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[Tal Shiar Agent]

Get these rational theories outta here. It's obviously aliens.

Spoiler

;-)

How would a non-spherical star even work? Doesn't gravity force matter above a certain mass into a sphere?

 

[Sapiens]

Or one day we'll find a big alien space mirror and we'll be able to study earth's history through an earth telescope.

Woah. Awesome.

 

[Graphics Horse]

How would a non-spherical star even work? Doesn't gravity force matter above a certain mass into a sphere?

They're still spheroid, I think, just streched out, it's called gravity darkening and causes a pole or both poles to be brighter than the middle. On a normal star brightness is the same anywhere across the visible disc.

 

[oreomunsta]

If wormholes exist, FTL communication from the perspective of the universe outside the wormhole can be achieved.

Open a wormhole between points A and B 1 LY apart and send a radio burst through it from A to B. If the radio burst takes less than one year to pass through the wormhole from A to B, from a practical engineering viewpoint FTL has occurred. Has it really occurred? Not really, but it certainly appears that way as the burst has gone 1 LY in less than 1 year's time.

It's like entropic forces - it's not exactly what is happening, but it may as well be if you are trying to build something. Hydrophilic and hydrophobic are great tools for looking at the world, but they are not exactly accurate.

Wormholes are also theoretically possible, therefore this sort of FTL is theoretically possible as well.

This still isn't FTL travel, though. You aren't going faster than light. You're just reaching a destination before light by reducing your path from A to B. A wormhole bends physical space through a higher dimension, so your distance is reduced.

 

[WordAssassin]

If we're invoking fantasy, why don't they just use the fairy express?

First off, it's sci-fi, not fantasy.

Second, we're talking fringe science, which is stuff that's theoretically possible to do, we just can't currently for one reason or another (tech, energy, understanding, whatever)

If life on another planet started even just 100 years before life on ours did, they would be at a huge technological advantage over us. I think it's super short sighted and more than a little condescending to imply that something like a Dyson Swarm or even worm holes are some kind of impossible things that can't, don't, or won't ever exist, especially if we're talking about a civilization with a head start on ours. As many have pointed out already, humanity could start building a Dyson Swarm right now today with our current level of tech, There's no reason to act like it's some kind of silly fantastical dream.

 

[infinitys_7th]

This still isn't FTL travel, though. You aren't going faster than light. You're just reaching a destination before light by reducing your path from A to B. A wormhole bends physical space through a higher dimension, so your distance is reduced.

If I have a problem of getting a signal 1 LY away in less than 1 year, then if I solve that I have overcome the impossibility of FTL travel. Sure, I warped space so that through the wormhole the signal only travels a millimeter or something (not my field), but I still got the signal 1 LY away in a fraction of the time.

FTL, but not FTL, but may as well be FTL. Science has a lot of those, as I mentioned with hydroponic and hydrophilic forces.

 

[Crispy75]

Yes, you could see people (drones?) working on it, as they were 1480 years ago.

In theory (ok guys I'm really gonna push it here), if we could create a big enough wormhole, and had access to a big enough telescope that we could get through that wormhole, we could go 2016 light years away, observe the earth from there and potentially see Jesus himself.

I'm not even sure a type-2 civ would be able to do this, but in theory... it's possible.

We can kind of do this today. When we see a supernova happen, we only ever see the after-effects. We can't watch every star in the sky in real-time, so someone will notice a brightened star and we point all the telescopes at it and get to watch the "boring" bit of the explosion. There only one existing recording of the actual instant of a supernova, and that was a fluke: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SN_2008D

BUT, the light from that detonation goes in all directions, as well as towards us. So if we watch the space around the star, we can see that light interact with interstellar gas/dust, which gives us a little insight into the event that we missed because we weren't looking. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_echo

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_echo

 

[Ferr986]

it probably can't. but a dyson swarm though. we could probably start building one now with our current tech.

yes, maybe you're right. That sounds more doable than a full Dyson Sphere atleast.

 

[oreomunsta]

If I have a problem of getting a signal 1 LY away in less than 1 year, then if I solve that I have overcome the impossibility of FTL travel. Sure, I warped space so that through the wormhole the signal only travels a millimeter or something (not my field), but I still got the signal 1 LY away in a fraction of the time.

