Fascinating.
For those of you uncultured swine unaware, Vulcan is the fictional home planet of Mr. Spock in Star Trek. And, over time, the producers of the series eventually came to associate it with a real-life near-Earth star: 40 Eridani A. Noramlly, that wouldn’t mean anything. But, recently, astronomers have discovered a planet orbiting 40 Eridani A; a real-life Vucan if you will.
For most of the franchise’s history, the exact coordinates of Vulcan weren’t really all that important. But, in the early 2000’s, an officially licensed book, Star Trek: Star Charts, decided that 40 Eridani A was a sensible spot. Said charts are canon, as well, notably turning up in Star Trek: Enterprise, the then-current series of the time.
All that said, aside from location, the newly discovered exoplanet has little in common with its fictional counterpart. 40 Eridani A is smaller and cooler than our sun, and the planet is fairly close to it, experiencing a full orbit of 42 Earth days. The exoplanet is 8 times the size of Earth, but astronomers consider it unlikely that it’s conducive to life. That said, they do think the system itself has the capability of containing life, due to a number of similarities between our sun and 40 Eridani A.
So, we may not have a real Vulcan, like Star Trek fans might want. But still, the coincidence is… fascinating.
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