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Researchers discovered alien megastructure?


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a.) What planet?

b.) What light?

c.) Radio signals require a sender. If there is no sender, there are no radio signals.

This is just figuratively speaking. For planet read megastructure. For light read starlight which is being obstructed. For sender read alien in mega structure. Sorry for the obfuscation toast.

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Obfuscation toast is better than no toast at all.

As long as it's buttered, that is.

Harte

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Wouldn't their age of radio have ended millions of years ago, just as ours is now fading away, so that any radio signals would've passed our planet approximately when the dinosaurs were roaming its surface? Also, what they would see of our planet right now is roughly our 6th century so not a whole lot of technology going on, hence, why send any kind of signal? If they are communicating using something like quantum mechanics then we wouldn't have any way of knowing they were saying anything.

@toast: I think this is a "If there were a civilization a that location, then..." type of conversation.

Good points Merc 14. Furthermore it wouldn't be our technology which attracts the aliens attention. A very advanced species looking for other lifeforms in distant planets would be directing their communication towards planets which had the essentials for life eg water, oxygen, climate, a star in just the right position etc. Even We in our rudimentary scientific position can still find out these facts from planets millions of miles away so advanced aliens would fare much better. If there was advanced life out there we should have been bombarded by signals from outer space by now don't you think?

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Personally, I don't think we're at all near to (perhaps not even in our galaxy) other advanced ET civilizations. Remember, we're dealing not only with the vast distance of space but time as well.

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Good points Merc 14. Furthermore it wouldn't be our technology which attracts the aliens attention. A very advanced species looking for other lifeforms in distant planets would be directing their communication towards planets which had the essentials for life eg water, oxygen, climate, a star in just the right position etc. Even We in our rudimentary scientific position can still find out these facts from planets millions of miles away so advanced aliens would fare much better. If there was advanced life out there we should have been bombarded by signals from outer space by now don't you think?

I agree and they'd certainly have much better observational capabilities than us but seeing as they are looking at sixth or seventh century earth with only rudimentary energy production there would be no point sending any signals. Of course maybe they should be sending signals in anticipation of us arriving at the radio age as the signals get here. Certainly an interesting topic though.

As far as being bombarded by signals the general hypothesis is that most civilizations pass through the raw radio phase in a fairly short time and so those signals are actually quite rare. Obviously a hypothesis but the alternative is we are alone in the universe which is not acceptable any longer in my book.

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Personally, I don't think we're at all near to (perhaps not even in our galaxy) other advanced ET civilizations. Remember, we're dealing not only with the vast distance of space but time as well.

I don't know Lilly, I really think that there are other civilizations in our galaxy given all that we have learned in the past decade or so. The Drake equation solutions have totally flipped with Kepler and all the other amazing tools we now have and the discoveries they have made. Fp and Ne hve changed significantly. Who knows but all I can say is how cool is it to be alive while these discoveries are being made?

I remember Apollo 11 but the last decade, in my mind, just seems bigger, exploration-wise. So many changes to our old paradigms. Jacques' link from the planetary society is very humbling and also very sobering when considering the distances between star systems and I have no faith that we have been visited but I do now believe that other civilizations exist somewhere out there in our relatively quiet galaxy.

disclaimer: Have watched Contact at least a dozen times and have read the book two or three times so I am definitely biased. Just sayin'

Edited by Merc14
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The fact that they are 1500 light years from us means it takes 1500 years for any signal they might send us to reach us, and one has to wonder to what end, since it would then take another 1500 years for them to get our response.

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The fact that they are 1500 light years from us means it takes 1500 years for any signal they might send us to reach us, and one has to wonder to what end, since it would then take another 1500 years for them to get our response.

Agreed that it is pointless but we have some innate need to know we are not alone in the universe. That is something you may be very good at dissecting.

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The Kepler Space Telescope observes the recent aftermath of an intruder star disrupting comets in the 'Tabby's Star' system. These disrupted comets give rise to the dimming of the star as they pass in front of it. So goes the favored explanation. It's said that it seems a notable coincidence that the KST should just happen to be observing at the right time to catch such an event.

I tended to think that if this was the case in just one out of 150,000 stars observed, it might not be that remarkable, after all.

I looked further into the Boyajian, et al. paper (Where's the Flux), that's been widely available. The authors have an interesting take on this problem.

They calculate that each star should have around 10,000 (10^4) encounters with intruder stars, over its lifetime, for it to be statistically reasonable for the KST to have observed one at KIC 8462852, in a scant 4 years. That seems a very high number of such encounters.

Is that a reasonable rate for such stellar encounters? Take our own Sun as a ready example. It has a calculated main sequence lifetime of about 13 billion years. 10,000 encounters with intruder stars should occur at an averaged rate of one every 1.3 million years, if my math is correct. In fact, there is no known previous or predicted encounter with an intruder star coming close enough to have a substantial effect on comets, over a span of 20 million years.

