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[DragonSworne]

Why are we assuming this is a star or something is blocking the star? Maybe the star is the artificial structure and it is periodically shutting off/dimming to recycle it's systems. Nothing is blocking the star, the star is doing it itself.

 

[jem0208]

Exactly.
Yea - they 99% likely dont give a shit about us, and probably know we are here (the pyramids and great wall are older than 1500 yrs and are visible from space).

You’re not talking about the great wall of China are you? Because that’s definitely not visible from space...

 

[QuantumZebra]

Why are we assuming this is a star or something is blocking the star? Maybe the star is the artificial structure and it is periodically shutting off/dimming to recycle it's systems. Nothing is blocking the star, the star is doing it itself.

Not sure if you're joking (I assume so) or theorizing - but the answer is simple: luminosity.

No artificial structure can produce the ungodly energy / light that a star does. If you *did*, then you would have literally just made a star... just an artificial one instead of natural.

 

[Crisco]

Is there some article giving a layman's explanation of the findings in that recent paper? Like "Astronomy for Dummies" level?

 

[spekkeh]

that's the reason this finding is so big

we do know everything that is going on here - we know a star cannot exhibit that sort of dimming without an artificial superstructure revolving around it - as the article said, even a Jupiter-sized object would barely be a blip compared to this dimming.



This is some real shit, yall

Surely dips can be explained, a brown dwarf circling it? It's the rapid decrease in luminosity accompanying it that's weird (then again, which alien lifeform that is so advanced that it can build a dyson sphere would noticeably deplete its own sun?).

Other increasingly exotic explanations that I'm pulling out of my ass and are probably wrong but who knows: a transient black hole that evaporated a lot of mass got caught by the pull of the star and is now slowly feeding on it, the dips are explained either by the black hole, or by the light bending off it and away from us as it passes in front of the star. Or there are two black holes circling each other relatively close by and the gravitational waves are buffeting and dimming the star.

 

[HTupolev]

The scale of the image. We've been blasting radio signal into space for a little over 100 years. Our galaxy is 100,000 light years across. That square should be a chunk that's 1/1000th the size of the diameter of the galaxy in that image. That square is more like 1/8th the diameter in that image. We've not come close to reaching what that image implies.

You're supposed to be looking at the blue dot, not the box. Although, the blue dot is arguably slightly bigger than it should be (but not orders of magnitude).

 

[MacGuffin]

Nm

 

[HStallion]

Why are we assuming this is a star or something is blocking the star? Maybe the star is the artificial structure and it is periodically shutting off/dimming to recycle it's systems. Nothing is blocking the star, the star is doing it itself.

Aliens just trying to give the solar system some mood lighting and save money on the electric bill.

 

[gutshot]

Why are we assuming this is a star or something is blocking the star? Maybe the star is the artificial structure and it is periodically shutting off/dimming to recycle it's systems. Nothing is blocking the star, the star is doing it itself.

Where would an alien civilization get the energy to construct an artificial star? I mean, constructing a Dyson swarm is already super advanced technology but constructing an artificial star? That is like orders of magnitude more advanced.

 

[Pantaghana]

Yea - they 99% likely dont give a shit about us, and probably know we are here (the pyramids and great wall are older than 1500 yrs and are visible from space).

Neither the pyramids nor the Great Wall are visible to astronauts in orbit, let alone from distant space.

And if we are the only other intelligent species for them to discover, I don't care how advanced they are, we would likely fascinate them as hell.

 

[Alexlf]

Why are we assuming this is a star or something is blocking the star? Maybe the star is the artificial structure and it is periodically shutting off/dimming to recycle it's systems. Nothing is blocking the star, the star is doing it itself.

At that point it could be anything, as that would break/change every single model we have in relation to stars and very likely change our view of modern physics. So they are much more anticipating stuff blocking it over it being the star itself.

EDIT: Never mind, this was probably sarcasm I just missed lol

 

[QuantumZebra]

You’re not talking about the great wall of China are you? Because that’s definitely not visible from space...

*Technically* it is, but its not exactly something you can just go to the Moon and see:

http://www.nasa.gov/vision/space/workinginspace/great_wall.html

In that post im also assuming any civilization capable of building a Dyson Swarm is capable of a zoom in photo of a planet.

Surely dips can be explained, a brown dwarf circling it? It's the rapid decrease in luminosity accompanying it that's weird (then again, which alien lifeform that is so advanced that it can build a dyson sphere would noticeably deplete its own sun?).