FTL, but not FTL, but may as well be FTL. Science has a lot of those, as I mentioned with hydroponic and hydrophilic forces.

I'll have to disagree there, then. It's just bad science to say something travelled faster than light when it really doesn't. It's not even an adequate approximation.

It doesn't appear like FTL in any reference frame. From the observer's frame, they would detect a signal skipping a portion of space entirely, not moving faster than light.

 

[DivineRage002]

I'll have to disagree there, then. It's just bad science to say something travelled faster than light when it really doesn't. It's not even an adequate approximation.

It doesn't appear like FTL in any reference frame. From the observer's frame, they would detect a signal skipping a portion of space entirely, not moving faster than light.

But it will get to it's destination "FTL".

 

[oreomunsta]

But it will get to it's destination "FTL".

Yes, that is true. I know I'm arguing semantics, but I feel that this difference is important seeing as how the speed of light is foundational to our understanding of physics as we know it today

 

[infinitys_7th]

I'll have to disagree there, then. It's just bad science to say something travelled faster than light when it really doesn't. It's not even an adequate approximation.

It doesn't appear like FTL in any reference frame. From the observer's frame, they would detect a signal skipping a portion of space entirely, not moving faster than light.

And I'm looking at it as a problem (v > c) and tool to solve it. Do I understand that the actual v < c? Yes, but I still sent something 1 LY away in less than a year. That's really all I care about. That limit, as a practical matter of why non-seed ship or drone space travel would be impossible, means nothing.

And I see the skip differently. c is a fundamental limit on the propagation of information. To the observer, that skip is very important because it means that information has effectively skipped "backwards" towards them such that they got it before they would have otherwise through artifice.

 

[Muppet of a Man]

I'll meet you in the future past, my friend. Meet you in the future past... That's where we're going to meet.

Haha! That is hilarious.

 

[oreomunsta]

To the observer, that skip is very important because it means that information has effectively skipped "backwards" towards them such that they got it before they would have otherwise through artifice.

Not sure I followed this line of thought. Could you elaborate on this?

 

[RangerBAD]

This is an odd reaction because if nothing else this latest news at least shows the most logical outcome for what is happening is out the window.

Doesn't mean aliens but it also means we really have no fucking clue what's going on with this star.

Maybe its even something crazier than a Class 2 civilization and its a monstrously gigantic alien organism that floats through space eating stars!

Bring it on, giant space bugs!

 

[infinitys_7th]

Not sure I followed this line of thought. Could you elaborate on this?

Suppose you had a pond with three colinear points A, B, and C. Point A lies between B and C, 10 M from each. On the line between A and B are the inlet and outlet of a wormhole, with the inlet 1 m from A and the outlet 1 m from B.

If you drop a rock at A at t=0 s a wave will form and propagate outwards at, say, 1 m/s. That wave should reach B and C at the same time (t=10 s), but because of the wormhole the wave reaches B at t=2 s. Thus you are seeing the effect expected at t=10 s at t=2 s. The effect of the wave reaching B at t=10 sec has effectively jumped backwards in time to t=2 s.

 

[oreomunsta]

Suppose you had a pond with three colinear points A, B, and C. Point A lies between B and C, 10 M from each. On the line between A and B are the inlet and outlet of a wormhole, with the inlet 1 m from A and the outlet 1 m from B.

If you drop a rock at A at t=0 s a wave will form and propagate outwards at, say, 1 m/s. That wave should reach B and C at the same time (t=10 s), but because of the wormhole the wave reaches B at t=2 s. Thus you are seeing the effect expected at t=10 s at t=2 s. The effect of the wave reaching B at t=10 sec has effectively jumped backwards in time to t=2 s.

Hmmmmm, I don't see why you would can that "backwards in time" because the wave got there when it did. If an observer was stationed at B, they would simply observe the wave reaching B before they would have expected it. The logical conclusion, if the observer couldn't watch the wave approach B at all, would be that the wave travelled much faster than anticipated.

