Fascinating: Astronomers discover Vulcan

No one is saying that any pointy-eared aliens live there, but astronomers have discovered an exoplanet orbiting 40 Eridani A, a star known to "Star Trek" fans as the host star of Spock's home planet, Vulcan.

The newfound exoplanet is 16 light-years from Earth in the Constellation Eridanus. It orbits its host star — a sunlike star with the formal designation of HD 26965 — just inside the habitable zone, where water could exist in liquid form and where life as we know it could be possible.

"It came as a total surprise to us," Jian Ge, a professor of astronomy at the University of Florida and co-author of a new paper about the discovery, told NBC News MACH in an email. "We did not have an intention to look for Vulcan orbiting HD 26965."

The exoplanet is about twice the size of Earth and is considered the closest "super-Earth" orbiting a sunlike star. For now, it's known as HD 26965b, in keeping with naming guidelines set forth by the International Astronomical Union. But Ge said he planned to contact the Union to ask that the exoplanet be named Vulcan.​

Astronomers just discovered Spock's home planet, Vulcan

 

The book I'm writing now is a lot about exoplanets. That shit is crazy cool.

There are rogue planets. Like, there are planets that don't orbit a star. They just wander across the galaxy, dark and cold and aimless. There's one where they believe it rains molten iron. An absolutely alien world.

The chances of our being alone are very, very small. There is a star for every grain of sand on Earth. And nearly every star has at least one planet orbiting around it.

Earth is a very special planet, but we can't be that special.

 

D_B. Already posted in the Cool Science Stuff thread:

Cool science stuff

 

Death to running threads. If it’s cool, it deserves its own thread.

 

It's probably on the Cool Science Stuff thread, but there's a paper out there about how while it's unlikely Earth is the only planet in the universe to house intelligent life, it may be equally unlikely that we will ever achieve the ability to contact them or they contact us. The basic premise is that while intelligent life has almost certainly developed independently across various galaxies and millennia, the chances of any civilization technologically advanced enough to reach across the universe to discover other intelligent life before wiping out their own civilizations is infinitesimal.

It's pretty depressing.

 

No, they didn’t, nerds.

That article made me want to throw up at least six different times.

 

Challenge your preconceptions, or they will challenge you.

 

Now when I wrote graffiti my name was Slop
If my rap's soup, my beats is stock
Step from the table when I start to chop
I'm a lumberjack DJ Adrock
If you try to knock me you'll get mocked
I'll stir fry you in my wok
Your knees'll start shakin' and your fingers pop
Like a pinch on the neck of Mr. Spock

Intergalactic, planetary, planetary, intergalactic

 

It's true. The distances in space are mind boggling. The nearest star to us after the sun, Alpha Centauri, would take us 73,000 years to reach with current technology. The next-nearest star is six more light years away. It's really, really far.

 

George McFly is about to have his brain melted down.

 

Let me know when they discover Ork.

 

Last year my kid watched this video in class and showed it to me. I was blown away.