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Spock's tricorder, which possibly doubled up as a universal translator

In the Star Trek universe, the beloved character Spock hails from the planet Vulcan. This planet is, of course, entirely fictional. However, Star Trek producers eventually associated Vulcan with a existent star near Earth called twoscore Eridani A. New observations have revealed a planet in orbit of twoscore Eridani A — our very own real-life Vulcan. The presence of pointy-eared aliens with green blood is not all the same confirmed.

Early in the beingness of Star Trek, it didn't affair much where exactly Vulcan was in the cosmos. All nosotros needed to know was that it was close to Globe on a galactic scale. Later, the expanding of technical background details necessitated authentic connections to the real globe. In 2002, an officially licensed book chosen Star Trek: Star Charts pointed to 40 Eridani A as the Vulcan organization. These charts as well showed up in Star Trek: Enterprise, which aired on Idiot box around that time. That makes it canon in the Star Expedition universe.

In real life, 40 Eridani A is slightly smaller and cooler than the sun, with an orange-ish colour. At a altitude of just 16 light years, you can await upwards in the sky and run into forty Eridani A without a telescope. The star is about the same historic period as the sun, and it has a like blueprint of sunspots. That could hateful its solar system is conducive to life.

The planet is a so-called super-Earth with an estimated mass eight times that of our planet, which doesn't lucifer the fictional Vulcan as far as we know. The exoplanet is too orbiting very close to its star with a year of just 42 Earth days. xl Eridani A is libation than the sun, only astronomers nonetheless believe the exoplanet will fall outside of the habitable zone. Although, Vulcan itself was largely desert.

Astronomers with the Dharma Planet Survey detected the planet via the radial velocity method. That we can infer its presence from small wobbles in the star caused by the orbiting planet. Information technology's unclear if the unnamed exoplanet transits in front of its host star from our perspective. If so, we may be able to characterize its atmosphere and verify the concrete characteristics.

A by study detected something foreign with 40 Eridani A'southward radial velocity, but that team was unable to verify a planet. The new study has additional data to makes its case. It's still just a candidate planet, though. More observations are needed. I think we can all agree that nosotros take to name the planet "Vulcan" if other studies verify its presence around xl Eridani A.

Now read: How to Build a Star Trek: The Next Generation Mechanical Keyboard, Real-life tricorders are hither 230 years early on, courtesy of the Tricorder XPrize, and Scientists Say Closest Exoplanet Could Be Habitable After All