The Worlds of 40 Eridani
| Zine | |
|---|---|
| Title: | The Worlds of 40 Eridani |
| Publisher: | Society for Earthbound Vulcans |
| Editor(s): | T'Pela |
| Date(s): | June 1977 |
| Fandom: | |
| External Links: | |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
The Worlds of 40 Eridani is a Star Trek: TOS zine by T'Nahi.
The topic is the origins of Vulcans and the 40 Eridani system.
The article "was mathematically extrapolated" from these sources:
- George Abell's Exploration of the Universe
- Stephen Dole's Habitable Planets for Man
- Bruce White's September 1975 article in Scientific American
About
From the title page:
A Warder-Liege Compact Unit Published by The Society for Earthbound Vulcans. Edited by Head Elder T'Pela. Approved by the Council of Elders.
This publication is protected under a copyright of honour, meaning that the SEV have faith that any and all who read this publication will have the integrity not to use any portion of this material as their own.
This publication is a purely non-profit venture; no infringement of the copyright law is intended.
Introduction
I first took the unusual view that Vulcans did not evolve on Vulcan when I encountered the astronomical data on the 40 Eridani stars. One star was a tiny red dwarf that, according to Dole, was too small to have sizable planets. The second star was a white dwarf which, sometime in the near past, had turned into a red giant (expanding it's girth several times it's normal size) which would have destroyed it’s nearest planets and wrecked (if not physically, then ecologically) the other planets in it's system. The third star seemed a likely candidate, but when it was younger any planet at the position of present-day Vulcan would have been too hot; yet it was not hot enough to warm the next nearest planet for the development of humanoid life. The only logical answer seemed to be that Vulcans had moved to Vulcan from another planet.
This idea was confirmed by several observations. For one thing, Vulcan has no large oceans, and an organism that is over 80% water would not evolve in a desert. Nor did Vulcan have large seas that dried up, for the planet became cooler rather than hotter. The shaggy sehlat, for example, a creature from a cooler world with it's furry coat and small ears (heat retaining mechanisms; not adjustments for a hot climate).
Having decided that Vulcans had moved to the planet Vulcan, the next question was: Where did they come from? It is obvious that they did not come from a nearby star; all the nearby stars are younger suns than the Eridani trio, and it would make no sense to move from a dying star to another dying star, especially when there are so many other young suns (including Terra's Sol) in the vicinity. Therefore, it seemed most likely that they came from another planet in the Eridanus star system. Since the red dwarf would not be able to have a planet of sufficient size and warmth for Vulcans to have evolved upon, the only candidate was the cold white dwarf.
Vulcans, then, evolved upon Khairt when the B sun was in it's [sic] prime a golden star like Sol, warming a large Earth-like planet. About two million years ago, the sun entered the red phase and began to proceed to a red giant. The people, unprepared for a long space voyage to the nearest suns, fled en masse to the nearest planets and began the complex task of eco-engineering the nearest thing they had to a habitable planet (i.e, Vulcan.).
Vulcan, however, was a hostile planet, and only a few areas were at first suitable for habitation. Wars broke out over who had the rights to these areas; the ancestors of the present-day Vulcans won the battle; the the ancestors of the Romulans lost and started a long and dangerous journey to a new home.
