vulcan” and gave it on a Star Trek cruise!”
They did it again. Scientists boldly went where imaginary men have gone before and ruined the illusion for the rest of us. At least I can rest knowing that Captain Kirk really has been to space and no one can take that away.
