The Death of Vulcan
— Tree of Knowledge (@ToK_ScienceTree) May 29, 2024
Few stories capture the interplay between science and culture as vividly as that of HD 26965 b, initially identified as a potential exoplanet in 2018.
It orbits the star 40 Eridani A, which is also the parent star of the planet Vulcan, the iconic home world… pic.twitter.com/9lWjt4lSBF
Many mourned in 2006 when Pluto was downgraded from a planet to a dwarf planet. But Vulcan's fate is even worse- scientists have determined that the planet probably never existed at all! Mr. Spock would like to have a word, but he is processing the logic of millions of voices suddenly crying out in terror, and were suddenly silenced. Oh, wait, that was Alderaan.
In 2018, scientists detected an exoplanet orbiting the star 40 Eridani A, 16 light years from earth. The planet was designated HD 26965 b, but they soon started calling it Vulcan. In the Star Trek universe, the planet Vulcan revolves around the star 40 Eridani A. The exoplanet described in 2018 was bigger than earth, but smaller than Neptune, and orbited its star every 42 days. Vulcan was never seen, but was detected by the radial velocity method, which measures how stars wobble and extrapolates data about the gravitational body that caused a wobble.
In the six years since the discovery, new equipment has been developed to detect planets wobbling stars in finer detail. A new science paper throws water on the idea of Vulcan as a planet. The new data is is attributed to a flickering of something on the star's surface that occurs every 42 days. In other words, Vulcan is probably an illusion.
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— Miss Cellania (@misscellania) June 2, 2024
At least we still have Vulcan, Alberta. -via Metafilter