Jason Frost
Member
How many years?
What if they already sent us the package and it's already on its way to our home?
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Star exhibits strange light patterns which could be a sign of alien activity
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What if they already sent us the package and it's already on its way to our home?
jakonovski
Member
Crow Pudding
Member
Why everyone assumes we are going to be destroyed by alien civ? I prefer the reality show explanation for our existence...
maquiladora
Member
1480 years old.
1.21Gigawatts
Banned
Yup, what we are detecting right now happened 1480 years ago.
Given we have become much more awesome in the last 1480 years, the aliens probably have become much more awesome, too
Yup, what we are detecting right now happened 1480 years ago.
Given we have become much more awesome in the last 1480 years, the aliens probably have become much more awesome, too
Also, assuming they aren't any more advanced at observing the universe, ie, their own telescopes are still limited by the speed of light, they wouldn't have seen much from Earth 1480 years ago. I think we'd have had enough "unusual activity" ourselves by now for them to notice us, hopefully less than 1480 years from now.
nkarafo
Member
I'd change those 10 people with 2 ants. And the African continent with the whole planet. And they should manage to meet each other within the strict limit of an ant's lifetime.
In fact, time is just as much of a bottleneck as distance. The universe is billions of years old. So not only you have to cover the unimaginable distances somehow, you also need to be lucky enough to co-exist and continue to exist long enough to make it to the meeting point...
More like 2 grains of sand, honestly. The universe is indeed freakin massive.
1.21Gigawatts
Banned
Not necessarily.
We're sending out radio and other signals for barely a century. These signals will take another 1400 years until they reach "their" position, before that there is nothing for "them" to detect.
Telescopes can't be not limited by the speed of light, that would be basically seeing the future. You can only detect whats there and signals are limited by the speed of light.
Unless another intelligence is in a radius of less than 100 light years from us, there is basically no chance they could have possibly taken notice.
Also, we are detecting them by seeing unusual changes in their sun. Afaik we haven't detected any planets yet, have we?
The main reason why scientists don't take alien sightings and stuff like that seriously isn't that they don't believe aliens exists, most do, but that they don't believe that the technology can be so advanced that the distances in space become managable.
The thought that you can be faster than light, your technology just has to be advanced enough is completely unfounded. Its like saying you can move objects with your thoughts, you just have to be smart enough.
We humans are used to distances beeing managable, because thats the case on earth, so we just assume that that can also be the case for space, but that assumption is likely wrong.
Nostremitus
Member
No to mention that our signals are so weak they'd diffuse into the background radiation long before it got anywhere near them...
Askherserenity
Member
If it is some sort of alien life form...what if they're actually trying to communicate using this stars light somehow? What if they're just mass broadcasting some sort of message using light patterns so anything "nearby" can see?
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I need sleep
Nostremitus
Member
Nah, probably Stargate-like replicators reproducing exponentially around their home star, blotting out the light of their creators' planet. Once they completely envelope it, they'll set their sights on other nearby stars.
When stars suddenly start vanishing from the sky, we'll know why.
Probably a natural phenomenon we haven't experienced before, possibly involving dark matter...
1.21Gigawatts
Banned
Why would they do that? Seems like an aweful lot of effort for something useless like sending out a random message into nowhere.
Much more likely that they are building these megastructures around their sun to get their suns energy.
If indeed theres not a natural cause for the dimming.
IceDoesntHelp
Banned
I've always wanted to be an astronaut, or go into space in some way or form.
I'm not smart enough to be an astronaut, or astronomer, and I was born at the wrong time to really go anywhere, so..I guess I'm stuck on this planet doing something else for my life.
I'm not smart enough to be an astronaut, or astronomer, and I was born at the wrong time to really go anywhere, so..I guess I'm stuck on this planet doing something else for my life.
Something something right age for dank memes. Ennui is a bitch friend. I completely understand.
Forerunner
Member
I am the same way. I took one class of astronomy and I was like nope! It's just not for me. However, I love space, it's just so intriguing. It sucks to think that maybe in a few hundred years space travel will be common place and here I am in 2016 with Trump...
Captain Smoker
Member
That makes no sense since you obviously need intelligence to create space travelling devices.
They wont create a rocket or space ship by random / or because it's an evolutionary process.
Therefore they need tools (science / understanding of the universe) to come up with this.
Not if it was a life form that could exist in a vacuum. Silicon based space fungus that only needs light energy to thrive.
Captain Smoker
Member
The key problem is that there is no scientific evidence that such a life form should / could exist. (I know that Silicon is discussed as an alternative to Carbon-based life)
Furthermore, if it's a space fungus like you described it, it's just a thing which is randomly roaming through the universe with no specific goal.
Edit: And which would die in interstellar travel because it obviously needs light.
