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Star exhibits strange light patterns which could be a sign of alien activity

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O

Ovid

Member
For those interested, this just popped up on my YouTube feed. It was posted about 45 minutes ago by the SETI Institute.

Frontiers in Artifact SETI: Waste Heat, Alien Megastructures & Tabby's Star
https://youtu.be/XEDR-G2EDRM

As mentioned in the OP, Jason Wright was the one who proposed the alien megastructure theory.
http://sites.psu.edu/astrowright/2015/10/15/kic-8462852wheres-the-flux/

The discussion is a little over an hour long.

Video description
In 1960 two seminal papers in SETI were published, providing two visions for SETI. Giuseppe Cocconi and Philip Morrison’s proposed detecting deliberate radio signals ("communication SETI"), while Freeman Dyson ("artifact SETI"), proposed detecting the inevitable effects of massive energy supplies and artifacts on their surroundings. While communication SETI has now had several career-long practitioners, artifact SETI has, until recently, not been a vibrant field of study.

The launch of the Kepler and WISE satellites have greatly renewed interest in the field, however, and the recent Breakthrough Listen Initiative has provided new motivation for finding good targets for communication SETI. Dr. Wright will discuss the progress of the Ĝ Search for Extraterrestrial Civilizations with Large Energy Supplies, including its justification and motivation, waste heat search strategy and first results, and the framework for a search for megastructures via transit light curves. The last of these led to the identification of KIC 8462852 (a.k.a. "Tabby's Star") as a candidate ETI host. This star, discovered by Boyajian and the Zooniverse Planet Hunters, exhibits several apparently unique and so-far unexplained photometric properties, and continues to confound natural explanation.
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Shadow Broker

Shadow Broker

Banned
qcf x2 said:
Doesn't matter if we're super advanced, it matters if we're unique.



Nature is nature. Some species are going to be brutal, if you accept the likelihood of life elsewhere then you accept that as well.



Yeah, I think that too. I would sorta expect advanced aliens to be more like the ones from Contact or Starmaker than vikings or whatever. I always liked that about Contact and Starmaker.

If we're going full scifi I would be suspicious of whether viruses were alien in origin. Seems like a fantastic thing to engineer to greatly reduce the odds of intelligent competition.



But you're assuming they're on the same technological graph/arc/tree that we are.
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I'm assuming they went threw the same technological graph/tree/arc we're currently in and evolved their technology into something different.

That's a mistake on my part for sure. The reason I made that mistake on purpose is simple.

I don't know how to apply my thoughts on the way they evolved threw time, biology, planet ecosystem, and DNA effected the way they developed their technology to suit the needs of their civilization.
 
K

Koren

Member
karnage10 said:
are you sure you really really want it to be aliens? because if an alien race can build such a thing; what would they do to us if they find us?
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Funnily enough, anomalies in light emitted by distant stars is the beginning of the confederation series of Peter F Hamilton... I won't spoil, but...

I agree with you ^_^
 
Elitist1945

Elitist1945

Member
kiunchbb said:
Ultra high speed galaxy wide wifi.
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airplane-departing.jpeg
 
Slayer-33

Slayer-33

Liverpool-2
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-news/tabbys-star-weird-star-gets-weirder/

Fuuuuuck at the last paragraphs.

The results also put the “comet swarm” scenario to rest. “It was already pretty contrived to invoke a swarm of comets to explain the data,” Boyajian says. “The Montet and Simon results put an additional tremendous strain on it!”

So, if it’s not comets, then what?

“Honestly, I'm all out of good ideas — all of us are,” Boyajian says. “We just need more data at this point!”
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http://earthsky.org/space/tabbys-star-more-weirdness

More
 
K

Katori

Member
So it's 1400 light-years away? No way we can get any kind of signal to it in our lifetimes, then.

So I guess let's keep hoping there's life closer.
 
D

DedValve

Banned
karnage10 said:
are you sure you really really want it to be aliens? because if an alien race can build such a thing; what would they do to us if they find us?
Click to expand...

Even if they wanted to kill us it would take quite a while to get here unless they have reached FTL speeds.

And if they are so advance that they can reach FTL speeds then they probably don't give a fuck about us.

And if they for some reason do give a fuck about Earth they would be looking at it eons ago before civilization so it will be just a green planet.

And if said (at the time) empty green planet has resources they need that they can't produce even though they somehow have FTL speeds then they will take a longass time getting here only to be surprised by humans who probably still can't do shit against them or will.

And if they have been travelling for thousands of years then...idk I give up. Way too many variables.

Nothing will probably want to kill us unless we have some ridiculously rare resource in the grand cosmos like miniature glass figurines or they are really, really, really, really close by that it won't be too much of a hassle to kill us.

This is assuming they aren't space clouds or some other weird space shit that is far more intelligent and sentient than we could ever hope to be and we simply can't recognize them.
 
M

Mr. Poolman

Member
karnage10 said:
are you sure you really really want it to be aliens? because if an alien race can build such a thing; what would they do to us if they find us?
Click to expand...

