New Planet Could Be Mr. Spock's Star Trek Home World

Turns out Vulcan, Mr. Spock's Star Trek fictional home world, has a real-world counterpart. A new survey has discovered a planet located exactly where Spock's would have been.This all takes a little explaining for those of us who aren't planetary scholars. Back in 1991, Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and three astronomers wrote a letter to Sky & Telescope magazine about where Vulcan might be located."The star around which Vulcan orbits was never identified in the original series or in any of the feature films based on it and so has never been officially established," they wrote. But Roddenberry's group had a candidate in mind. "We prefer the identification of 40 Eridani as Vulcan's sun."The orange dwarf-star 40 Eridani is 4 billion years old, about the same age as our sun, they went on to say. Roddenberry and the astronomers thought that would give an intelligent civilization time to evolve -- and no one has ever denied the intelligence of Vulcans.
Read more here:  CNET