Other increasingly exotic explanations that I'm pulling out of my ass and are probably wrong but who knows: a transient black hole that evaporated a lot of mass got caught by the pull of the star and is now slowly feeding on it, the dips are explained either by the black hole, or by the light bending off it and away from us. Or there are two black holes circling each other relatively close by and the gravitational waves are buffeting and dimming the star.

They already addressed all the known natural possibilities and none of them worked:

We examine whether the rapid decline could be caused by a cloud of transiting circumstellar material, finding while such a cloud could evade detection in sub-mm observations, the transit ingress and duration cannot be explained by a simple cloud model. Moreover, this model cannot account for the observed longer-term dimming. No known or proposed stellar phenomena can fully explain all aspects of the observed light curve

http://arxiv.org/abs/1608.01316

 

[Fenderputty]

You're supposed to be looking at the blue dot, not the box. Although, the blue dot is arguably slightly bigger than it should be (but not orders of magnitude).

.

Awwwww ... that would make sense. I thought the blue dot represented our planet. My bad. Continue on.

 

[HTupolev]

Radio doesn't travel at the speed of light though.

Radio is light. In the ~vacuum of space, it never travels at any speed other than c.

 

[Smokey]

Nerded out and was fascinated reading about Fermi Paradox and Type I - III civiliAtions

http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/fermi-paradox.html

 

[Tal Shiar Agent]

Where would an alien civilization get the energy to construct an artificial star? I mean, constructing a Dyson swarm is already super advanced technology but constructing an artificial star? That is like orders of magnitude more advanced.

Maybe not. Converting a failed star (a supermassive gas giant) could theoretically be easier than building a Dyson swarm. Unless we are talking about an automated construction device that gets it material directly from the energy of the star, as energy and matter are interchangeable.

 

[DragonSworne]

At that point it could be anything, as that would break/change every single model we have in relation to stars and very likely change our view of modern physics. So they are much more anticipating stuff blocking it over it being the star itself.

EDIT: Never mind, this was probably sarcasm I just missed lol

Don't worry.

Have there been any theories revolving dark matter? Doesn't dark matter not interact with light? Could we have spotted dark matter?

 

[davepoobond]

Radio is light. In the ~vacuum of space, it never travels at any speed other than c.

its funny how the misconception around that is. i thought the same way during high school.

 

[sphinx]

Do we know how near is the artifact blocking the sunlight from the star itself, compared to earth??

if this were our Sun, at what aproximate distance would the blocking thing would be?

around Mercury or farther apart?

 

[HStallion]

Do we know how near is the artifact blocking the sunlight from the star itself, compared to earth??

if this were our Sun, at what aproximate distance would the blocking thing would be?

around Mercury or farther apart?

If it is a dyson sphere, and we don't know of course, it would be fairly close to the sun at least compared to the planets. The farther out you get the even more insanely huge it would grow.

 

[sphinx]

If it is a dyson sphere, and we don't know of course, it would be fairly close to the sun at least compared to the planets. The farther out you get the even more insanely huge it would grow.

I really really doubt that's it.

I think it's something we just haven't seen before.

It's some weird wacky rock formation around the star. How that came to be, we will have to investigate

 

[Orbis]

wouldn't it kind of depressing if we finally found evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence...

and then nothing ever fucking happened because the universe is too big and the distances and times involved make anything other than "huh, I guess there was somebody out there" essentially impossible?

It would be depressing but it's just one of the many depressing answers to the Fermi Paradox. We don't make any kind of contact with intelligent aliens because the distance between stars is the one hurdle that nobody (or very few) can overcome due to the probable energy requirement involved.

Interestingly though, if this is/was an alien civilisation, then the fact that it is so relatively close to us implies though probability that either:
a) Intelligent life is probably quite common in our galaxy and thus the known universe
or
b) This civilisation probably has some sort of link to us. Perhaps they seeded life here.

EDIT: I should add, that this phenomenon is probably very explainable without aliens, we just haven't figured it out yet. It will fascinate for a long time though I feel. Best to keep an open mind as always.

 

[spekkeh]

They already addressed all the known natural possibilities and none of them worked:



http://arxiv.org/abs/1608.01316

They didn't, they just state this matter of factly, after ruling out the idea of a cloud, which seems like a bit of a hasty conclusion. (in fact I find ruling out a cloud without spectometry quite hasty.) There are no known reasons why the star would suddenly deplete by itself, but there surely could be other external possibilities. In any case, nothing about an absence of explanations is actual proof for a Dyson sphere, let's not get ahead of ourselves, this is some level of "you can't explain it ergo God" argumentation.