It would probably die as soon as it's out of it's solar system.
Kai Dracon
Writing a dinosaur space opera symphony
In the science fiction novel Second Genesis, a form of humans encounter, spoilers,
The hypothetical danger from alien intelligence is whether that intelligence is structurally capable of recognizing you as sentient, even if it sees evidence such as artificial structures you've created. Or perhaps the alien intelligence is literally incapable of caring about the existence of other life. It won't try to harm you on purpose, but if you're in its way, it will just mow the grass.
Put shortly, hope that any intelligences you encounter in the universe are the touchy feely types. Who succeeded because their species selected for cooperation with other life during their formative phase. Turning it around, the fact that humans project themselves onto other creatures, seeing themselves in non-human things, may be the most important human trait for preventing other intelligent life from seeing humanity as a potential threat, someday.
a civilization of intelligent insect which are capable of creating spacecraft. But they are only fully sentient when interacting with members of their own hives. They are incapable of seeing other animate life as anything but food sources, due to the structure of their brains. They didn't need to develop empathy for other life as they evolved, in order to become a dominate force in their environment.
The hypothetical danger from alien intelligence is whether that intelligence is structurally capable of recognizing you as sentient, even if it sees evidence such as artificial structures you've created. Or perhaps the alien intelligence is literally incapable of caring about the existence of other life. It won't try to harm you on purpose, but if you're in its way, it will just mow the grass.
Put shortly, hope that any intelligences you encounter in the universe are the touchy feely types. Who succeeded because their species selected for cooperation with other life during their formative phase. Turning it around, the fact that humans project themselves onto other creatures, seeing themselves in non-human things, may be the most important human trait for preventing other intelligent life from seeing humanity as a potential threat, someday.
-Plasma Reus-
Service guarantees member status
This is my favourite thread on the internet. What one poster said a few pages ago is crazy and I never thought of it. What if this star dimming mechanism is a form of communication? All intelligent form of life would understand that stars do not dim by themselves in such irregular fashion. All another form of life has to do to communicate its existence is to do this kind of thing.
Subpar Spatula
Banned
It's quite possible that there are intelligent civilizations out there but hypothetical modes of transportation and communication aren't actually possible so every one stays in their small solar system unable to reach anyone.
Subpar Spatula
Banned
It's not a great way of communication due to, ya know, the whole they'll see responses to it about 1,000 years or longer. If they had space magic similar to dimming a star then they could probably have enough energy to make wormholes but then again traveling long distances does cause a lot of problems with civilizations.
Any alien civilization technologically sufficient to attack us, literally had no reason to.
We'll be like ants to them. Further, any and all resources they'd want would be easily taken from space, not at the bottom of a pain in the ass gravity well like earth. There's more water in the dirt cloud than in all the inner solar system combined. There more gold in the asteroid belt than earth, and one asteroid would have more platinum than everything humans have cobbled together in generations. Even our sun is pretty average and inconsequential. Life would be the only interesting thing, but once you have two as a sample size (exosolar), the Drake equation explodes into billions of civilizations.
Although I suppose we should be fearful of Alien junior deciding to fry us with his 2 billion kilometer gamma ray magnifying lens that auntie alien gave him for his centennial.
If they can harvest the materials for and build a structure big enough for that, I assume it would only require just a bit more patience to just build it beyond the orbit of the habitable planet, and then you've got no problem. It would probably be trivial to just put it inside the orbit and make sure it never obstructs the planet's exposure to the star either.
QuantumZebra
Member
For real.
Anyone going "whelp we haven't seen anything yet so...".
Man, we have been around for a gnat's lifespan in galactic terms... and the contact we've attempted likely won't reach any intelligent life for hundreds if not thousands of years.
We're not alone, but will we find out what else is out there in our lifetime?
Probably not.
Harken Raiser
Banned
You assume these creatures feel empathy. What happens if they have no such notion of that or ideas and feelings like compassion or love. For all we know they could be ants that achieved space travel and all we would ever encounter are drones that just see us as meat to eat. While the true intelligence is never actually encountered.
In that case, we fight them with anime waifus in mechs.
EndlessSky
Member
One thing I'm wondering is how did they first notice this abnormal light pattern? Did this just coincidentally happen to a star they were observing, or are they able to actually detect abnormal behavior in any given star that is in the field of view? With the billions of trillions of stars out there, it's insane to me that we notice the change in a single one of them.
It's also far less energy intensive than making a high power laser beam for communication and has fewer directional limitations like beam width.
Ether_Snake
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Well this is a matter of survival. If a species/collective/entity reaches a stage where the risk to its survival is low, the chances of it wiping out other species lessens.