 

[Chittagong]

So here is the thing I don't get, if we think of Dyson Spheres.

Imagine Earth is like a pea, and sun is like a basketball. The pea is 30m away from the basketball. Now imagine you were to draw lines from the basketball to every direction. And infinitesimally tiny fraction of those lines hit the pea. In other words, a tiny, tiny fraction of sun's energy even reaches earth.

Mankind's total energy need in our current state of development is 18 TW. The total amount of solar energy reaching earth is 174,000 TW. So even if we could capture all of the tiny fraction of solar energy hitting one planet, we'd have 10,000 times more juice than we do currently. What could we do that we can't do now if we had ten thousand times the available energy at our disposal? It's hard to think of anything that would require that much power.

Now, up the game from there to all of sun's output, a total of 3.8 x 10^26 W, or 380,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 W. That's about a trillion times more that wll the sunlight earth receives in total, and about a quadrillion times more than all of mankind uses currently. What would a civilization do with that amount of energy?

 

[Branduil]

So here is the thing I don't get, if we think of Dyson Spheres.

Imagine Earth is like a pea, and sun is like a basketball. The pea is a football field away from the basketball. Now imagine you were to draw lines from the basketball to every direction. And infinitesimally tiny fraction of those lines hit the pea. In other words, a tiny, tiny fraction of suns energy even reaches earth.

Mankind's total energy need in our current state of development is 18 TW. The total amount of solar energy reaching earth is 174,000 TW. So even if we could capture all of the tiny fraction of solar energy hitting one planet, we'd have 10,000 times more juice than we do currently. What could we do that we can't do now if we had ten thousand times the available energy at our disposal? It's hard to think of anything that would require that much power.

Now, up the game from there to all of sun's output, a total of 3.8 x 10^26 W, or 380,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 W. That's about a trillion times more that wll the sunlight earth receives in total, and about a quadrillion times more than all of mankind uses currently. What would a civilization do with that amount of energy?

Make cell phone batteries that last longer than 5 hours.

 

[Badlucktroll]

So if it is intelligent aliens, ask yourselves these questions.

How old are they? Why did they evolve intelligence? What did they evolve from?

Its said that humans evolved intelligence to hunt. Over time, we got better and better at it. Maybe these guys evolved intelligence to escape acid rain, or to kill each other, or to catch the only food source, which is air borne. It could be anything. Intelligence evolves for a reason. What did they evolve from? They almost certainly evolved from bacteria in a body of water, that eventually walked on land. But what happened after that? This could have happened billions of years before life got a foothold on earth, making them very old.

 

[The Kree]

It's too far away. :\

 

[Tal Shiar Agent]

So here is the thing I don't get, if we think of Dyson Spheres.

Imagine Earth is like a pea, and sun is like a basketball. The pea is 30m away from the basketball. Now imagine you were to draw lines from the basketball to every direction. And infinitesimally tiny fraction of those lines hit the pea. In other words, a tiny, tiny fraction of sun's energy even reaches earth.

Mankind's total energy need in our current state of development is 18 TW. The total amount of solar energy reaching earth is 174,000 TW. So even if we could capture all of the tiny fraction of solar energy hitting one planet, we'd have 10,000 times more juice than we do currently. What could we do that we can't do now if we had ten thousand times the available energy at our disposal? It's hard to think of anything that would require that much power.

Now, up the game from there to all of sun's output, a total of 3.8 x 10^26 W, or 380,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 W. That's about a trillion times more that wll the sunlight earth receives in total, and about a quadrillion times more than all of mankind uses currently. What would a civilization do with that amount of energy?

Destroy 5 other planets.

 

[NinjaTehFish]

So here is the thing I don't get, if we think of Dyson Spheres.

Imagine Earth is like a pea, and sun is like a basketball. The pea is 30m away from the basketball. Now imagine you were to draw lines from the basketball to every direction. And infinitesimally tiny fraction of those lines hit the pea. In other words, a tiny, tiny fraction of sun's energy even reaches earth.

