The traveler was originally a Dyson Sphere, just saying.
What's in that thing? A star for ants?
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Star exhibits strange light patterns which could be a sign of alien activity
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What's in that thing? A star for ants?
neurosisxeno
Member
I think the idea is that it surrounded a star and forced it into a small area--which makes almost no sense.
Maybe a neutron star?
neurosisxeno
Member
Didn't even think of that. I would imagine the EMF and Gravitational Field around that thing would make Neutron Stars nearly impossible, but SCIENCE FICTION MAGIC has it covered.
chromatic9
Member
This theory could be ruled out in 2017 with more data. We don't have a full picture to really rule some planets with large ring systems with odd orbits, not talking about one object easy to track. Could be a few planets with rings with some comets to make it variable. A big clue could be the red dwarf nearby as well.
nkarafo
Member
Couldn't it be more than one objects with consistent orbit but from our point of view we see them passing front of the star and it looks like one inconsistent object?
chicko1983
Member
I think it is more, there was a consistent dimming of the light from the star, too regular to be a star dying off and far to great to be a bunch of objects to obstruct the light (IIRCit was estimated that it would have to be something like 70,000 comets, increasing with a steady rate for it to be a bunch of comets orbiting).
So it was a consistent dimming, which makes it inconsistent with all other known natural phenomena. Thats not to say it isnt some natural phenomena which isnt yet known.
Wolfe
Member
To me that falls back under the warning/beacon/message type thing I was talking about earlier which I could see being a much more plausible explanation that straight up two way communication.
For us it would be. But can we really take for granted that any other civilization would use the same materials or building techniques as we would?
Is this a hint for halo 6??
Halo Wars and Halo 4 both take place inside the Halo universe equivalent of Dyson Spheres for most of the game
Halo Wars ends with
them nuking the star and the sphere implodes
Halo 4 dealt with it
with them later throwing the sphere into another star in Spartan Ops, and also that star explodes
TheSecondSpitter
Member
In order to block 20% of light emitted by that star you would need to commit 750 billion square kilometers of solar panels (or anything else for that matter). You really think this "is a much more plausible explanation"?
Wolfe
Member
You're twisting my words, I said it's a much more plausible explanation when compared to the idea that dimming the light of a star could/would be used for two way communication, as in back and forth "having a conversation" type scenario.
I'm sure it's just some natural phenomenon we have yet to encounter or identify, but the purpose of the thread is to discuss, therefore I'm discussing.
DragonSworne
Banned
Wolfe
Member
Holy shit dude when did I ever say something was blocking it? Lmao you guys need to relax, this is all hypothetical discussion based off what others in the thread have already said.
Should I have just turned to that poster (as we sit together on the internet, posting on NeoGAF) and said "naw sorry bro the star itself is flickering, nothing is obstructing it, your theory fails".
mmh maybe these aliens are from the biggest possible size a living and intelligent thing can be?
maybe 750 billion square Km isnt' that much form them like it's for us?
I was told there's a limit to the size a rock planet can be but I am not sold on that premise.
There are like billions of billions of billions of them everywhere and we've seen like 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001% of all of them, how can we conclude "Rock planets can't possibly be bigger"?
dunno
Lovely Salsa
Banned
But bigger means higher gravity=smaller life forms
It's not because of the sample that we have, but because of gravity. If something starts to get too massive the gravity become so strong that the atoms at its core start to fuse together generating tons of heat and light, becoming basically a star. That's the simplified version of it as I understand.
TheSecondSpitter
Member
750 Billion km^2 = 1,500 x Earth's area.
Really big rocks also tend to hoover up all the local gas, and then you get Jupiter. "Naked" planets that big would have to form in exceptional circumstances where there wasn't much gas to go around.
yeah, didn't think about it, so bigger beings would have to mean smaller planet.
Pluto citizens would be like earth trees
yeah, that's what I was told but that's all very strange. I mean, I'll have to deal with it but I have a hard time coming to terms with the "Black or White" of it, maybe there's some strange mix of planet<->star?
this tabby star, couldn't it be that a part of it hasn't reached that state and it's on it's way there? like a patch of rock on it
no way we humans could make that big a dyson sphere maybe other inteligent species in other systems
Subpar Spatula
Banned
We could. A Dyson Sphere requires a lot (I cannot emphasize that enough) of materials to make. A swarm would require the harvesting of entire planets so they're reduced to rubble. It's a neat science fiction thing but there's easier and more practical ways to get people living in space IE colony clusters that connect like lego.
We also have to remember that this may not exactly be a rare case since a lot of the visible stars we do see aren't exactly documented all that well. The answer is going to be so dull.
It's not practical to communicate or warn anything by this method. This is essentially code-cracking except you're not sure if it's an actual message so there's no starting position other than "the star gets dim". It would be like if traveling to a country you've never been to before and assuming a pile of rocks in a forest is a message for someone.
It's very difficult to leave a message for another civilization because you have to show some intelligence to it. A dimming star means we don't know as much as we think we do. Honestly, it would be better for them to communicate by sending out probes randomly to planets.
Version 3.0
Member
Correct. Although, I think an extremely massive "rock" body wouldn't ignite, or not for long. Stars are fusing hydrogen into helium, and then helium into progressively heavier elements. But the process stops at iron, IIRC. It can't fuse further, and that cessation of fusion is the first step towards a star exploding into a supernova. That may be in just one type of star, don't recall exactly.
Anyway, all that aside, I'm guessing the smarter guys with more data than we have, have not overlooked such things as massive planets or brown dwarfs or whatever; there are ways to detect such massive objects, most notably that they would cause motion of the star itself, much like Jupiter pulls our sun into a small circular motion.
