Beam This Up

By Leon Jaroff and Brad Liston/Earth

Trekkie news traveling at warp speed: University of Texas astronomer WILLIAM COCHRAN has discovered a Jupiter-size planet in the same orbit that Star Trek lore says you would find Vulcan, MR. SPOCK'S home world. That would be somewhere orbiting the star Epsilon Eridani, just a hop, skip and parsec from Earth, or 10.5 light-years to be exact.

Epsilon Eridani was never mentioned on the 1960s TV series or in the six movies that featured the science officer played by LEONARD NIMOY--indeed, producer GENE RODDENBERRY said in 1991 that the star he envisioned was 40 Eridani, which is 4 billion years old. Epsilon, he insisted, at about a billion years old, was not old enough for any advanced life-forms to have evolved on its planet, let alone the intelligent, relentlessly logical Vulcans. But Epsilon was the star of choice in at least one Star Trek book, and the Earthling who first made contact with the Vulcans was ZEPHRAIM COCHRANE--just an extra e away from Texas astronomer Cochran. Talk about a mind meld.

--By Leon Jaroff and Brad Liston/Earth