It seems in the end, that the coincidence at 'Tabby's Star' may be a little too strained for comfort.

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The Kepler Space Telescope observes the recent aftermath of an intruder star disrupting comets in the 'Tabby's Star' system. These disrupted comets give rise to the dimming of the star as they pass in front of it. So goes the favored explanation. It's said that it seems a notable coincidence that the KST should just happen to be observing at the right time to catch such an event.

I tended to think that if this was the case in just one out of 150,000 stars observed, it might not be that remarkable, after all.

I looked further into the Boyajian, et al. paper (Where's the Flux), that's been widely available. The authors have an interesting take on this problem.

They calculate that each star should have around 10,000 (10^4) encounters with intruder stars, over its lifetime, for it to be statistically reasonable for the KST to have observed one at KIC 8462852, in a scant 4 years. That seems a very high number of such encounters.

Is that a reasonable rate for such stellar encounters? Take our own Sun as a ready example. It has a calculated main sequence lifetime of about 13 billion years. 10,000 encounters with intruder stars should occur at an averaged rate of one every 1.3 million years, if my math is correct. In fact, there is no known previous or predicted encounter with an intruder star coming close enough to have a substantial effect on comets, over a span of 20 million years.

It seems in the end, that the coincidence at 'Tabby's Star' may be a little too strained for comfort.

We probably have to wait until more assets are thrown at the question. Interesting conversations that are fun to deal with though, regardless.

Edited by Merc14
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The Kepler Space Telescope observes the recent aftermath of an intruder star disrupting comets in the 'Tabby's Star' system. These disrupted comets give rise to the dimming of the star as they pass in front of it. So goes the favored explanation. It's said that it seems a notable coincidence that the KST should just happen to be observing at the right time to catch such an event.

I tended to think that if this was the case in just one out of 150,000 stars observed, it might not be that remarkable, after all.

I looked further into the Boyajian, et al. paper (Where's the Flux), that's been widely available. The authors have an interesting take on this problem.

They calculate that each star should have around 10,000 (10^4) encounters with intruder stars, over its lifetime, for it to be statistically reasonable for the KST to have observed one at KIC 8462852, in a scant 4 years. That seems a very high number of such encounters.

Is that a reasonable rate for such stellar encounters? Take our own Sun as a ready example. It has a calculated main sequence lifetime of about 13 billion years. 10,000 encounters with intruder stars should occur at an averaged rate of one every 1.3 million years, if my math is correct. In fact, there is no known previous or predicted encounter with an intruder star coming close enough to have a substantial effect on comets, over a span of 20 million years.

It seems in the end, that the coincidence at 'Tabby's Star' may be a little too strained for comfort.

I haven't read the paper in detail, so maybe I'm missing the mark here, but my immediate reaction was that surely the density of nearby 'problem' stars that are likely to go near enough to cause the effect, is also very likely a constraint on the likelihood of life in that region... So, for us, it may well be that we live in this 'quiet' neighbourhood because of that very fact - if it was a more collision-prone region then we would have been wiped out by the encounters before we could evolve to where we are.

So surely picking our own system (the only one we know has life) as a comparative benchmark is flawed - shouldn't the comparison have been much wider than that?

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I don't believe we know the rate of intruder stars in other star systems, especially one 1500 light years away. Was rather impressed to find that we know as much as we do about this, with respect to our own solar system.

I'm not aware of any data to suggest that star density is higher in the area of Tabby's star, than it is in our own stellar neighborhood. The KST was intended to give a statistical sample of planets throughout the galaxy. Because of this, it was reasonable to select a region that is typical, rather than exceptional. The principle of non-uniqueness of viewpoint suggests that our solar system is typical in the rate of intruding field stars.

It's believed that a star would have to pass quite close to substantially disturb the Oort cloud comets, or it's analog in another star system, ~ 1000 Astronomical Units, or less.

It's been remarked that the WISE survey observations of KIC 8462852, just a few years before the Kepler Space Telescope's, showed no infrared excess. If should have, if there'd been a comet-shattering disruption of sufficient scope to cause the debris to dim this star by up to 22 percent.

If the Tabby's Star disruption occurred in the short time between the WISE and Kepler observations, we literally caught the event within a few years, or less, of its happening . Given the truly immense scale of astrophysical time, with things happening on the scale of millions or billions of years, that seems a very strained coincidence, at any reasonable rate of intruding field stars.

Edited by bison
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Looking carefully over a graph of the light output of Tabby's Star, I think I see a certain regularity to the dips in brightness. In a section of the graph for days 170 through 270, eight nearly regularly spaced dips seem to exist at an average separation of a little over nine days.

I doubt these indicate a planet with a ~ nine day orbit. The sizes and shapes of the dips are quite varied. Further, they aren't seen on the graph before about day 197. It somehow seems unlikely that comet fragments would position themselves in this way.

