Starship Enterprise second in command, Mr Spock, would have been overjoyed to find that earthlings had identified his home planet Vulcan from which he had been estranged.
The exoplanet that featured in Gene Rodenberry’s popular series Star Trek has been described by astronomers as an earth like planet in the constellation Eridanus.
Eridanus has long been a subject of interest for extraterrestrial life since a project Ozma in the 1960s named after the US writer L Frank Baum’s fictional Princess of Oz morphed into SETI with private funding from Steven Spielberg amongst others.
The constellation at the foot of Orion appears like a flowing river in the Southern Hemisphere where it can reportedly be seen around the month of November.
From the time of the Greek astronomer Ptolemy in the second century, Eridanus has inspired myths and legends. For the Babylonians it was the cosmic domain of a Babylonian chief with a reservoir of fresh water below the surface of the Earth.
The newly discovered planet is only 16 light years away and one of Earth’s nearest neighbours.
Moreover, its Sun star named HD 26965 is about the same age as our Sun at 4 billion years – our Sun is 4.6 billion years old.
Professor of Astronomy Jian Ge at the University of Florida who reported the findings in the Monthly Notes of the Royal Astronomical Society wants the exoplanet to be named Vulcan after the Star Trek series.
Co-author with Gregory Henry, Mathew Mutterspaugh of Tennessee University has said the exoplanet was “an ideal host star for an advanced civilisation”.
The astronomers discovered the planet using a telescope in southern Arizona on Mount Lemmon from the Dharma Endowment Foundation.
The planet is described as partially habitable with the possibility of liquid water and an atmosphere.
Mr Spock whose father was a Vulcan and his mother human was depicted as a loyal aide to the Starship Enterprise’s Captain Kirk and his guide and conscience though he found human emotion illogical.
Whether his Vulcan heritage holds sway on this remote superearth remains to be seen.