Vulcan in
Roman Mythology is the son of
Jupiter and
Juno, and husband of Maia
? and
Venus. He was god of
fire and
volcanoes, and the manufacturer of art, arms and armor for gods and heroes. His smithy was believed to be situated underneath [Mount Aetna]
? in
Sicily. At the Vulcanalia festival, which was held on
August 23, fish and small animals were thrown into a fire. Vulcan's analogue in
Greek mythology is the god Hephaestus
?.
At one point it was suspected that there existed a small
planet that
orbited between
Mercury and the
Sun, proposed to explain perturbations in Mercury's orbit from the path predicted by
Classical Mechanics. This hypothetical planet was known as
Vulcan.
Albert Einstein's
Theory of Relativity later explained these perturbations without the need for a third body, however, and so the possible existence of the planet Vulcan was discounted.
The name was later reused for a fictional planet in Star Trek.
The
Vulcan was a British
Royal Air Force jet propelled bomber. Vulcan's were capable of delivering nuclear weapons. A Vulcan featured in the
James Bond film Thunderball.