 

[HStallion]

They didn't, they just state this matter of factly, after ruling out the idea of a cloud, which seems like a bit of a hasty conclusion. (in fact I find ruling out a cloud without spectometry quite hasty.) There are no known reasons why the star would suddenly deplete by itself, but there surely could be other external possibilities. In any case, nothing about an absence of explanations is actual proof for a Dyson sphere, let's not get ahead of ourselves, this is some level of "you can't explain it ergo God" argumentation.

We're speculating. No one is claiming its a Dyson sphere or ring or whatever seriously or anything else because we don't know. I mean we're talking the Fermi Paradox and theoretical alien civilizations.

 

[PantherLotus]

Maybe not. Converting a failed star (a supermassive gas giant) could theoretically be easier than building a Dyson swarm. Unless we are talking about an automated construction device that gets it material directly from the energy of the star, as energy and matter are interchangeable.

Very quickly: a civilization with the power to ignite a failed star wouldn't need the power from a failed star. We can move past this point of it being an artificial star.

 

[spekkeh]

Very quickly: a civilization with the power to ignite a failed star wouldn't need the power from a failed star. We can move past this point of it being an artificial star.

Conversely, I reckon a civilization that would be able to build a structure that eclipses 20-50% of a star (where do you even get all the materials and energy?), would long before have been able to harness nuclear fusion.

We're speculating. No one is claiming its a Dyson sphere or ring or whatever seriously or anything else because we don't know. I mean we're talking the Fermi Paradox and theoretical alien civilizations.

I agree, but QuantumZebra said there was a 51% chance that it was a Dyson swarm, which to me seems like an even bigger stretch than my explanations from my ass.

 

[PantherLotus]

Conversely, I reckon a civilization that would be able to build a structure that eclipses 20-50% of a star (where do you even get all the materials and energy?), would long before have been able to harness nuclear fusion.

... and then wouldn't need to do so on a stellar scale.

 

[HStallion]

Conversely, I reckon a civilization that would be able to build a structure that eclipses 20-50% of a star (where do you even get all the materials and energy?), would long before have been able to harness nuclear fusion.



I agree, but QuantumZebra said there was a 51% chance that it was a Dyson swarm, which to me seems like an even bigger stretch than my explanations from my ass.

Well that's dumb on his part. I think most people are just excited at seeing something totally unexpected and unexplainable, at least at this venture and will most likely remain that way until we get one of those far more advanced and powerful telescopes up into space. I do believe they are building one now?

 

[G.ZZZ]

They didn't, they just state this matter of factly, after ruling out the idea of a cloud, which seems like a bit of a hasty conclusion. (in fact I find ruling out a cloud without spectometry quite hasty.) There are no known reasons why the star would suddenly deplete by itself, but there surely could be other external possibilities. In any case, nothing about an absence of explanations is actual proof for a Dyson sphere, let's not get ahead of ourselves, this is some level of "you can't explain it ergo God" argumentation.

Clouds are not black holes, they still emit light if they absorb light from the star, just they re-emit in a lower frequence. They haven't found any emission in the spectra, which suggest a solid opaque object, like a planet. But no planet or proto-star could be so big to dim the light so much. An amass of planets wouldn't work either, because of the gravity dynamics. A supermassive swarm of comets could sorta work, but the dim seems to be in way too short of a period. It has to be an incredibly strange formation which we have no knowledge of. Natural, or Artificial, who know.

Conversely, I reckon a civilization that would be able to build a structure that eclipses 20-50% of a star (where do you even get all the materials and energy?), would long before have been able to harness nuclear fusion..

Why would an hypotetical civilization advanced enough to build a dyson swarm care about nuclear fusion on a tiny planetary scale? A star is order and order of magnitude more energy than all the amount of hydrogen on a planet converted to nuclear fusion.

 

[Extollere]

Dyson spheres always seems hilariously implausible to me. How huge is our tiny sun compared to the Earth? How fucking massive would the radius of a Dyson sphere around such a typical star be? Would there even be enough materials in one's solar system to stretch that far? How many hundreds or thousands of years would construction take? Would future generations even care about the promises of ancient technology?

I know I'm looking at this through a human lens, and such questions are probably not even applicable given the kinds of crazy differences an advanced alien race might have, but I still can't help feeling like Dyson spheres are the stuff of fantasy.

 

[HStallion]

Dyson spheres always seems hilariously implausible to me. How huge is our tiny sun compared to the Earth? How fucking massive would the radius of a Dyson sphere around such a typical star be? Would there even be enough materials in one's solar system to stretch that far? How many hundreds or thousands of years would construction take? Would future generations even care about the promises of ancient technology?