TheSecondSpitter
Member
-- there are no other such phenomena in the immediate vicinity, so this would be this hypothetical civilization's first attempt at a Dyson swarm
-- so where is this hypothetical near K2 civilization sourcing materials and energy from? (plus the energy needs to sustain their population);
-- The undertaking up until this point has required 750 sq km of materials, 1,500 times the area of Earth;
-- in fact, it is more likely not to be their home star......which means (a) they are already space faring (b) they have picked a particularly "bad" star for their first attempt to reach the K2 threshold.
Tal Shiar Agent
Member
They wouldn't necessarily need to source material. If this civilization is sufficiently advanced they likely have the capacity to convert energy into matter. They could start with one small section that automatically builds the rest just using the energy from their star to create the matter.
You are more or less correct. It isn't a matter of type of star, it is a simple matter of nuclear physics. Fusing hydrogen to get helium generates a lot of energy, but fusing larger types of atom produces less and less energy. By the time you reach iron, it takes more energy to fuse the atoms than the fusion process generates. Nuclear fission follows the opposite process: larger atoms successively break down into smaller ones, but produce less and less energy as they get smaller. Iron is again the absolute cut-off point, making it the most stable of all atomic elements. In the long term, most free matter in the universe will eventually become iron. That is why most rocky planets (including the earth) are primarily composed of iron with some nickel.
Yeah, I think when the experts say that they have no explanations for this star's dimming, they are including various theories such as planets being torn apart or brown stars getting in the way.
TheSecondSpitter
Member
I would be more inclined to accept this line of reasoning if they had already reached the K2 threshold.
Lovely Salsa
Banned
I doubt we have a space faring civilization in this galaxy. They'd leave a trace if they were travelling near light speed
Maybe in a galaxy far far away....
Maybe in a galaxy far far away....
We barely even started looking
Lovely Salsa
Banned
Something something xray something
Thats what I got from watching a documentary about the subject. It would be shown in the xrays or something
Even the largest planet we have seen with Kepler would be nowhere near enough to block out this amount of light. It's such a big drop that what ever is causing it would have to be either staggering in size or there's some process going on that we have no idea about within the star itself, which is unlikely seeing as it should be a nice and stable main sequence star.
TheSecondSpitter
Member
The logic here is crude. The fact that something should be at a particular state doesn't prevent it from deviating from such a state, especially when all information is very far from complete.
Tal Shiar Agent
Member
We have no idea what technologies could come with each of our arbitrary levels of stellar development. For all we know energy matter conversion is a relatively early technology.
That's what is so exciting about this star. Even if it's not aliens it will be something new. That's not something that happens every day.
Subpar Spatula
Banned
Aliens could be looking too or there's predatory aliens out there who wait for signals and then kill noobs like us.
Badlucktroll
Member
No matter how advanced they are, they likely evolved because of liquid water, just like us. There, we have something in common with them. What if they are a billion years older than us, and even the dumbest of them are 100s of times smarter than einstein?
Subpar Spatula
Banned
Water isn't the only catalyst for life. We search for water because we know 100% life does tend to gravitate towards it.
TheSecondSpitter
Member
This star is an extremely poor choice for any of this to happen. It will die around the same relative age as when multicellular life was starting on Earth. It's also a lot hotter than our sun.
Badlucktroll
Member
"Triple signal of ‘alien megastructure’ star baffles astronomers"
https://www.newscientist.com/articl...alien-megastructure-star-baffles-astronomers/
:O
KIC 8462852 is an unprecedented anomaly.
https://www.newscientist.com/articl...alien-megastructure-star-baffles-astronomers/
:O
KIC 8462852 is an unprecedented anomaly.
I'm more impressed they were able to raise 100K to purchase time at a major telescopic array.
TheLostBigBoss
Banned
This is really promissing that they havent been able to nail down a resonable explination
So what is if this is in fact an artificial star created by aliens and the dips in brightness are just the parts of the star shut down for regular maintenance by the alien workers working at the star.
superdeluxe
Member
We are going to get some amazing movie scripts/book scripts for this thing aren't we? Amazing stuff going on right now.
It's not crude. We actually have a very good understanding of lots of stellar phenomenon. Main sequence stars have very little variability in their output, they stay stable for several billion years until the slowly and gradually balloon in size to Red giants. Out own sun is a typical main sequence star and we have been observing that for hundreds of years. There's also alpha centuri right near us which contains a main sequence star very similar to ours.
Even the most variable of stars never drop off anywhere near the amount of light this one does. Not even Betelgeuse, a candidate for a supernova explosion in the relatively near future.
As for the other question about planet size, well that's an easy one. There is a size limit to what can be a solid planet, or at least a planet with a solid crust like earth (remember that inside earth there are layers and layers of red hot molten rock and then a solid, largely iron core). Typically that limit is roughly five earth masses. Beyond that the planets start gather so much gas that they become gas giants. Jupiter for example may have a solid core, it would be over a dozen earth masses but compared to the size of jupiter that is nothing.
However while there are gas giants around other stars, many of which are more massive than Jupiter they too have an upper limit in size. Once you get to a certain point the pressure, gravity and heat at the core allows fusion to start and the gas giant becomes a small brown dwarf. These are by far and away the most common stars around.
Still even the largest planet discovered, 12 times the mass of jupiter could never hope to block out the amount of light we are seeing. Mighty jupiter only accounts for 0.001 percent of the mass of the sun. Over 99 percent of the solar system mass is the sun. The sun is that much more massive. It's mindbogglingly huge.
What reason would a civilization need an artificial star?
To impress the lady aliens.
Their original star wasn't bling enough.
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