Well … kinda.
A new study from University of Florida astronomer Jian Ge, along with a team including Tennessee State University astronomers Matthew Muterspaugh and Gregory Henry, have discovered a planet orbiting the star 40 Eridani A as part of the Dharma Planet Survey, which is analyzing about 150 nearby stars that are like the Sun in size and temperature to detect planets through a gravitational signature from Doppler shifts.
The planet, categorized as a “super-Earth” (i.e., two to 10 times the size of terra firma), has twice the radius of Earth and about nine times the mass. According to the scientists involved, it is barely within the habitable zone of 40 Eridani A, an orange dwarf star (or K-type main-sequence star) which is smaller and cooler than our sun. 40 Eridani is a triple star system 16.4 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Eridanus. 40 Eridani A is the brightest star of the three, and is visible in the sky at night, with the binary pair of 40 Eridani B and C orbiting it.
Whether the discovered planet orbiting 40 Eridani A may support life is an open question. Although, the conditions would not be optimal. The habitable zone of 40 Eridani A is closer to the star than Earth is to the Sun, so a year on this planet is 42 days, and its closeness to the star means the planet’s temp is more “toasty” than what we’re used to here. Also, all that extra mass means the gravity well of the planet would be stronger and make things about twice as heavy, too.
The reason these findings have made headlines in recent days is not exactly the planet itself but where this planet was located, and how closely some of the conditions match an iconic fictional world in science fiction lore. Since at least 1968, the planet Vulcan from Star Trek has been speculated on by fans and the show's creator as being located in the 40 Eridani system.
Whether or not there are green-blooded, pointy-eared, human-looking aliens living on this planet is the next shoe to drop.
The name “Vulcan” is derived from Roman mythology for the god of fire and metalworking. Whether this newly discovered planet might one day receive the moniker of Vulcan is unclear. The name has a history in astronomy as a hypothetical planet thought to have existed in an orbit between Mercury and the Sun. The International Astronomical Union recently set up a system for naming exoplanets and rejected a proposal to name one of the moons of Pluto “Vulcan” back in 2013, since the term “vulcanoid” remains attached to any asteroid existing inside the orbit of Mercury.
Within Star Trek, both the “Vulcans” and “Romulans” (a major adversary within the franchise, who are offshoots of the Vulcan race) share a borrowed name from human mythology. The reason for this is pretty much explained by saying: “It’s a TV show,” but does have a quasi-canon/fan fiction explanation. Within Star Trek, the Greek/Roman gods actually existed, and were aliens which traveled from planet to planet, possibly influencing Vulcan in the same way they did Earth.
From Katherine J. Wu at Smithsonian.com:
In the “Star Trek” universe, the star 40 Eridani A (alias HD 26965) has long been canon as the sun of Vulcan, the home world of the franchise’s favorite pointy-eared science officer, Mr. Spock.
This was first established in 1968 by James Blish’s script anthology Star Trek 2 and later affirmed in 1980’s Star Trek Maps by Jeff Maynard. But it wasn’t until 1991 that show creator Gene Roddenberry himself (backed by a few astrophysicists) penned a letter in scientific support of 40 Eridani as a probable host for Vulcan viability. Nearly three decades later, a new discovery from the University of Florida delivers some serious vindication to the choice, revealing a real-life planet actually clocking in at coordinates eerily reminiscent of the fictional M-Class planet.
From the University of Florida:
The discovery was made using the Dharma Endowment Foundation Telescope (DEFT), a 50-inch telescope located atop Mt. Lemmon in southern Arizona. The planet is the first “super-Earth” detected by the Dharma Survey.
“The orange-tinted HD 26965 is only slightly cooler and slightly less massive than our Sun, is approximately the same age as our Sun, and has a 10.1-year magnetic cycle nearly identical to the Sun’s 11.6-year sunspot cycle,” explains Muterspaugh, who helped to commission the Dharma spectrograph on the TSU 2-meter automatic spectroscopic telescope. “Therefore,” he adds, “HD 26965 may be an ideal host star for an advanced civilization.”
From Phil Plait at Syfy Wire:
If it has the same density as Earth, then it would have to be about twice Earth’s diameter to get a mass of 8.4 times ours. In that case, the surface gravity would be about twice ours too. That means you’d weigh twice as much on the planet as you do on Earth.
Huh. In Trek it’s known that Vulcan is a high-gravity world (which is why Spock is stronger than humans). It’s also known to be hot there, and this planet, if it exists, is close enough to its star to be much warmer than Earth (maybe too warm; it’s actually near the inner edge of the star’s habitable zone).
P.S. I have to add, the lead author on the paper is named Bo Ma, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Florida. As it happens, Samual Boma was a character in Star Trek, appearing in the original series episode "The Galileo Seven." He was an astrophysicist (!), and one of the big sources of conflict in that episode was that he vehemently disagreed with many of Spock's command decisions. That makes me so happy. As I told you: I'm a huge Trek nerd.