https://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-news/super-earth-vulcan/ That's right. They just might have found Spock's home world. Hope they actually name it Vulcan and not just 40 Eridani b or something like that.
I suspect it's going to get called Vulcan whether the IAU likes it or not. They got all stuffy when the discovery team that found the dwarf planet that is now known (thanks to IAU) as Eris named it Xena.
40 Eiridani is a triple star system so 40 Eridani A, B and C are already taken as designators of these stars. The planet around 40 Eridani B is reckoned to have a mass about 8.5 times that of Earth so might well have a surface gravity over 2 times greater.
interesting in itself as it won't be a gas giant, most likely but with a larger gravity well it might have cleared enough icy asteroids and comets in its path early in the formation stage that it could have liquid water. It could also have maintained its atmosphere rather than lost much of it, as Mars may have done. Nice candidate for a not-entirely-Earth-like world. or it could be a total hell-hole like Venus. Fascinating to imagine, one way or another.
A Super Earth is not class M. As was posted,it will informally be called Vulcan,unless a smaller planet is discovered.. Insufficient observations to determine temperature,etc.
https://www.sciencealert.com/star-t...i-a-hd-26965-super-earth-dharma-planet-survey The habitable zone of 40 Eridani A is centred around 0.7 AU. The reported distance of 0.225AU from the star does suggest that newly reported planet 40 Eridani A b is likely to be very hot. ETA: The surface gravity g of 40 Eridani b is probably around 4 times that of the Earth assuming double the radius and eight times the mass -- g scales as mass/radius. The orbital and escape velocities Vo and Ve would be twice that of Earth -- Vo and Ve scale as sqrt(mass/distance) to a good approximation where distance ~ radius.
Yeah, the geology is unknown -- it being termed a super-Earth is based on mass alone. There are many examples that have masses up to an arbitrary limit of 10 Earth masses, which is just over half that of ice giants such as Uranus and Neptune. However, the mass of between 8 and 9 times that of Earth is pretty well determined from velocity measurements that have a precision of 1 metre per second -- any statements about the radius and therefore the density and inferred composition are purely guesses in the absence of transit observations that would provide observational evidence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super-Earth
Hello everyone, I was surprised to discover that I could get the full text of the article about the discovery through work. It’s watermarked with the name of my employer, so I’m not even slightly tempted to “break the paywall” and post it. For anyone who has the right subscription (or can afford the outrageous one-off charge), the reference is: Bo Ma et al.: The first super-Earth detection from the high cadence and high radial velocity precision Dharma Planet Survey. MNRAS 480, 2411–2422 (2018) The parameters measured in the article are mass: 8.47 times the mass of the Earth, plus or minus 0.47 (so 8 to 8.94), and a period (orbit or “year”) of 42.38 days, plus or minus 0.01 days (so it’s pretty accurate) and an eccentricity of 0.04 (the eccentricity of the earth’s orbit is 0.0167, so it’s a little more, but not enough to create extreme variations of temperature on the planet). Moving beyond that involves guesswork, and I admit that my guesses aren’t based on any really detailed knowledge. If you assume that the composition of the planet is similar to Earth’s, then my best guess is that the radius of the planet will be just under twice that of the Earth, somewhere between 1.8 and 1.9. That gives a rather savagely high surface gravity of just under 2.5 times the Earth’s. In effect, everything will weigh two and a half times what it does on Earth. That is going to be tough to cope with. I think humans would need powered exoskeletons to move anything more than really short distances. Even if you assume that there are “twin” planets of something like four-and-a-quarter times the mass of Earth in a close orbit around each other (rather like the arrangement in “Yesteryear” or “Star Trek: The Motion Picture”) then the surface gravity is still likely to be around 1.9 times the gravity on Earth. There is also a second article, suggesting a smaller planet: Díaz, Matías R. et al.: The Test Case of HD 26965: Difficulties Disentangling Weak Doppler Signals from Stellar Activity. AJ, 155, 126 (2018) As the title indicates, this wasn’t specifically an attempt to identify an exoplanet, so I’m tempted to think that the 8.45 Earth mass version is possibly closer to the reality than the 6.92, plus or minus 0.79, mass suggested in the second paper. Of course, the exciting thing about this exoplanet is that it’s real. Exactly how big it is and what the surface gravity is like are facts, and eventually we’ll find them out. Timon
Why would anyone name some obscure planet after some old TV show? I'm not really serious, but if the discoverers or namers ever watched Star Trek, they probably facepalmed every time they heard the term ‘class M planet’, and realised it doesn't encompass legitimately habitable planets. They probably wouldn't touch Vulcan with a ten-foot pole, especially after that inner eyelid thing. Then again, that should have pissed biologists more than astronomers, so maybe not. Besides, Dwayne Surak Pride never had any issue without the inner eyelids. Hope they do have inverted skyscrapers lowered from the cliffs there.
Scientists are fans, too. They like to name new planets, new species and other things after favorite musicians, actors and fictional places.