Star Trek’s Planet Vulcan Found In Real Life
Planet Vulcan is the ancestral home of one of Star Trek’s main characters, Spock. Now, scientists reported that they have finally found the real life version of what was originally a fictional world.
In 1991, Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and three astronomers from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics revealed, through a letter to Sky & Telescope magazine, their preferred choice for planet Vulcan’s location. They identified the most likely candidate for Vulcan’s sun.
Although the star around which Vulcan revolves was not identified in the original series and the feature films that were based on it, two stars have been suggested as likely candidates, namely the stars Epsilon Eridani, and 40 Eridani, also known as star HD 26965.
Roddenberry and the astronomers said that they prefer 40 Eridani, as the host star of Vulcan and explained why. They cited observations suggesting that 40 Eridani is 4 billion years old, which is about the same age as our sun.
