NASA Finds Vulcan

[Ferd Burfel]

Star Trek fans, take heart — Mr. Spock's fabled home star, the nearby Epsilon Eridani, could harbor an Earth-like planet.

NASA astronomers today report that the triple-ringed star has an asteroid belt and a Jupiter-like giant planet in roughly the same orbits as in our own solar system. Only 850 million years old, a fifth the age of Earth's sun, Epsilon Eridani resembles a younger twin to our solar system. About 62 trillion miles away, it is the closest known solar system.

It was borrowed by the creators of the TV series Star Trek as the location of Vulcan, the planet that gave us the super-logical science officer Mr. Spock.

"We certainly haven't seen it yet, but if its solar system is anything like ours, then there should be planets like ours," say astronomer Massimo Marengo of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass.

The NASA Spitzer space telescope results, which measure the infrared heat given off by dust and ice rings circling the star, suggest Epsilon Eridani possesses three jumbo worlds, revealed by dust-free circular lanes in its asteroid belt and more distant comet belts.

This was taken from a USA Today article. I'm still a little unsure of the linking policy on here so I didn't link it, I just took some of the stuff from the article. It was written by Dan Vergano.

 

[T'Aerwynd]

I love it when NASA comes out with stuff like this. Some of the pictures they've got on their Web site are just TOO freakin' cool. I could spend hours browsing through the Hubble gallery. If I had any aptitude whatsoever for math and science, I'd have been an astronaut hands-down.

 

[captcalhoun]

FAIL.

Vulcan's home is in the 40 Eridani system

 

[T'Aerwynd]

Which is fictional. Here's the news release from NASA:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/spitzer/news/spitzer-20081027.html

Here's an excerpt:

Because the star is so close and similar to the sun, it is a popular locale in science fiction. The television series Star Trek and Babylon 5 referenced Epsilon Eridani, and it has been featured in novels by Issac Asimov and Frank Herbert, among others.

 

[Professor Moriarty]

Vulcan's home is in the 40 Eridani system

Which is fictional.

Since when is 40 Eridani fictional?

 

[T'Aerwynd]

40 Eridani itself is not fictional (although 40 Eridani is just the Flamsteed number for the star; the star's actual name I believe is Keid A or sometimes Omicron-2 Eridani in Eridanus). The idea of it being Vulcan is.

 

[FredH]

Both are real stars, and both have been cited (in different, print-only sources) as the Vulcan homestar. I want to say that an ENT episode finally confirmed 40 Eridani as the Vulcan sun, but am not sure.

 

[Finn]

Which one is 16 light years away? That distance was stated in Enterprise, I think the one when Trip visited Vulcan with T'Pol.

 

[Sector 7]

When translated from the original Vulcan, 40 Eridani became Epsilon Eridani. Both are actually correct and canon.
[Just trying to one-up the eventual canonites. Work with me here guys... heheh]

 

[Timo]

Well, they might have found new stars in each constellation, not visible from Earth but prominent once you peek past the nearest dust cloud. They might then have decided to insert the newcomers to the suitable positions in the apparent luminosity scale, forcing the reshuffling of the Greek letters in those constellations...

OTOH, I don't really think the idea of constellations would survive mankind's discovery of a space travel method that allows for peeking past interstellar obstructions. Once we start looking from vantage points other than Sol, constellations are more trouble than worth.

That said, Vulcan = 40 Eri is "near-canon", visible in many background graphics and so forth. Vulcan = Epsilon Eri never made it into televised or silver screen Trek.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[All Seeing Eye]

Quickly, lets send a generational ship there pronto!

 

[SonicRanger]

40 Eridani is about 16.5 lightyears away, so ENT established that as Vulcan.

 

[Timo]

...Or at least excluded Epsilon Eridani.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Sheliak]

NASA couldn't find a needle in a haystack.

 

[Lonemagpie]

Which one is 16 light years away? That distance was stated in Enterprise, I think the one when Trip visited Vulcan with T'Pol.

Yep, 40 Eridani A is about 16 and a half LY from Earth, and confirmed as Vulcan in Enterprise season 4's "Home"

 

[Basill]

Epsilon Eridani isn't nearly old enough, or far enough away to be what the fictional Trek universe refers to as the "Vulcan System." It is still a baby by stellar standards and only just under 11 light years distant.

 

[T'Aerwynd]

It's "only" 850 million years old, about a fifth the age of our Sun and I think I read that it's 62 trillion miles away. What interests me most is Eridani's similarities to our own system.

From USA Today:
Jokes Marengo: "Of course there is disagreement among Star Trek fans about whether the planet of Mr. Spock could be at Epsilon Eridani, because it is such a young star and Vulcans are supposed to be an advanced civilization." (Marengo is astronomer Massimo Marengo of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass.)

 

[All Seeing Eye]

It's "only" 850 million years old, about a fifth the age of our Sun and I think I read that it's 62 trillion miles away. What interests me most is Eridani's similarities to our own system.

From USA Today:
Jokes Marengo: "Of course there is disagreement among Star Trek fans about whether the planet of Mr. Spock could be at Epsilon Eridani, because it is such a young star and Vulcans are supposed to be an advanced civilization." (Marengo is astronomer Massimo Marengo of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass.)

right so all civilisations throughout the universe take exactly the same amount of time to evolve and advance technologically.

Wow that article stinks of ignorance.

 

[Timo]

Umm, it's fairly generally agreed that if evolution happened all over again, the result wouldn't be human. So the odds of Vulcans really evolving in our universe are a bit below zero.

However, even if we ignore such biological details as humanlike looks, a case could be made that our evolution represents the shortest possible time for arriving at a civilization even coarsely like ours. Give or take a few hundred million years, make the dinosaurs the first spacefaring species already, whatever; the main issue is that the planets of Epsilon Eri would have enjoyed less than one-fifth the time ours did for evolving any sort of complex life. We're not talking about "exactly", we are talking about assuming that single-celled life suddenly sprouted hands and feet and intelligence and started building a civilization.

Frankly, it's a goddamn miracle (with or without the religious implications) that multicelled life already exists on our planet. Epsilon Eri probably wouldn't have a prayer (ditto) unless perhaps with a highly radioactive crust that boosted the mutation rate to unimaginable heights...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Red Ranger]

Just to clarify a point about humanoid evolution in the ST world. In the TNG ep The Chase, it was established that many worlds in the Milky Way galaxy were "seeded" with the pattern for humanoid evolution by an ancient race of solitary humanoids. Of course, in our universe, probably nothing of the kind exists, so I'm sure if intelligent life has evolved on other worlds -- and the odds favor this -- it will be quite different from us. Still, the news from NASA is exciting! -- RR