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Star exhibits strange light patterns which could be a sign of alien activity
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That's the one! Look at the fucking thing, its looks like a death ray built by a super villian!
Of course it seems the US doesn't want to help fund this thing. Seems like it would be under 10 billion to build but of course that's one less destroyer for us to build.
Insane Metal
Member
There's the JWST, the E-ELT European Extreme Large Telescope, the SKA Square Kilometer Array, the GMT - Giant Magellan Telescope etc
A collision event would cause infrared excess, which isn't the case with this star.
captjohnboyd
Member
One step closer to Dyson sphere!! Holllla!!
Joe Shlabotnik
Banned
Whatever is causing the dimming is far, far too large to be a planet.
opticalmace
Member
To be fair, we should at least wait for the latest article to undergo the peer review process before taking it as fact.
Simon Belmont
Banned
Can we even be sure they are related phenomena? Isn't it just as likely that the dimming and occlusion are due to different reasons?
WeAreStarStuff
Member
What a wonderful thread bump.
Badlucktroll
Member
SETI found no artificial signals. People were freaking out back in the day when PULSARs were first discovered. They didn't know wtf they were. I say this star probably has the most comets around any star ever. Just a bunch of comets and asteroids and shit. Maybe a failed solar system. But yes, the updates just get weirder and weirder. What ever happened to people saying the dimming events were shaped like a triangle?
I think its worth it to point a dedicated space telescope at this thing to see whats going on.
I think its worth it to point a dedicated space telescope at this thing to see whats going on.
Ether_Snake
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That's still true.
BTW how come we know it's been dimming for 100 years at least?
Simon Belmont
Banned
I'm just spitballing here, and definitely not a scientist, but what if there was a black hole in an irregular orbit around that star?
It is possible, but it seems highly unlikely that one star would possess two wholely unrealted qualities that have not been seen in any other star. So the odds of them being unrelated are low.
Someone went back and checked through a hundred years' worth of historical star observations. It is possible that the dimming has been occuring for longer than that, I think.
If there was a black hole, we would have detected it by noticing a wobble in the star's movement caused by the black hole's gravity. The Kepler telescope is designed to do that specifically, since it is designed to look for exoplanets that we can't see directly. A black hole is significantly more massive than a planet, and is thus much easier to detect.
Simon Belmont
Banned
The universe is huge, and rare things happen all the time. I'm probably just invoking the anthropic principle here, but it's at least a possibility.
Does the star not have any wobble at all?
Badlucktroll
Member
" I do not see how it is possible for something like 648,000 giant-comets to exist around one star, nor to have their orbits orchestrated so as to all pass in front of the star within the last century. So I take this century-long dimming as a strong argument against the comet-family hypothesis to explain the Kepler dips."
Yikes...
Something unprecedented is happening there.
Its exciting to think that something weird that has never been seen before (like a pulsar for example) is so close to earth, and not in the middle of some galaxy billions of light years away
Yikes...
Something unprecedented is happening there.
Its exciting to think that something weird that has never been seen before (like a pulsar for example) is so close to earth, and not in the middle of some galaxy billions of light years away
forgeforsaken
Member
A negative SETI finding shouldn't rule things out as there are a few things to consider. KIC 8462852 is 1480 ly away, and SETI I believe would fail to detect Earth at greater than 100 ly (or even far less). There's also the factor of catching the other civilization during peak broadcast, which may not be a large window. What I mean by that is as technology evolves so does transmission of information, look at the evolution of broadcast TV, not only moving away from omnidirection broadcasting but also to digital which requires less power so it won't propagate as far. And this all assumes that they have not moved to some kind of post radio communication. Then there's even also the possibility of encryption, where advanced encryption in theory would not be discernible from white noise.
That actually brings up a rather interesting point that's probably been brought up before, but I just noticed. Light dimmed by a massive amount. It would be weird for a hypothetical structure (or anything really) of that size to not produce a wobble. For funsies someone should guess at the structure and materials of an object that could produce that kind of dimming without a tell-tale wobble in the parent star.
Also spitballing.
And a little inebriated.
Lord Panda
The Sea is Always Right
^
A structure that massive would produce a significant and measurable gravitational field?
A structure that massive would produce a significant and measurable gravitational field?
PantherLotus
Professional Schmuck
1. great bump.
2. I'm not saying it's aliens,
3. But if it is, how fucking amazing and scary would it be if the first time we detect intelligent life it might be a type-II civ? I don't know what you all grew up believing would happen with aliens but the popular portrayal has always been a species powerful enough to reach FTL speeds and it just kinda stopped there and went exploring. But a species capable of building a Dyson sphere?
That should stop everyone in their tracks for a long long time.
2. I'm not saying it's aliens,
3. But if it is, how fucking amazing and scary would it be if the first time we detect intelligent life it might be a type-II civ? I don't know what you all grew up believing would happen with aliens but the popular portrayal has always been a species powerful enough to reach FTL speeds and it just kinda stopped there and went exploring. But a species capable of building a Dyson sphere?
That should stop everyone in their tracks for a long long time.
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
Eh, not necessarily. The important thing to remember is that while they're big they're also hollow
Fine Ham Abounds
Member
Nothing better than having no idea what the fuck is going on
I mean, unless this was right next door, then I'd be concerned
Simon Belmont
Banned
But shouldn't the star have a wobble from whatever planet the constructors of said theoretical dyson sphere come from?
Dyson Ring or Islands™. Not O'Neill's I have been reminded.
No observed wobble because the star is the center of mass in a properly built Dyson Object anyway.
Still working out the orbital period of 1,500 days. That's going to win this Ring vs Island™ argument. Going to need more beer.
Definitely aliens though. 100%. The lightweights claiming natural phenomena have been plowed under the table.
BigJonsson
Member
Fine Ham Abounds
Member
Maybe they cannibalized their entire planet to build the Dyson sphere
Simon Belmont
Banned
Where did they live in the interim? Wouldn't the planet start falling out of it's orbit as your consumed its mass? Is there enough mass in an earth sized planet to make such a structure?
Fine Ham Abounds
Member
Beats me, the more I think about this the less comfortable I am with exactly how you acquire resources for such a project
My little ape brain keeps fixating on the prospect of planetary manifest destiny
I wonder if a planet sized debris field could account for these observations, like if two planets collided or something
There is a whole asteroid belt to mine in our own solar system so these hypothetical aliens could have one to mine in their own solar system
Simon Belmont
Banned
But that whole asteroid belt doesn't have enough material to stretch all the way around the sun. If you were to coalesce all of the mass of our asteroid belt together it would be less than half the size of our moon.
Epsilon-delta
Banned
A species capable of building a Dyson sphere far surpasses us in technology and engineering.
To harness energy at that scale is a civilization that should be left alone imo.
I'm fine with SETI doing their best to capture possible radio signals from advanced alien civilizations, but disagree on Active SETI broadcasting our signals out there.
#teamscary
Is this true? Just curious as I thought there was a lot of raw material out there. Planetoids and such
Simon Belmont
Banned
Yep. While there are a few big things floating around in there it's pretty much mostly small stuff that's extremely far away from each other.
Slayer-33
Liverpool-2
Could the material used for the sphere be some super high yield super strong discovery of theirs?
Imagine for the sphere,
Modular design
Ground breaking battery/energy storage technology
Super high yield space grade composite material
Fool proof automated building process
Isn't this what we need?
Imagine for the sphere,
Modular design
Ground breaking battery/energy storage technology
Super high yield space grade composite material
Fool proof automated building process
Isn't this what we need?
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