Mankind's total energy need in our current state of development is 18 TW. The total amount of solar energy reaching earth is 174,000 TW. So even if we could capture all of the tiny fraction of solar energy hitting one planet, we'd have 10,000 times more juice than we do currently. What could we do that we can't do now if we had ten thousand times the available energy at our disposal? It's hard to think of anything that would require that much power.

Now, up the game from there to all of sun's output, a total of 3.8 x 10^26 W, or 380,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 W. That's about a trillion times more that wll the sunlight earth receives in total, and about a quadrillion times more than all of mankind uses currently. What would a civilization do with that amount of energy?

There's a mum joke involving vibrators here somewhere.

 

[Badlucktroll]

New article
https://www.newscientist.com/articl...ain-weird-alien-megastructure-star-after-all/

This star got even weirder in the past few days. This is unprecedented.

All we know is, mathematically, the object behaves like a triangle.

 

[unholyrevenger72]

Or one day we'll find a big alien space mirror and we'll be able to study earth's history through an earth telescope.

Isn't that the plot of that Denzel/ Jim Caviezel Movie

 

[Log4Girlz]

Or one day we'll find a big alien space mirror and we'll be able to study earth's history through an earth telescope.

Imagine several, all several light years away from each other. One for each Epoch.

 

[Joey Fox]

So here is the thing I don't get, if we think of Dyson Spheres.

Imagine Earth is like a pea, and sun is like a basketball. The pea is 30m away from the basketball. Now imagine you were to draw lines from the basketball to every direction. And infinitesimally tiny fraction of those lines hit the pea. In other words, a tiny, tiny fraction of sun's energy even reaches earth.

Mankind's total energy need in our current state of development is 18 TW. The total amount of solar energy reaching earth is 174,000 TW. So even if we could capture all of the tiny fraction of solar energy hitting one planet, we'd have 10,000 times more juice than we do currently. What could we do that we can't do now if we had ten thousand times the available energy at our disposal? It's hard to think of anything that would require that much power.

Now, up the game from there to all of sun's output, a total of 3.8 x 10^26 W, or 380,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 W. That's about a trillion times more that wll the sunlight earth receives in total, and about a quadrillion times more than all of mankind uses currently. What would a civilization do with that amount of energy?

Fueling station for the galaxy's warships?

 

[SkyOdin]

So here is the thing I don't get, if we think of Dyson Spheres.

...

What would a civilization do with that amount of energy?

Well, they could be supporting a much, much more populous civilization than ours. The energy could be used for tasks such as rearranging the orbits of planets. Certainly a big possibility is using the energy to send ships out at near-light speeds, a task that demands this scale pf energy.

 

[User 73706]

This is an odd reaction because if nothing else this latest news at least shows the most logical outcome for what is happening is out the window.

Doesn't mean aliens but it also means we really have no fucking clue what's going on with this star.

Maybe its even something crazier than a Class 2 civilization and its a monstrously gigantic alien organism that floats through space eating stars!

What do you think black holes are?

So here is the thing I don't get, if we think of Dyson Spheres.

Imagine Earth is like a pea, and sun is like a basketball. The pea is 30m away from the basketball. Now imagine you were to draw lines from the basketball to every direction. And infinitesimally tiny fraction of those lines hit the pea. In other words, a tiny, tiny fraction of sun's energy even reaches earth.

Mankind's total energy need in our current state of development is 18 TW. The total amount of solar energy reaching earth is 174,000 TW. So even if we could capture all of the tiny fraction of solar energy hitting one planet, we'd have 10,000 times more juice than we do currently. What could we do that we can't do now if we had ten thousand times the available energy at our disposal? It's hard to think of anything that would require that much power.

Now, up the game from there to all of sun's output, a total of 3.8 x 10^26 W, or 380,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 W. That's about a trillion times more that wll the sunlight earth receives in total, and about a quadrillion times more than all of mankind uses currently. What would a civilization do with that amount of energy?

Power a Dyson Sphere

 

[Arkeband]

Fire a laser, out of boredom, at a distant star to provoke bigger aliens to come fight us.

 

[HStallion]

New article
https://www.newscientist.com/articl...ain-weird-alien-megastructure-star-after-all/

This star got even weirder in the past few days. This is unprecedented.

