NASA announced the death of super-Earth Vulcan, causing a stir

NASA's new statement abruptly ruled out HD 26965 b - also known as Vulcan - roughly the way the Star Trek planet of the same name disappeared.

Planet Vulcan/HD 26965 b is a super-Earth orbiting the star 40 Eridani A in the 3-star cluster 40 Eridani, just over 16 light-years away.

It created a stir when it was discovered because it was too similar to the planet Vulcan with three parent stars, home of the character Spock in the famous Star Trek movie.

But a group of NASA scientists has just published a study with the opening name "Death of Vulcan".

Planet Vulcan as visualized from previous observation data - (Graphic image: NASA).

New research led by astronomer Abigail Burrows from Dartmouth College and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory says that in the several years after Vulcan was confirmed in 2018, it appeared extremely unstable.

NASA once called it a "wobbly super-Earth" because signals showed it seemed like it was constantly shaking.

The new bad news for Star Trek fans comes from a device called NEID , a new radial velocity measuring device recently added to the telescope complex at Kitt Pea National Observatory in the state. Arizona - USA.

In this case, analysis of the supposed planet's signal at different wavelengths of light revealed it may just be a flicker of something on the star's surface coinciding with the 42-day rotation period. .

The "something" could simply be convection associated with features on the star's surface.

Overall, planet Vulcan may just be an illusion planet!

The new statement reminds many people of how Vulcan disappeared in the movie Star Trek: Very suddenly, due to being swallowed by a black hole. The only difference is that what is swallowing it up in the present are humanity's increasingly advanced observation methods.

Although the death of a planet is of great concern to the scientific community, this discovery is not necessarily bad news.

The method the team used to rule out Vulcan promises to yield clearer observations, distinguishing between confounding factors when searching for planets orbiting distant stars.