If you are truly interested in learning more, and you have free time to read a book. I recommend the book 'An Elegant Universe'. It will provide you with some background information on Physics, and it dwells into Quantum Physics as well. You don't need to know much to understand it, and Brian Greene does a terrific job at explaining it.
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Star exhibits strange light patterns which could be a sign of alien activity
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If you are truly interested in learning more, and you have free time to read a book. I recommend the book 'An Elegant Universe'. It will provide you with some background information on Physics, and it dwells into Quantum Physics as well. You don't need to know much to understand it, and Brian Greene does a terrific job at explaining it.
No.
But we also don't care about the anthill when we go to build a parking lot on top of it.
LookAtMeGo
Member
That book was amazing. Fabric of the Cosmos was also a great one from Brian Greene.
Well, it is an absolutely mind-blowing amount of energy. Our Sun outputs 3.8x10^26 Joules of energy every second. For comparison's sake, the combined fossil fuel resources of the Earth only add up to about 3.9x10^22 Joules of energy. So over the course of a day, the Sun generates a billion times as much energy as we will ever be able to extract from fossil fuels on the Earth.
In other words, the amount of energy generated by the Sun is enough that each second it produces enough energy to sustain our world's current energy usage for more than half a million years. Even 22% of that energy is difficult to wrap your mind around. And a Dyson sphere pretty much by definition the most efficient method of harvest energy from a star. You don't even need complete coverage in order to reap massive gains. The Earth after all only receives a tiny fraction of a percent of the light generated by the Sun, yet it is enough to sustain all life as we know it.
Could be that a dyson sphere is required to extract enough energy to create a wormhole for interstellar travel. Conventional space travel without a wormhole is definitely unrealistic if we are correct about the speed of light, there is a lot of space out there.
PantherLotus
Professional Schmuck
1. Person who made the 20% of our sun being covered post: amazing! Even after I posted that pie chart I couldn't really grasp that we are talking about something 100s of Jupiters in size.
2. A lot of people discussing Dyson Spheres and Dyson Rings in a way that suggests they'd be right up next to the star, like Mercury close. I don't think we should limit our thinking -- I always pictured something far far farther out in a star's Oort Cloud range.
3. Speaking of Oort Clouds and Dyson Spheres -- anyone ever thought of pointing out satellites at potentially hospitable planets to see if we can find a cloud of satellites like we have?
4. To the honest fellow asking about why looking at a star is looking into the past, and to the many people finding ever more difficult ways of explaining it: simplify.
Look at the sun. The light from the sun takes 8 minutes to get here. If there was a light switch, and someone turned off the sun, we wouldn't know for 8 minutes. That means the sunlight you feel is 8 minutes old, and the sun you see in the sky is 8 minutes older.
Now imagine a sun much much farther. All the stars in the sky are hundreds and thousands of light years away. Looking at them is literally looking at the past. It's awesome.
2. A lot of people discussing Dyson Spheres and Dyson Rings in a way that suggests they'd be right up next to the star, like Mercury close. I don't think we should limit our thinking -- I always pictured something far far farther out in a star's Oort Cloud range.
3. Speaking of Oort Clouds and Dyson Spheres -- anyone ever thought of pointing out satellites at potentially hospitable planets to see if we can find a cloud of satellites like we have?
4. To the honest fellow asking about why looking at a star is looking into the past, and to the many people finding ever more difficult ways of explaining it: simplify.
Look at the sun. The light from the sun takes 8 minutes to get here. If there was a light switch, and someone turned off the sun, we wouldn't know for 8 minutes. That means the sunlight you feel is 8 minutes old, and the sun you see in the sky is 8 minutes older.
Now imagine a sun much much farther. All the stars in the sky are hundreds and thousands of light years away. Looking at them is literally looking at the past. It's awesome.
Not much point in building it so far away when a close-range sphere would provide exponentially more energy.
I Still struggle with those thinking aliens would be hostile. I can't imagine you get to be an ultra intelligent species by operating In a destructive way on a massive scale. Without a sense of strong empathy and respect for your planet and its balance you'd likely destroy your own species or the planet you are inhabiting long before becoming a galactic force.
Any aliens that would want to destroy us or any other primitive civilization would have to be some real, Grade-A dickheads, since there really is no reason for them to kill anyone. They would have to really go out of their way to fuck our shit up. Almost any species you would encounter would be too far away to pose any real threat, and most importantly, for what possible reason would they want to destroy us, beyond the fact that we simply exist?