Maybe they are worried about those weird new neighbors lithning flares and sending radio signals everywhere. Don't they know big space Galactus is out there? keep quiet you shaven monkeys, you will get us both killed!
 
T

TimeEffect

Member
DedValve said:
Even if they wanted to kill us it would take quite a while to get here unless they have reached FTL speeds.

And if they are so advance that they can reach FTL speeds then they probably don't give a fuck about us.

And if they for some reason do give a fuck about Earth they would be looking at it eons ago before civilization so it will be just a green planet.

And if said (at the time) empty green planet has resources they need that they can't produce even though they somehow have FTL speeds then they will take a longass time getting here only to be surprised by humans who probably still can't do shit against them or will.

And if they have been travelling for thousands of years then...idk I give up. Way too many variables.

Nothing will probably want to kill us unless we have some ridiculously rare resource in the grand cosmos like miniature glass figurines or they are really, really, really, really close by that it won't be too much of a hassle to kill us.

This is assuming they aren't space clouds or some other weird space shit that is far more intelligent and sentient than we could ever hope to be and we simply can't recognize them.
Click to expand...

Yeah, unless some alien version of Nazis have dominated the planet, I dont expect any aliens to want to harm us if they are so advanced as to be able to travel space.

Seems we just have to pass the test of working with each other and surviving the planet to get good enough to be so advanced
 
Buggy Loop

Buggy Loop

Gold Member
If its an alien civilisation that is building a Dyson sphere :

a) They assume that there's a possible alpha predator out there killing alien civilisations and want to hide (i.e. remove the star's light, unlikely to be found)

b) They already know there's a predator out there, maybe even experienced it first hand and are building a last resort outside of their native system.

c) They are simply a type 2 civilisation wanting to capture all the sun's power

I vote for b)
 
H

HStallion

Now what's the next step in your master plan?
Buggy Loop said:
If its an alien civilisation that is building a Dyson sphere :

a) They assume that there's a possible alpha predator out there killing alien civilisations and want to hide (i.e. remove the star's light, unlikely to be found)

b) They already know there's a predator out there, maybe even experienced it first hand and are building a last resort outside of their native system.

c) They are simply a type 2 civilisation wanting to capture all the sun's power

I vote for b)
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Why would they assume there is some sort of alpha predator species/threat by building a Dyson sphere? Maybe they just want to maximize the power they get from their local star like your third option. If there is an Alpha level species they would no doubt notice a star acting very oddly and might very well check it out for that reason alone. Its not a great way to hide yourself.
 
A

AYF 001

Member
HStallion said:
Why would they assume there is some sort of alpha predator species/threat by building a Dyson sphere? Maybe they just want to maximize the power they get from their local star like your third option. If there is an Alpha level species they would no doubt notice a star acting very oddly and might very well check it out for that reason alone. Its not a great way to hide yourself.
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Yes, who could possibly think it's a good idea to build a Dyson Sphere to defend against a galactic alpha-predator?

2458341-8844927229-H4-Di.jpg
 
A

aliengmr

Member
Slayer-33 said:
I discovered some shit, wtf is this?

https://talk.planethunters.org/#/subjects/APH00015d9?quarter=10-3

Whoa, click on the quarters, am I reading this right? Look at those dips

HEEEELP!



lol learning as a go over here too
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That's not Tabby's star. You are looking at a K type star that is .6 the size of our Sun. Tabby's Star is an F type that is ~1.5 the size of our Sun.

The dips are likely a result of it being an Eclipsing Binary. Binary system which is aligned to Kepler's line of sight.
 
Slayer-33

Slayer-33

Liverpool-2
aliengmr said:
That's not Tabby's star. You are looking at a K type star that is .6 the size of our Sun. Tabby's Star is an F type that is ~1.5 the size of our Sun.

The dips are likely a result of it being an Eclipsing Binary. Binary system which is aligned to Kepler's line of sight.
Click to expand...

I know it's not Tabby's star baby J, ty for the explanation though. Thought we discovered some wild shit.
 
S

SkyOdin

Member
Lovely Salsa said:
So how exactly will we find out what exactly it is? If its alien...how will we know?
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The problem is that it is nearly impossible to clearly prove the existence of an alien megastructure. We can rule out theories, but certainty will elude us. If we can discover a cluster of these phenomena around stars near to each other, that would lend credibility to the alien theory. However, even if it is aliens, they might have just built the one structure.

All we can do is continue to observe this star and see what we can discover about it.
 
S

sphagnum

Banned
Something I've never understood, since I'm not a scientist, is why we can get images from billions of light years away with Hubble but we can't just point it in the direction of exo-planets or stars and see what we can find. What's stopping us from doing that?
 
W

WeAreStarStuff

Member
sphagnum said:
Something I've never understood, since I'm not a scientist, is why we can get images from billions of light years away with Hubble but we can't just point it in the direction of exo-planets or stars and see what we can find. What's stopping us from doing that?
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Planets are small and don't exactly emit visible light shining like beacons in the universe; the amount they reflect is miniscule - relatively.
 
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