All we know is, mathematically, the object behaves like a triangle.

God just left some pizza out to warm next to the sun.

 

[parmanu]

What if it is an artificial star. /twist

 

[RSTEIN]

So here is the thing I don't get, if we think of Dyson Spheres.

Imagine Earth is like a pea, and sun is like a basketball. The pea is 30m away from the basketball. Now imagine you were to draw lines from the basketball to every direction. And infinitesimally tiny fraction of those lines hit the pea. In other words, a tiny, tiny fraction of sun's energy even reaches earth.

Mankind's total energy need in our current state of development is 18 TW. The total amount of solar energy reaching earth is 174,000 TW. So even if we could capture all of the tiny fraction of solar energy hitting one planet, we'd have 10,000 times more juice than we do currently. What could we do that we can't do now if we had ten thousand times the available energy at our disposal? It's hard to think of anything that would require that much power.

Now, up the game from there to all of sun's output, a total of 3.8 x 10^26 W, or

380,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 W. That's about a trillion times more that wll the sunlight earth receives in total, and about a quadrillion times more than all of mankind uses currently. What would a civilization do with that amount of energy?

That's easy:

 

[Team Filler]

New article
https://www.newscientist.com/articl...ain-weird-alien-megastructure-star-after-all/

This star got even weirder in the past few days. This is unprecedented.

All we know is, mathematically, the object behaves like a triangle.

Those subtitles.

 

[efyu_lemonardo]

weird stuff. wonder if there could be some kind of systematic error that could cause a perceived century long dimming.

 

[gutshot]

weird stuff. wonder if there could be some kind of systematic error that could cause a perceived century long dimming.

I guess we'll know for sure once the paper gets a more thorough review, but the author is quite convinced it is not a measurement error. He measured it both by computer and by eye and came up with the same result. And apparently he is very well respected in the field for doing these types of analyses.

 

[Arkos]

Probably a stupid question, but (how) do we know the obstruction isn't light years away from the star and just happens to be blocking our line of sight?

 

[Crispy75]

Probably a stupid question, but (how) do we know the obstruction isn't light years away from the star and just happens to be blocking our line of sight?

To cause this much dimming, it would have to absolutely collosal.

 

[Log4Girlz]

Probably a stupid question, but (how) do we know the obstruction isn't light years away from the star and just happens to be blocking our line of sight?

Regularity of the dimming

 

[GSG Flash]

Even if the light patterns that the star is exhibiting is not a result of alien activity, the fact that we have a chance to discover something new makes me really excited.

The conclusion that it was just some comet debris around the star was a bummer, but this recent revelation got me excited again

 

[yogloo]

That's easy:

I think you are talking about the game gear or the nomad.

 

[Ms.Galaxy]

So here is the thing I don't get, if we think of Dyson Spheres.

Imagine Earth is like a pea, and sun is like a basketball. The pea is 30m away from the basketball. Now imagine you were to draw lines from the basketball to every direction. And infinitesimally tiny fraction of those lines hit the pea. In other words, a tiny, tiny fraction of sun's energy even reaches earth.

Mankind's total energy need in our current state of development is 18 TW. The total amount of solar energy reaching earth is 174,000 TW. So even if we could capture all of the tiny fraction of solar energy hitting one planet, we'd have 10,000 times more juice than we do currently. What could we do that we can't do now if we had ten thousand times the available energy at our disposal? It's hard to think of anything that would require that much power.

Now, up the game from there to all of sun's output, a total of 3.8 x 10^26 W, or 380,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 W. That's about a trillion times more that wll the sunlight earth receives in total, and about a quadrillion times more than all of mankind uses currently. What would a civilization do with that amount of energy?

 

[CrocMother]

New article
https://www.newscientist.com/articl...ain-weird-alien-megastructure-star-after-all/

This star got even weirder in the past few days. This is unprecedented.

All we know is, mathematically, the object behaves like a triangle.

What about those alien megastructures? Schafer is unconvinced. “The alien-megastructure idea runs wrong with my new observations,” he says, as he thinks even advanced aliens wouldn’t be able to build something capable of covering a fifth of a star in just a century.