I know I'm looking at this through a human lens, and such questions are probably not even applicable given the kinds of crazy differences an advanced alien race might have, but I still can't help feeling like Dyson spheres are the stuff of fantasy.

Well unless a species can figure out some kind of Zero Point energy process that just makes energy from nothing or can harness something like Dark Matter, using your own solar systems star is probably the most logical idea.

 

[Shadow Broker]

Has there been a new development? Curious on why the bump.

Opinion

Wildest dream

A Alien Dyson Sphere

Logical Dream

A natural Phenomenon we haven't witness before

Lame Dream

A bunch of shit we've seen before clumped together. Though would be interesting to see why and how all of it got clumped together.

 

[Extollere]

Well unless a species can figure out some kind of Zero Point energy process that just makes energy from nothing or can harness something like Dark Matter, using your own solar systems star is probably the most logical idea.

For sure. I just don't see it being a Dyson sphere, which is a human concept in the first place. I guess in my mind whatever technology a very advanced civilization uses to gather energy from the sun would use far fewer resources, and be incomprehensible to us. Why would super smart aliens use a resource intensive concept that humans thought of?

A quote from the link Smokey posted above sums up my feelings:

A Type II Civilization can harness all of the energy of their host star. Our feeble Type I brains can hardly imagine how someone would do this, but we’ve tried our best, imagining things like a Dyson Sphere.

 

[PantherLotus]

Has there been a new development? Curious on why the bump.

Opinion

Wildest dream

A Alien Dyson Sphere

Logical Dream

A natural Phenomenon we haven't witness before

Lame Dream

A bunch of shit we've seen before clumped together. Though would be interesting to see why and how all of it got clumped together.

Worst Dream

Really Bad Instruments

 

[John Dunbar]

For sure. I just don't see it being a Dyson sphere, which is a human concept in the first place. I guess in my mind whatever technology a very advanced civilization uses to gather energy from the sun would use far fewer resources, and be incomprehensible to us. Why would super smart aliens use a resource intensive concept that humans thought of.

maybe they're not that smart, and way back when they had the same idea as we did but have only "recently" been able to pull it off and went for it.

 

[gutshot]

Has there been a new development? Curious on why the bump.

Opinion

Wildest dream

A Alien Dyson Sphere

Logical Dream

A natural Phenomenon we haven't witness before

Lame Dream

A bunch of shit we've seen before clumped together. Though would be interesting to see why and how all of it got clumped together.

Check the last update in the OP.

 

[HStallion]

For sure. I just don't see it being a Dyson sphere, which is a human concept in the first place. I guess in my mind whatever technology a very advanced civilization uses to gather energy from the sun would use far fewer resources, and be incomprehensible to us. Why would super smart aliens use a resource intensive concept that humans thought of?

A quote from the link Smokey posted above sums up my feelings:

Theoretically a Dyson sphere doesn't have to be a solid sphere but can be millions of smaller satellites surrounding the star that would do the same job without needing to think about the structural integrity of a structure built around a star.

 

[Shadow Broker]

For sure. I just don't see it being a Dyson sphere, which is a human concept in the first place. I guess in my mind whatever technology a very advanced civilization uses to gather energy from the sun would use far fewer resources, and be incomprehensible to us. Why would super smart aliens use a resource intensive concept that humans thought of.

Get what you're saying but.... let's say...

This is a Dyson Sphere.. you think that advance civilization waited billions of years for humans to randomly come up for that concept for them to build it?

No..

They came up with it and call it something else. I think any advance civilization would want to become a solar civilization that takes advantage of all resources in their solar systems and that's where I think coincidences in technology two seperate species that may never meet each other will occur in taking advantage of their home star.

Same theory, different method, and different names. Maybe same results.

 

[Übermatik]

This is my favourite thread to see bumped.

*EDIT* "No known or proposed stellar phenomena can fully explain all aspects of the observed light curve." - hype.

 

[Tal Shiar Agent]

Dyson spheres always seems hilariously implausible to me. How huge is our tiny sun compared to the Earth? How fucking massive would the radius of a Dyson sphere around such a typical star be? Would there even be enough materials in one's solar system to stretch that far? How many hundreds or thousands of years would construction take? Would future generations even care about the promises of ancient technology?

I know I'm looking at this through a human lens, and such questions are probably not even applicable given the kinds of crazy differences an advanced alien race might have, but I still can't help feeling like Dyson spheres are the stuff of fantasy.

