12 Comments
Mar 6Liked by Phil Plait

Well, we learned that Vulcan doesn't exist in *that* particular orbit around 40 Eridani A, but in my humble opinion it's illogical to rule out the existance of Vulcan altogether until the system is thorougly observed by future telescopes. You said it yourself: "Mind you, this doesn’t mean 40 Eridani A doesn’t have planets." This holds the possibility that we still could find Spocks fictional planet in a different orbit than expected. Wouldn't you agree that's logical? Just trying to keep my hopes up here...

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Mar 6Liked by Phil Plait

Ah, but perhaps in the Kelvin Timeline?

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founding
Mar 6Liked by Phil Plait

Oh, dear! Doeds that mean Spock doesn't exist, eether? (or actually, his progenitors?) I'm bummed, I tell you! (Frak, indeed! Or even "Frell"!)

Of course what it *could* mean, is that, since our suppossition that there was a hot Jupiter was wrong, perhaps there IS a smaller, rocky planet that we can't observe, yet, a little hotter than Earth, perhaps closer to a super earth, just lurking there until we can figure out warp drive...

It's all OK, though; I'm more of a Babylon 5 kind of guy!

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Mar 6Liked by Phil Plait

At the risk of bumming you out more, I've a question concerning multi-star systems you may be able to answer with a blog post. The binary has a white dwarf - Eridani 40 B. That implies to me that at some point there was a nova, yes? (This is so stated online as well.) Would that not preclude any possibility of a habitable planet? How protected would an Eridani 40 A planets have been from that nova? It is about 400 AU away, but planetary nebula on average are 60k AU in size. Now, as there is no nebula around 40 Eri, the nova would have happened long, long ago and the system may have moved out of it. (Could that actually have happened?) But would it not have had lasting detrimental affects on the system as a whole? So yeah, that paragraph may take a blog post. LOL.

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Mar 6Liked by Phil Plait

(Sad in Federation Standard)

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Or …

https://youtu.be/z1Pqqf_6J9w

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