But there are no exoplanets in Spock’s home system

In the Star Trek universe, the planet Vulcan orbits the sun of the “40 Eridani” triple system. When an exoplanet was discovered in a real star system in 2018, it caused quite a stir among fans. But closer inspection of the star has now turned out to be a “false positive”, reports a research group led by Kathryn Laliotis of Ohio State University. What initially appears to be an orbital period of 42 Earth days is caused by stellar activity, the study said. The researchers investigated whether follow-up observations would be useful for some exoplanet candidates.

Doubts have long been expressed

40 Jordan and he too ο² Eridani, called Keid or HD 26965, is a ternary system. In 2018, astronomers reported finding an exoplanet around the main star 40 Eridani A. The alleged exoplanet “HD 26965b” was found using the so-called radial velocity method, in which the presence of a smaller satellite is inferred by the motion of a star. However, this finding has long been questioned because the orbital period of HD 26965b is almost exactly the same as that of its stars. According to Laliotis’ team, they have now confirmed that the alternative explanation for this observed pattern is correct and that the alleged motion is not caused by an exoplanet.

Gene Roddenberry, creator of Star Trek, wrote a letter to America’s largest magazine for amateur astronomers in 1991 – a few months before his death – with three astronomers from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. In it, they chose 40 Eridani over a possible other star, Epsilon Eridani, as the sun over Vulcan. This is indicated by the age of older stars, where more intelligent life can develop in their orbits. In fact, in the 2004 Star Trek Enterprise series, Vulcan is mentioned as being 16 light years from Earth.

picture 1 from 2

Just because the exoplanets found in 40 Eridani don’t exist doesn’t mean they don’t exist. For smaller exoplanets, our instruments may not be accurate enough. For example, Laliotis and his team wrote that, using the radial velocity method, we can only detect an exoplanet as far from Earth as the Sun if the star has a mass of six and a half times that of our home planet. All research work Available online and accepted for publication in The Astronomy Journal.

(mo)