Merely speculation, of course, but mightn't huge solar collectors be spaced more or less equally, to avoid collisions in space?

A link, below to an article by Dr. Jason Wright, which contains the section of the graph discussed. It's the third graph down from the top of the article.

http://sites.psu.edu/astrowright/2015/10/15/kic-8462852where-the-flux

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The intruder star idea has all kinds of problems with it, not just that it would be such a rare thing that it is surprising it has happened in our galaxy so close to our being here to observe it. The main problem seems to be to get enough cometary material to cause the dimming seen, and to get it all in the formation needed to be periodic.

I think this is a straw people have latched onto in order to avoid saying they have no freakin' idea.

That doesn't mean it's aliens though -- that idea has its own set of problems explaining what we observe too.

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The intruder star idea has all kinds of problems with it, not just that it would be such a rare thing that it is surprising it has happened in our galaxy so close to our being here to observe it. The main problem seems to be to get enough cometary material to cause the dimming seen, and to get it all in the formation needed to be periodic.

I think this is a straw people have latched onto in order to avoid saying they have no freakin' idea.

That doesn't mean it's aliens though -- that idea has its own set of problems explaining what we observe too.

I think it is just a hypothesis that they are exploring alongside many others to explain this anomaly in the data they are seeing. Honestly, Frank, I don't think we will have an answer to this until we have those more powerful telescopes, both earth and space bound, on-line in the early 2020's. Hopefully I am still around then.

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Darrin Bell, author of the popular comic strip Candorville used most of the Sunday, Nov. 8th strip to give a straight outline of what is known about KIC 846 2852. Since Candorville is featured in most large American newspapers, this may be the widest presentation of information on Tabby's Star, yet. For those who did not see the strip, it's linked below:

http://www.gocomics.com/candorville/2015/11/08

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  • 1 month later...

It seems that Tabby's star (KIC 8462852) has a new mystery for us. Observation records for this star, for the years 1890 to 1989, were gone over carefully. It was found that, in those 99 years, the brightness of the star has declined gradually by about 16 percent. This is said to be unprecedented for an F type star on the main sequence, which Tabby's Star is held to be.

Suppose the usual explanation for the sporadic dimming of this star, disrupted comets blocking its light, is extended to this century-long, gradual dimming. The author of the paper, linked below, explains that it would require about 648,000 giant comets, each about 200 kilometers (120 miles) in diameter, to cross in front of this star. The number of comets would presumably have to increase with time, to account for greater dimming.

A gradual increase in dimming could also be in line with our watching a Dyson swarm in the process of being built, with 16 percent more starlight collected, and, so, blocked from our view, in the course of a century. Given the distance of this star, this would have been happening about 1500 years ago.

link, below, to scientific paper on this:

http://arxiv.org/abs/1601.03256

Edited by bison
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It seems that Tabby's star (KIC 8462852) has a new mystery for us....

Should It Be A Dyson Sphere

So let's say, every 100 years the aliens make a 4% progress (should it be a Dyson sphere) and since we are at 20% dimming, then it would take 2,000 more years to finish (if my smarter than a 5th grader math is correct). So the aliens are almost done, unless they did a final push or the halfway point still would make it operational.

I like to imagine that these possible aliens are not only using this for energy but ways to instantly travel across the galaxy by using the Dyson Sphere to shoot objects directly into their star and use the star's central gravity, while stabilizing their star, to create a small and instant black hole to travel through and come out from another star of their choice in our galaxy. They would want to do this to survive their dying star system - But that's just me :D:geek:B)

Edited by dirtierdragoon4
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Should It Be A Dyson Sphere

So let's say, every 100 years the aliens make a 4% progress (should it be a Dyson sphere) and since we are at 20% dimming, then it would take 2,000 more years to finish (if my smarter than a 5th grader math is correct). So the aliens are almost done, unless they did a final push or the halfway point still would make it operational.

I don't think Dyson believed that you could completely encapsulate a star but watching packers at Cards so get your own links

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I don't think Dyson believed that you could completely encapsulate a star but watching packers at Cards so get your own links

Yeah, I was not thinking encapsulation of a star either and did not envision an encapsulated star when commenting. Packers at cards? I googled and it was a guy holding a sign with a misspelled word. Get my own links? You want me to provide sources? Stop expanding on my own comment by editing? What do you want from me??!!! :lol: :lol: Just kidding. :P

Edited by dirtierdragoon4
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All I need to know is once that star is sucked dry into the alien Starkiller....... does its range mean it could hit us, or should I offer Chewie 2% of the overall gross profit, to secure its destruction?

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is Tsoukalos writing for the new scientist now? the article's opening sentence: "The weirdest star in the cosmos just got a lot weirder. And yes, it might be aliens."

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