Thoughts like this are just baffling to me. You don't think aliens you know nothing about, including if they even exist, have technology capable of that? Based on what?

 

[Wellscha]

SETI should transmit classic cartoons to that star ( like Tom & Jerry or TMNT). If that's not possible, then radio transmit NPR or Jazz.

 

[ersocaster]

This still isn't FTL travel, though. You aren't going faster than light. You're just reaching a destination before light by reducing your path from A to B. A wormhole bends physical space through a higher dimension, so your distance is reduced.

Electron entanglement is FTL, and we are slowly learning how to send information through it.

Edit: Missed the travel part. Can't send people through an electron as far as I know.

 

[3phemeral]

Electron entanglement is FTL, and we are slowly learning how to send information through it.

Edit: Missed the travel part. Can't send people through an electron as far as I know.

Entanglement also stops once the state of one entangled particle is affected, collapsing the wave function and disentangling them.

 

[Simon Belmont]

Electron entanglement is FTL, and we are slowly learning how to send information through it.

Edit: Missed the travel part. Can't send people through an electron as far as I know.

We are absolutely not learning how to send information through entanglement.

 

[Skinpop]

So here is the thing I don't get, if we think of Dyson Spheres.

Imagine Earth is like a pea, and sun is like a basketball. The pea is 30m away from the basketball. Now imagine you were to draw lines from the basketball to every direction. And infinitesimally tiny fraction of those lines hit the pea. In other words, a tiny, tiny fraction of sun's energy even reaches earth.

Mankind's total energy need in our current state of development is 18 TW. The total amount of solar energy reaching earth is 174,000 TW. So even if we could capture all of the tiny fraction of solar energy hitting one planet, we'd have 10,000 times more juice than we do currently. What could we do that we can't do now if we had ten thousand times the available energy at our disposal? It's hard to think of anything that would require that much power.

Now, up the game from there to all of sun's output, a total of 3.8 x 10^26 W, or 380,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 W. That's about a trillion times more that wll the sunlight earth receives in total, and about a quadrillion times more than all of mankind uses currently. What would a civilization do with that amount of energy?

for example: send probes to every system in the galaxy . Terraforming. Possibly transmute energy into matter if that is even possible. power supercomputers.

 

[J-Rod]

You can't send information through entanglement, though. You have no idea what the result will be until you observe it, and observation breaks the entanglement. Those two things together make it impossible to send usable information. I suspect this isn't from a lack of knowledge and is more likely just how the universe is, because it allows for the weirdness of quantum physics and Einstein's principles to both be correct which holds up with what we see in reality.

You could use entanglement to create undefeatable encryption though. Have person A and B hold some entangled particles. Each particle has two possible outcomes that we interpret as a 1 or 0 bit. Person A observes his, collapsing his and person B's into one state or the other. As person A observes each random bit, he then notes if it is the correct bit he wishes to send or the opposite. He can then communicate that note of information to person B through classical means. If the note is intercepted, it is just a string of random bits that can't be deciphered, but put it together with person B's observation (which by itself is also just a random string of bits) and you have the message.

 

[Cosmo Clock 21]

So here is the thing I don't get, if we think of Dyson Spheres.

Imagine Earth is like a pea, and sun is like a basketball. The pea is 30m away from the basketball. Now imagine you were to draw lines from the basketball to every direction. And infinitesimally tiny fraction of those lines hit the pea. In other words, a tiny, tiny fraction of sun's energy even reaches earth.

Mankind's total energy need in our current state of development is 18 TW. The total amount of solar energy reaching earth is 174,000 TW. So even if we could capture all of the tiny fraction of solar energy hitting one planet, we'd have 10,000 times more juice than we do currently. What could we do that we can't do now if we had ten thousand times the available energy at our disposal? It's hard to think of anything that would require that much power.

Now, up the game from there to all of sun's output, a total of 3.8 x 10^26 W, or 380,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 W. That's about a trillion times more that wll the sunlight earth receives in total, and about a quadrillion times more than all of mankind uses currently. What would a civilization do with that amount of energy?

Mine Bitcoin