Not CT, From Washington Post - serious scientists - alien megastructure

[RKP5637]

I am not a CT'er. I heard about this last night, and it's now on Washington Post.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/10/15/the-strange-star-that-has-serious-scientists-talking-about-an-alien-megastructure/

“It was kind of unbelievable that it was real data,” said Yale University astronomer Tabetha Boyajian. “We were scratching our heads. For any idea that came up there was always something that would argue against it.”

She was talking to the New Scientist about KIC 8462852, a distant star with a very unusual flickering habit. Something was making the star dim drastically every few years, and she wasn’t sure what.

Boyajian wrote up a paper on possible explanations for the star’s bizarre behavior, which was published recently in the Monthly Notes of the Royals Astronomical Society. But she also sent her data to fellow astronomer Jason Wright, a Penn State University researcher who helped developed a protocol for seeking signs of unearthly civilization, wondering what he would make of it.

Or, to be more specific, something built by aliens — a “swarm of megastructures,” as he told the Atlantic, likely outfitted with solar panels to collect energy from the star.

“When [Boyajian] showed me the data, I was fascinated by how crazy it looked,” Wright said. “Aliens should always be the very last hypothesis you consider, but this looked like something you would expect an alien civilization to build.”

To be sure, both Boyajian and Wright believe the possibility of alien megastructures around KIC 8462852 is very, very remote. It’s worthy of hypothesis, Wright told Slate, “but we should also approach it skeptically.”

[jeff47]

1. To give an idea of scale....

A Jupiter-sized planet passing between a star and the Earth dims that star's light by about 1%.

The greatest dimming they saw with KIC 8462852 was 22%.

So....something or things that can block as much light as 22 Jupiters. Our sun is only 10 Jupiters in diameter.

Since it is that enormous, I'm going to severely doubt the "alien megastructure" hypothesis. It can't be completely ruled out, but building something that big is really, really, really, really, really, really hard.

[DisgustipatedinCA]

2. Maybe parts of a dim nebula are coming between us and the star occasionally.

That's just a wild layman's guess, and I'm sure they've considered it, but it was the first possibility that came to mind.

[jeff47]

3. Nebulae don't move that fast.

The light dims quickly and returns quickly. Nebulae don't move that fast.

That's the big puzzle here. We don't have a "natural" reason that fits the data.

Most likely, we'll discover a new natural phenomena. At this point we can't rule out aliens, but aliens are as likely as me winning PowerBall. Twice. Not impossible, but very unlikely.

[Fumesucker]

17. A white dwarf would be smaller than Jupiter

In fact most of them are about the size of the Earth so a Jupiter size planet occulting a white dwarf it orbits could easily dim the dwarf to zero from our point of view.

Not that this particular star is a white dwarf but pointing out that not all stars are larger than Jupiter.

[Oneironaut]

23. Hard for humans.

Imagine highly advanced nanotechnology that can construct something the size of earth within an hour by instantly fabricating material, or something like that. If something were able to build something this big, they would have ridiculously advanced technologies that humans wouldn't even understand. That would be awesome.

I don't think this is aliens either, though.

[Decoy of Fenris]

36. It'd be easier with Replicator-styled robots, and doable even by humans.

A simple self-replicating program written into a tech that could build in its own image would be the easiest way to propagate a large number of robotic organisms, especially given the vast resources available in a given solar system. Basically a bunch of "Seeder" robots fired into an asteroid belt with the programming to mine, refine and build parts until they reach a desired point.

Not aliens, I don't think, but certainly possible (and indeed probably one of the more efficient ways of mining in a star system.)

[AngryAmish]

38. If they are that advanced, we better shut up our radio presence asap.

Or in 1500 years they will be dining on tacos al homo.

[thesquanderer]

44. Well maybe these aliens are really, really, really, really, really, really big. ;-) (n/t)

[randome]

47. And with really, really, really, really, really, really, really big ideas, too!

[hr][font color="blue"][center]The truth doesn’t always set you free.
Sometimes it builds a bigger cage around the one you’re already in.[/center][/font][hr]

[Lizzie Poppet]

4. Obviously a Culture GSV, with some GCUs and such in orbit with it.

Any Iain M Banks fans out there?

[muriel_volestrangler]

7. We'll just call this an excession, for now

I don't think, in Banks' galaxy, that even an orbital could hide that much of a star's output (they're wide, but quite narrow). It would be some civilisation mucking around with the star's fusion process ...

[Lizzie Poppet]

8. Agreed.

If it's a megastructure, an under-construction Dyson sphere or suchlike would be a possible explanation.

But it probably wouldn't have nearly as cool a name as a Culture ship.

[muriel_volestrangler]

10. I've used 3 Culture ship names for internet user names

so I agree on how cool they are.

[JHB]

5. Well, if we've found the ringworld...

...best to get started on anti-Kzinti defenses now. We'll need'em.

[AngryAmish]

39. I'm worried about Consu.

[Whiskeytide]

6. Uh oh. I suspect the freedom caucus...

... will propose lifting death ray bans immediately. The only thing that can stop an alien with an energy based particle beam weapon is an earthling with an energy based particle beam weapon!

[hifiguy]

27. With our luck aliens would turn out to be

Ferengi and not Vulcans.

Though we do have experience dealing with Ferengi under their earth name of "Republicans" for the last 40 years or so.

