Skip to content
Search AI Powered

Latest Stories

'Star Trek' Fans Hail Newly Discovered Exoplanet In the Habitable Zone as a Real Life Planet Vulcan

Live long and prosper.

Just how prophetic was Star Trek? Based on a recent discovery, it seems a lot. Astronomers have recently discovered an exoplanet orbiting 40 Eridani A, a star known to hard-core Star-Trek fans as Spock’s home planet, Vulcan. While no one is actually suggesting that any pointy-eared aliens live on this newly discovered exoplanet, the discovery is undeniably coincidental.


The “Vulcan”-like planet exists just 16 light years away from Earth in the Constellation Reidanus. The planet exists in the habitable zone in the orbit of its host star, designated HD 26965. The habitable zone suggests that it is possible for water to exist in liquid form, which is a necessary component for life to exist.

"It came as a total surprise to us. We did not have an intention to look for Vulcan orbiting HD 26965," admitted Jian Ge, a professor of astronomy at the University of Florida.

Some experts suggest that the existence of life is indeed possible on the exoplanet.

“The orange-tinted HD 26965 is only slightly cooler and slightly less massive than our Sun, is approximately the same age as our Sun, and has a 10.1-year magnetic cycle nearly identical to the Sun’s 11.6-year sunspot cycle. Therefore, HD 26965 may be an ideal host star for an advanced civilization,” says Tennessee State University (TSU) astronomers Matthew Muterspaugh.

The exoplanet is actually twice the size of Earth and is now considered to be the closest “super earth” orbiting a sun-like star. Ge claims that he intends to proposition the International Astronomical Union to officially name the planet Vulcan.

Astronomers believe that the planet is tidally locked to its host star, meaning that one side permanently faces the star, while the other side constantly faces away. As a result, the side facing the star would likely be " too hot to be habitable," said Sara Seager, an astrophysicist.

Ge counters that the dark side of the planet, however, would theoretically be habitable. "On the other hand, life can also survive underground. Like what Star Trek imagines, Vulcans stay in the caves."

Seth Shostak, another astronomer, states that Super-Earths, such as this newly discovered exoplanet, "could very well be the sort of world where life could begin, and perhaps evolve into intelligent beings... But you’ve got to ask yourself — with all the twists and turns of evolutionary history on any planet, how likely is it that a planet 16 light-years away would eventually produce beings that look nearly identical to us, except for ears that would challenge any barber?"

For many hardcore Star Trek fans, the discovery is exciting. "This star can be seen with the naked eye, unlike the host stars of most of the known planets discovered to date. Now anyone can see 40 Eridani on a clear night and be proud to point to Spock's home,” said Bo Ma, a University of Florida postdoctoral student.

For many astronomers, this discovery is just the beginning,

"This discovery demonstrates that fully dedicated telescopes conducting high-cadence, high-precision radial velocity observations in the near future will continue to play a key role in the discovery of more super-Earths and even Earth-like planets in the habitable zones around nearby stars," Ge said.

Who knows how many more potentially habitable worlds are waiting to be discovered?

More from News

Screenshot of Harris Faulkner
Fox News

Fox Host Ripped For Suggesting Trump Tell Anxious '401k People' To Treat Stock Market Tumble Like A Wartime Sacrifice

Fox News host Harris Faulkner received furious criticism on April 1 after suggesting that President Donald Trump, amid stock market tumbles, tell retirees and those worried about losing their retirement savings due to his tariffs that they should treat it like a wartime sacrifice, evoking World War II in response to widespread uncertainty.

Trump has repeatedly referred to April 2 as “Liberation Day,” pledging to impose tariffs—taxes on imports—to reduce U.S. reliance on foreign goods. He has framed these tariffs as “reciprocal,” aiming to match the duties other nations place on American exports.

Keep ReadingShow less
human anatomy figure
Nhia Moua on Unsplash

Doctors Share Things Most Folks Don't Know About The Human Body

The existence of Homo sapiens has been traced back 350,000 years to the late Pleistocene Epoch.

Our current last stop in human evolution is the subspecies Homo sapiens sapiens—modern humans—which would dominate the Holocene Epoch—which began 11,700 years ago—as the last surviving subspecies of Homo sapiens.

Keep ReadingShow less

Most Telling Signs That Someone Is Smarter Than They Let On

Brains and smarts.

Those two things don't always go together.

Keep ReadingShow less
Screenshots of Lauren Boebert and Roger Stone
C-SPAN

Boebert Dragged After Confusing Director Oliver Stone With Roger Stone At JFK Hearing

Colorado Republican Representative Lauren Boebert hit a new low after she attempted to grill director Oliver Stone—the director of the classic 1991 political thriller JFK—on some of his views on the assassination of JFK, only to have colleagues point out that she'd mistaken him for Roger Stone, a former adviser and strategist to President Donald Trump.

The hearing—held in response to last month’s release of 80,000 pages of documents by the Trump administration related to the 1963 assassination—took an awkward turn when more than halfway through the hearing, Boebert brought up a book Roger Stone wrote, which alleges that former President Lyndon B. Johnson played a role in former President John F. Kennedy’s assassination.

Keep ReadingShow less
Amy Schumer
Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images

Amy Schumer Epically Fails To Convince Husband She's Pregnant As April Fools' Prank

Stand up comic Amy Schumer realized that her husband Chris Fischer was no fool.

On April Fool's Day, the Trainwreck star tried to prank her husband by telling him she was pregnant, but he knew better than to fall for it.

Keep ReadingShow less