An artist's depiction of what the newly discovered planet orbiting 40 Eridani A, a star made famous by the series "Star Trek," might look like. Credit: Don Davis Link:1

In the Star Trek history Spock's home was Vulcan and according to the creators this planet was associated with a real star called 40 Eridani A. As natural the scientists started to wonder if a similar planet like the one in Star Trek actually exists or not. Apparently the star hosts at least one planet so we may not be far away of an actual Vulcan but let's get into more details about that exoplanet.

So the planet discovered in 2018 by the Dharma Planet Survey which we gonna dive in and learn about a bit later. The planet is considered a super-Earth as it is approximately twice in size than your Earth,orbiting the star 40 Eridani A or as it's called now by the scientists HD 26965. The orbital period around its Star is 42.4 days which means that a year in Earth is 42.4 days there, while the star is located 16 light years away from us.

If you wanna see a very accurate view of how the planet and its sun look click here and you will be transferred to Nasa's Site

The star is a little bit cooler and smaller that our Sun but they have similar age. Also because it has a similar sunspot pattern with our sun, the scientists are positive this may be a sign that life may lurk there. The only bad news about the planet is that because it is orbiting close to the sun the chances of it being in the habitable zone are small. 

Being in the habitable zone means that liquid water is in the surface of the planet

Dharma Planet Survey

The Dharma Planet Survey is a new study led by the University of Florida along with some astronomers from Tennessee State University and their purpose is actually quite cool. What they aim is to detect close-in low mass planets that are located in nearby solar stars. That way they wanna discover Super Earth Planets like the one we talked in this post that are potentially habitable.

Also if you wonder why they only chose to check and detect planets that are "close" to us, the reason behind this is because they wanna make future space missions to the ones discovered and that way to obtain more accurate info. In other words you can say it's a complete work, as they check for planets nearby that we have the technology to get there and have potential of be habitable!

For more info about the project click here

Sources
https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/newworldsatlas/6351/hd-26965-b/
http://news.ufl.edu/articles/2018/09/exploring-strange-new-worlds-star-trek-planet-vulcan-found.php
https://www.livescience.com/63618-planet-vulcan-real-star-trek-discovery.html
http://kiaa.pku.edu.cn/lunchtalks/2016aprthu-0