Spock’s Planet Vulcan Might Not Be Real After All, Study Finds

Finding a “Vulcan”-like planet, known in Star Trek lore as Spock’s home world, around the star 40 Eridani A, was thrilling. Just imagine a real Vulcan, only 16 light-years away.

Scientists even gave it a name: HD 26965 b and thought to be a “super Earth” that’s smaller than Neptune. But after its discovery in 2018, doubts emerged.

Some astronomers questioned whether it really existed at all, and even the scientists who initially found it warned it might not be real. So, could Vulcan be just a part of science fiction after all?

New Study Questions the Planetary Nature of Spock’s Vulcan

Spock’s Planet Vulcan Might Not Be Real After All, Study Finds » Vulcan hz 590 wc
Image Credit: See page for author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

A team of scientists led by astronomer Abigail Burrows has published a new study that challenges the idea that Spock’s home planet, Vulcan, might be real. 

They revisited HD 26965, though to orbit 40 Eridani A (also known as Keid), using new tools to observe its activity. Their findings suggest that the signal previously believed to be caused by a planet is likely due to natural activity on the star itself.

This “activity signal” is caused by things like spots on the star’s surface, rather than a real-world Vulcan. (ref)

How Scientists Look for Exoplanets & Why Vulcan Might Not Be Real

Spock’s Planet Vulcan Might Not Be Real After All, Study Finds » 40 Eridani System wc
Image Credit: Shisma, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) says there are two main ways scientists search for planets outside our solar system, known as exoplanets.

One method, called the transit method, looks for tiny dips in a star’s light when a planet crosses in front of it. The transit method, used successfully by NASA’s TESS satellite, is how most exoplanets are discovered. (ref)

The other method, radial velocity, tracks the “wobble” of a star caused by the gravitational pull of an orbiting planet. This method is especially useful when planets don’t pass directly in front of their stars from our point of view.

The scientists who first detected HD 26965 b did warn it could be caused by stellar jitters, not a planet. By using the high-precision radial velocity measurements not yet available back in 2018, the new, more precise data confirms their caution was correct.

An astronomical spectrograph tool called NEID measures radial velocity to find and study exoplanets. It recently joined the telescopes at Kitt Peak National Observatory. It works by looking for tiny shifts in the light from stars, known as the “Doppler effect,” to detect planets.

When scientists analyzed the signal from the star 40 Eridani A, where Vulcan was thought to be, the signal didn’t match what you’d expect from a planet.

Instead, it seemed to be caused by activity on the star’s surface, like bright regions and hot and cold layers below the surface. This activity happens on a 42-day cycle, the same as the suspected planet’s orbit. (ref)

While this means Vulcan probably isn’t real, NEID’s precision gives scientists a better way to tell the difference between real planets and star activity, which improves our chances of finding real exoplanets in the future.

Source:

  1. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

Read Next

Spock’s Planet Vulcan Might Not Be Real After All, Study Finds » cable tv subscription ss2190776509
Image Credit: metamorworks/Shutterstock
Nancy Maffia » nancy
Nancy Maffia
Author & Editor | + posts

Nancy received a bachelor’s in biology from Elmira College and a master’s degree in horticulture and communications from the University of Kentucky. Worked in plant taxonomy at the University of Florida and the L. H. Bailey Hortorium at Cornell University, and wrote and edited gardening books at Rodale Press in Emmaus, PA. Her interests are plant identification, gardening, hiking, and reading.