Star Trek: Spock's home system is totally a real place

Monday, July 25, 2016, 11:42 AM - The best science fiction is anchored, even if tenuously, in today's reality.

With the latest Star Trek film in theatres, the folks at NASA's Exoplanets Exploration Program have just the tie-in for it: It turns out the iconic Mr. Spock's home star system is absolutely a real place, and it's right in Earth's galactic neighbourhood.

More properly known as 40 Eridani, it's a 'mere' 16.5 light years away (probably not too far at warp speed, but today's technology will get you there in in several thousand years), and it's a fantastical place.

In a feature published last week, NASA says it's a trinary star system, which is to say it features three stars, all of them dwarfs. The main star, 40 Eridani A, would be the mythical Vulcan's primary sun, while the other two, 40 Eridani B and 40 Eridani C, orbit each other.

So Vulcan would have some unbelievable sunsets, putting Tatooine to shame. But while the system is real, we don't know whether Vulcan itself actually is.

“Could there be an Earth-like planet in this system? We have no way of knowing that now,” said Karl Stapelfeldt, chief scientist of NASA’s Exoplanet Exploration Program, said in last week's feature.

NASA says they're working on ways to check in on Earth-like exoplanets in relatively close systems like 40 Eridani, but if there is such a planet there, and its anything like how it looks in the various Star Trek films and series, it's likely near the inner edge of the habitable zone, given its common portrayal as an arid world.

NASA's helpfully made a virtual model of the system, complete with a model of a fictional Vulcan within it. You can play with it here.

SOURCE: NASA Exoplanet Exploration Division