I mean, if there was an advanced alien civilization at this star, we clearly pose no threat, and it's likely that they aren't even aware of our existence even if they are there, just due to how primitive our tech is. Any species with a Dyson Swarm wouldn't need any of the resources here, since it would be easier to literally go anywhere else.
Really, once you get to that level of tech(and ignore other possible threats like Beserker probes) there's little need for war, even if you're quite warlike as we are. It serves no purpose whatsoever.
War would really go obsolete at that point, even if such a species were hostile. The only way any species that even was hostile enough to go out of their way to kill each other or any other living species in the galaxy is if they had an undying appetite for murder or an extreme sense of paranoia, and like you said, any species that was too hostile likely wouldn't have been able to build up the civilization needed to become a greater galactic force.
Aliens with the capacity to build and run a Dyson level energy harvesting system has the resources such that they wouldn't really be going out of their way at all. It would take very little energy and technology wise to wipe out all of humanity relative to the resources at their command.
Their culture, reasoning, and rationale would literally be alien to the point where it is difficult to comprehend the options. While you'd hope there is a tendency for intelligence to arrive at a state of enlightened empathy, its probably also possible for advanced civilizations to exist in extremely practical, utilitarian models or something we'd consider somewhat sociopathic.
Wiping out humanity might be considered preventative medicine. Or just collateral damage in their building a Dyson sphere around our own star.
I have no real opinion on what is "likely" in terms of alien attitudes, though I lean heavily optimistic. I'm much more excited about the prospect of discovering alien life at all than I am worried about the possible implications.
On the flip side, an alien civilisation technologically advanced enough to wipe out entire civilisations via geo or solar system engineering would also have the ability and options to avoid doing so.
Our star, for instance, is relatively common. Our solar system is comprised of relatively common resources. There is simply no need for an alien civilisation to enter our system for resources when they are in absolute abundance throughout the galaxy.
Well, unless they want ALL the energy in the galaxy.
Sapiens
Member
Let us hope it isn't some rogue AI then. We'd be finished.
Funyarinpa
Member
I doubt it needs to be an AI to certainly fuck us over.
Whatever it would be, would likely be far removed from our limits of perception and comprehension anyway.
God of Gamblers
Banned
AstroNut325
Member
Pretty sure this has been ruled out as it would have created a unique and recognizable IR signature.
Nothing was ruled out. An exo-comet was the preferred solution.
Yes I did. A planetary collision is mentioned as being a possibility. Though I meant it in a more vague sense that something was broken up or destroyed.
More to the point however, unless we get a signal, its not aliens.
PantherLotus
Professional Schmuck
Yeah I don't know. Can you apply this maxim to any species we know of? Are fire ants protecting their colony from other species they don't understand 'hostile?' Sharks? Bears? Is the frog that zaps the fly that was buzzing around its head hostile?
And frankly, can't we apply the opposite -- open hostility to itself and everything else on the planet -- to the only species we know capable of spaceflight (humanity)?
I don't think there's some magical moment where humanity, or any other space-faring species, suddenly looks up and sees the majesty of their existence and suddenly changes the instincts that got them there.
So while you might very well be correct -- that a civilization / species / culture capable of building a structure so large as to blot out 25% of a star's light might be benevolent -- it's just as likely they could take minute steps that wipe out all of humanity without a second thought, and perhaps they think it a kindness. Or perhaps this civilization isn't a civilization at all and just another species trying to protect itself, impervious to our ideas of hostility.
Like Sagan said, perhaps we should think and watch for a bit and get our bearings before shouting into a jungle we do not understand.
Abstruse Moose
Member
No one is shouting. At least not anymore than usual since we began leaking radio waves into space. All we're doing is listening. We have over a thousand years before evidence of our existence is detectable by any possible civilization orbiting that star.
TOP SHOTTA
Member
This has been a great thread to watch and a fun story to watch develop.
But about "shouting"... when I learned that "we" responded to the Wow! signal 35 years hence by mining Twitter tweets and then beaming 10,000 of them back in the direction from where we heard the 1977 signal I truly felt at the time and now, that it was one of the stupidest and most careless things I've ever heard scientists do (in recent times, of course). Not only did I personally see it as shouting but I imagined it as us fucking mooning and pressing our collective balls against the spaceship window, which my brother told me the kids call a "fruit salad".
Responding to the Wow! signal that way made me so sour on social media in science, even though that is such a huge thing to the sciences at the moment. I still feel like we could have done worse - but we couldn't have done TOO much worse.
Even then there would be more suitable firs choices than Sol.
Jason Wright, the astronomer behind the extraterrestrials theory, has posted a blog post due to the increasing media coverage surrounding his hypothesis.
