A recent statement from NASA has abruptly excluded HD 26965 b, also known as Vulcan, nearly making the planet of the same name from the Star Trek film series disappear.
Vulcan/HD 26965 b is a super-Earth orbiting the star 40 Eridani A in the 40 Eridani star system, located just over 16 light-years away from us.
Its discovery previously caused quite a stir because it closely resembled the planet Vulcan, which orbits three parent stars and is home to the famous character Spock from the Star Trek series.
However, a team of NASA scientists has recently published a study titled “The Death of Vulcan.”
Vulcan planet as envisioned from previous observational data – (Graphic: NASA).
The new research, led by astronomer Abigail Burrows from Dartmouth College and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, indicates that in the years following Vulcan’s confirmation in 2018, it appeared to be highly unstable.
NASA previously referred to it as the “wobbly super-Earth” because signals suggested that it seemed to be constantly shaking.
The bad news for Star Trek fans comes from a device called NEID, a newly added radial velocity measurement tool at the Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona, USA.
In this case, analyzing signals believed to be from the planet at different wavelengths of light revealed that it might just be the flickering of something on the surface of the star corresponding to a 42-day rotation cycle.
“Something” could simply be convection combined with surface features of the star.
Overall, the Vulcan planet may just be a mirage!
The new statement evokes comparisons to how Vulcan disappeared in the Star Trek film: very abruptly, swallowed by a black hole. The only difference is that what is swallowing it now are humanity’s increasingly advanced observational methods.
Although the death of the planet has garnered significant interest from the scientific community, this discovery is not necessarily bad news.
The methods used by the research team to exclude Vulcan promise clearer observations, distinguishing noise factors when searching for planets orbiting distant stars.