An advanced enough culture would only need to build one small module from material. The rest of the sphere or swarm could self-replicate by converting the energy of the star into matter.

 

[eyeball_kid]

I love when scientific observations go from "That's weird" to "We're sure there's some natural phenomenon at work here" to "....No, this is very weird"

The lack of radio signals isn't surprising. I doubt any civilization that has the capability to built giant structures around a star would still be using radio waves for communication.

 

[Extollere]

Theoretically a Dyson sphere doesn't have to be a solid sphere but can be millions of smaller satellites surrounding the star that would do the same job without needing to think about the structural integrity of a structure built around a star.

Then it wouldn't cause the star to dim the way a huge Dyson Sphere would, right? This is the whole reason why I feel it's an extremely implausible answer to say "it's a Dyson Sphere!" whenever we observe strange activity around a star.

Get what you're saying but.... let's say...

This is a Dyson Sphere.. you think that advance civilization waited billions of years for humans to randomly come up for that concept for them to build it?

No..

They came up with it and call it something else. I think any advance civilization would want to become a solar civilization that takes advantage of all resources in their solar systems and that's where I think coincidences in technology two seperate species that may never meet each other will occur in taking advantage of their home star.

Same theory, different method, and different names. Maybe same results.

I didn't mean they would get the idea from humans. I meant why would a smarter civilization (and perhaps a smarter race of beings) be limited by the ideas of a less intelligent race?

 

[Unai]

Someone somewhere had to be. I don't think we are but that has always been a kind of trippy thought, is what if we really are the first batch of cells to actually get this far. At some point some species in the Universe really was the 1st to get there. Kind of a crazy thing to think about

You know, Obliterator, we really are the first of us.

 

[Extollere]

An advanced enough culture would only need to build one small module from material. The rest of the sphere or swarm could self-replicate by converting the energy of the star into matter.

Okay, this is a good post.

 

[QuantumZebra]

Conversely, I reckon a civilization that would be able to build a structure that eclipses 20-50% of a star (where do you even get all the materials and energy?), would long before have been able to harness nuclear fusion.



I agree, but QuantumZebra said there was a 51% chance that it was a Dyson swarm, which to me seems like an even bigger stretch than my explanations from my ass.

The reason I said 51% was simply because in the lack of any other known natural phenomena, the scales tip ever so slightly to an artificial explanation (and the most obvious of those being a Dyson Swarm). I'm not acting like its actually 51%.

Well that's dumb on his part. I think most people are just excited at seeing something totally unexpected and unexplainable, at least at this venture and will most likely remain that way until we get one of those far more advanced and powerful telescopes up into space. I do believe they are building one now?

See above.

Dyson spheres always seems hilariously implausible to me. How huge is our tiny sun compared to the Earth? How fucking massive would the radius of a Dyson sphere around such a typical star be? Would there even be enough materials in one's solar system to stretch that far? How many hundreds or thousands of years would construction take? Would future generations even care about the promises of ancient technology?

I know I'm looking at this through a human lens, and such questions are probably not even applicable given the kinds of crazy differences an advanced alien race might have, but I still can't help feeling like Dyson spheres are the stuff of fantasy.

Dyson spheres/swarms/arrays are the most logical way to harvest incredibly massive amounts of energy, AFAIK.

You know, Obliterator, we really are the first of us.

 

[Blizzard]

Going by averages there should be multiple high level civilizations within our GALAXY not to mention the Universe. And yet, again the galaxy is silent (so far).

There are other high level civilizations. But they are ungodly rare

I'm not up on my galactic/universal science, but has this been proven? I assumed it was just statistically likely.

 

[John Kowalski]

Maybe it's a sentient star.

 

[Shadow Broker]

I didn't mean they would get the idea from humans. I meant why would a smarter civilization (and perhaps a smarter race of beings) be limited to the ideas of a less intelligent race?

Because not everyone is born a Einstein and those who are are limited to the technology of their time.

Every species needs to start somewhere. Scary thought. Let's say this is a Dyson Sphere and let's say this is old technology for this alien species meaning having this thing circle their home star now provides minimal benefits and they don't even up keep it anymore.

I mean that's me blowing alot of smoke out my ass but I don't think any species are born with hardcore advance tech. It takes time and growth to get to the point you are describing and thinking of.

 

[Lovely Salsa]

Wait, so it can be aliens? Boys, we're in for a ride

 

[HStallion]

Maybe it's a sentient star.

Mogo just wants a tan and that's whats causing this.