He also went ahead and published his paper on the subject, despite it not being accepted just yet: http://arxiv.org/abs/1510.04606
He also went ahead and published his paper on the subject, despite it not being accepted just yet: http://arxiv.org/abs/1510.04606
Battersea Power Station
Member
But we are considering it for fun...
More Fun To Compute
Member
Really? Shit, I already launched my recon fleet.
We should build some of those proposed nuclear-bomb powered ships and strap a few really huge nukes to them for when they reach their destination. Though it might take some tens of thousands of years to get there, if there is anything alive back there, then surely they'd notice the arrival of the nukes (hopefully they'd survive the transit and be functional) and send some ships back to investigate.
Omegasquash
Member
Gotta turn everything you can into clickbait, right?
maquiladora
Member
Seth Shostak, Senior Astronomer at the SETI Institute has a blog post about this which mentions a bit about what they are doing at the moment.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/seth-shostak/alien-engineering-around_b_8353762.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/seth-shostak/alien-engineering-around_b_8353762.html
They aren't saying anything that the original article didn't say. The article that started all of this made it pretty clear that there was no solid proof that it was a megastructure. In fact, it even listed out some of the alternatives. So the article you posted doesn't really add much in the way of new or more correct information, it just adds a strong layer of skepticism over the information we already knew. It is also worth pointing out that, despite the headline in the article you linked, the possibility of an alien megastructure has yet to be ruled out by more evidence.
The original article made it pretty clear that it was only a very slim possibility that we might have discovered an alien megastructure. But even though it is just a slim possibility, it is still something exciting.
abstract alien
Member
From what I've read, they (the ones looking into this) put in a request for time with a major telescope to focus it there and take a good look. Should happen next year, if they are granted access. Someone correct me.
It probably is but that would also be exciting. Because it means we can possibly learn something new about our universe.
nelsonroyale
Member
I have no expectations of this. I hope to be surprised
Battersea Power Station
Member
This is the "imagery" used for "looking" at stars far away. Light from there is way too dim to analyze or often even see with the naked eye.
Any deep astronomy done today is basically spectography, i.e. using instruments to study wavelengths and intensity of various electromagnetic radiation.
DragonSworne
Banned
theepicoftyler
Member
Because it's the most unlikely answer. You don't start at a conclusion and work backwards, you work forward from your data.
infinitys_7th
Member
Why is it the most unlikely answer? That seems like an awfully definite, unscientific statement to make.
We have no actual way to determine that it is unlikely, and the answer denoted "likely" is described as contrived, so it is just another possibility that fits the data. We have no way to compare likelihoods, so it is irrational to apply them.
All we can do, with this data, is speculate. Can't get blood from a turnip.
yeah I think so too. we have no idea of whether aliens are likely or not. I think they say so just because saying aliens seem unprofessional or something.
TangoAlphaLima
Member
Okay, but how long would it take in their fastest rocket, hmmmm???
theepicoftyler
Member
It's most unlikely because it's dependent upon the existence of a super advanced intelligent species. Considering we've observed no evidence of life anywhere outside of this planet, that is asking a lot. Other hypothesized causes have roots in observed phenomena.
It's less likely because there is no evidence that life exists anywhere else in the universe, and we can only rely on probability for our speculation on whether it does. Probability isn't evidence. Because of that, I would argue that it is much more likely that our eventual explanation to be one that is not artificial in nature, but of some other naturally occurring phenomenon. It's not the exact same, but the first time we detected pulsars it was thought that we were observing a artificial phenomenon as well.
Could it be super intelligent species? Sure. But that requires a lot more gets than the alternatives.
As a scientist, which I am, Occam's Razor is your best friend. I
The bottleneck is not how fast we think, but how long it takes to implement our ideas in the real world. Science requires experiments and experiments take time to build and run. Thinking about them faster isn't going to change that much.
infinitys_7th
Member
But the exocomet explanation is an admitted contrivance, not an observed phenomenon. It is just a possibility put forward, unless they have cases of similar spectrographic dips known to be caused by exocomets.
Your statement "Other hypothesized causes have roots in observed phenomena," doesn't make a case against the possibility of this being artificial. Life is an observed phenomenon, so how is more of a stretch to say "life elsewhere may have done this" versus "comets elsewhere may have done this"?
For the intermittent pulsar signals, was artificial origin considered definite or just presented as a possibility among others? You are presenting that like it suggests some folly on researchers at the time.
maquiladora
Member
The results of the SETI Institute's analysis of radio emissions from KIC 8462852 will be published in a few weeks.
I wonder what it is that's making them publish analysis so quickly. A need to move onto other stars?
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