But unless you can survive the big crunch, you've never really assured your survival, so depending on what survival implies we would either be at risk or not. My guess is no advanced intelligence would bother interacting with us unless it was out of some sort of compassion, since we would likely not be a threat nor useful to their survival ends.
TheSecondSpitter
Member
It would be like an invitation but only to more advanced species. Not interested in dealing with the galaxy's riff-raff.
oreomunsta
Banned
What if the star itself is being manipulated to send messages? A lighthouse on a grand scale.
If they start seeing prime numbers being beamed out by this thing like in Contact I'm fucking calling it. It's what we need right now on this shit fucking planet, some hope, some vision, realising there's something bigger out there. Fuck religion, that's gotten us nowhere, only held us back. Time for people to realise there's other people, probably not all that alien to us, out there, somewhere. If they can make it, so can we, but we need to change or they'll be no one left here.
If they start seeing prime numbers being beamed out by this thing like in Contact I'm fucking calling it. It's what we need right now on this shit fucking planet, some hope, some vision, realising there's something bigger out there. Fuck religion, that's gotten us nowhere, only held us back. Time for people to realise there's other people, probably not all that alien to us, out there, somewhere. If they can make it, so can we, but we need to change or they'll be no one left here.
Lol ok I hadn't caught up with the thread, I wasn't the first to propose this (obviously, always behind the curve lol). A vastly technologically advanced civilisation no doubt could influence a star to this degree. I mean why not. The universe is clearly incredibly complex, we're constantly discovering new laws and depths to it all, our modern science has only been working at a serious level for maybe a century and that's likely to be at a baby level next to any civilisation that's lasted longer than us, and we are a young civilisation if you think of the grand timescales of dinosaurs etc.
Lion Heart
Banned
It's nothing.gif until proven otherwise. I'm starting to believe we are alone in this gigantic universe which is both depressing and beautiful at the same time. We are special dammit.
Do we even know of any other planets that are habitable temperature wise, let alone having water?
Do we even know of any other planets that are habitable temperature wise, let alone having water?
Badlucktroll
Member
Astronomers are saying that this is literally the strangest star in the universe. they have no idea what the hell is going on. What could it be? Some of the results that came out a few days ago are even fucking weirder.
http://www.sciencealert.com/we-just...-alien-megastructure-star?0_7154510510154068=
They should point a new dedicated space telescope at it. Its entire stellar flux dimmed.
http://www.sciencealert.com/we-just...-alien-megastructure-star?0_7154510510154068=
They should point a new dedicated space telescope at it. Its entire stellar flux dimmed.
HellBlazer
Member
It was noticed in data from the Kepler space telescope, designed to monitor the brightness of the stars in its field of view in order to detect orbiting planets by a tell-tale periodic dimming of luminosity. It was the only star observed that featured such an anomaly, but Kepler was observing a region of the sky that contained "only" 145,000 stars, so that's a tiny fraction of the galaxy.
I know there are several designs that are ready to be built but I don't know if anyone has ponied up the funds.
further reading on the 'fermi paradox'...
http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/fermi-paradox.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox?wprov=sfla1
http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/fermi-paradox.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox?wprov=sfla1
Killer Queen
Banned
So what's the consensus. Is it aliens or is it aliens.
The fact you came up with the idea after no doubt dozens of other posters suggests that any species like us who thinks like us will possibly try the same thing. By which I mean blocking sunlight is a simple idea. And it works across all the wavelengths a star emits in too, so the observer (or its instruments) doesn't need to see in the same spectral range we do.
Some scientists have suggested that communicating in the simple frequences like Hydrogen alpha emissions would also be a sensible idea too. Which would require a more selective blocking filter around a star or a beamed laser which is much more energy intensive and limited to the planets in the range you beam towards. Or it simply becomes too weak if it is an omnidirectional signal.
Stars are handy to use as beacons because they have all the energy you need and all you need to do to make a lighthouse is, as you say, position some objects about it to cause occultation which is not periodical like a planetary transit.
Because its a simple idea it should also be common amongst signalling species, but I guess that's the point I make an assumption about what they would be like so I have to concede that is probably not a fair conclusion.
Using a giant unnatural shape to block off light seems like a pretty good way to communicate
Totally aliens
1. It depends on where in the sequence the message is (if it is deliberate)
2. It depends on what the tempo of the sequence is.
Let's assume the message is caused by large occulting structures. If they're too close to the sun and (as we have observed) effective at blocking a large fraction of radiation, would you risk cutting off sunlight at home for a few days?
If the structures are large and further out in the orbit in an array to ensure observers in all directions might see it, then it could naturally be a long time between occultation events because of orbital distances involved.
Signalling '1234' would require a more directed approach as to where the blocked light is going to be directed. Which would limit the potential number of observers.
Or this.
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