 Astronomers have checked out Mr Spock’s home star and made a profound finding about the universe, they revealed tonight.
They used the Hubble space telescope to gain proof that planets form from disks of dust and gas circling stars. The scientists’ target was Epsilon Eridani, a star only ten and a half light-years away from Earth. It is considered by Star Trek fans to be the location for Spock’s planet, Vulcan. Before now, astronomers had discovered more than 200 planets outside our own solar system. They had also detected disks of debris orbiting other stars. However, they had never observed a planet and a disk of debris around the same star. Now an international team led by the University of Austin, Texas, has found a planet orbiting Epsilon Eridani that is exactly lined up with a disk of dust and gas. Scientists have long believed that planets form from such dust disks. Philosopher Immanuel Kant first proposed the idea more than 200 years ago. Our own Sun’s debris disk dissipated long ago because it is a middle-aged star, around 4.5 billion years old. Epsilon Eridani still has its disk because it is young, only 800 million years old. The Hubble observations reveal that the star’s planet is 1.5 times the size of our own biggest planet, Jupiter, and orbits once every 6.9 years. The planet’s presence was revealed by a slight wobble in the star’s light. Astronomers say no Vulcan or any other alien could live on the giant planet because it is made up of gas. |