[wheniwasincongress]

9. from Wikipedia

Researchers currently think the most likely explanation for the star's odd reduction in light is due to a series of chunks of a broken up comet orbiting the star elliptically.[6] Under this explanation, gravity from a nearby star causes comets from the star's Oort cloud to fall in towards the star. Evidence to support this hypothesis includes the fact that a red dwarf star already exists close to this star 130 billion km away. Evidence against the hypothesis includes doubts over whether disturbed Oort cloud comets orbiting elliptically close to the star could exist in high enough numbers to obscure 22% of the star's observed luminosity.[5]

[BlueJazz]

11. For those of you that have Stellarium (Free), you can find it by doing a search, in stellarium,

for TYC 3162-665-1

[RKP5637]

14. Thanks! WOW! I just installed it for Linux. I put in TYC 3162-665-1

as a search. My location says Paris. I'm just looking at the sky. Likely a stupid question, but what do I do next. Thanks!

[BlueJazz]

18. Run your mouse all the way to the left of your screen (about 4" from the bottom)..

...when the settings thing pops up go to the top one and you'll see location...click on it. There's a LONG list of cities there.

Search is also on the pop-up. Type in the star.

[RKP5637]

19. Thanks!!! This is incredible!!! So glad you posted this!

[BlueJazz]

20. Thank you. On the bottom of the screen there's the little icons. The far right on closes the program

The arrows speed up the time or slow it down. There's also icons to "erase" the earth and other stuff.

After you get used to it, one REALLY fun thing is to set the date (on the left side pop-up) to either way in the future or way in the past.

I was messing around with it one day and set it to something like?, the year 85444, The sun rose at 9:00AM and set at 3:00PM (in Sarasota, Florida.
Wow...shows you how time can change the perspective of the heavens. Have fun.

[RKP5637]

21. This is soooooooooo cool! I had absolutely no idea something like this

existed for free and also available in Linux.

[dixiegrrrrl]

25. Would you show me link to install it?

I was on the page but it said not compatible with Linux.
And what browser did you install it in?
I have both Chromium and Firefox.

If it works, Mr. Dixie is gonna be SO excited!!!

[RKP5637]

42. I run Linux Mint. I installed it from the sw search in Mint. It's similar to Ubuntu.

It really doesn't install into a browser, but is a native Linux app. Here's the page I was on.

https://launchpad.net/~stellarium/+archive/ubuntu/stellarium-releases

[dixiegrrrrl]

43. Yay! I found it in my Ubuntu Softwaer package program

and am installing it.

Thanks!!!

[RKP5637]

46. Great News!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! n/t

[Bradical79]

12. Yeah, an exciting possibility

Next step is to see if those big radio dishes can detect anything interesting.

[RKP5637]

13. Yep, there is certainly some interesting stuff going on in this huge universe wherein

we are just a very tiny little speck. I'm always interested in what Stephen Hawking has to say, do we or do we not attempt to contact an alien civilization.

[Bradical79]

15. Well, I sometimes tend to have a pessimistic outlook

in regards to the Hawking quote. Too often these days I look at some issues like climate change and I think we're already plenty screwed on our own. So I figure there's not much to lose by trying to contact an alien civilization.

[RKP5637]

16. Yep, this is likely a very good way to look at it. I often think that without

some type of intervention mankind will likely be just another extinct species on earth. To me, each day is a total WTF. Things/events do not have to be as they are, but mankind is so damn DUH!

[hifiguy]

29. I would hope that if intelligent life has evolved

somewhere in the universe they were smart enough to avoid creating the plague virus known as "capitalism" and didn't destroy themselves.

[Octafish]

22. Sad DUers have to begin posts ''Not CT...'' due to fear of censorship or ridicule...

The search for extraterrestrial life should be a fascinating topic for discussion.



Great post, RKP5637. I look forward to learning more about this KIC 8462852.

[RKP5637]

24. Thanks Octafish! There is so much in the universe, so much going on. Yes, exactly

why I titled it as I did. So sad. Art Bell was among the first to make it more public as far as I know. He had quite an interesting discussion about it last night.

[hifiguy]

30. Well, this universe is an awfully big and old place.

There has to be fascinating stuff going on somewhere out there.

[Rex]

31. 100 million earth-like planets in the Milky Way galaxy alone.

Still. Not only do you have to 'see' the right part of space, you have to see it at the right 'time' as well. Explains why it is so dam hard to find other life. Time adds another level of complexity to it.

I personally believe there must be other life out there (or has been or will be), it would be statistically impossible for there not to be imo.

[hifiguy]

32. Evan reducing the parameters of the Drake Equation

by a factor of 10, there should still be millions of worlds with intelligent life out there at some stage of socio-technological development. I can't believe that a civilization that could vomit up the likes of freligulous fundies, Scalia, tRUMP and Cruz is the best that the universe can do.

There are days when Roddenberry's vision of the future helps to keep me sane.

[Rex]

33. True but does the equation take into account the extra dimension of time.

We have an extra value to add in, unlike digging up relics on Earth...we have to catch the civilization at the right time and place. Maybe this is the first...the article has me excited about it being something other than mother nature.

[hifiguy]

34. Time is a factor in it,

but advanced civilizations in other parts of the universe, or even the galaxy, could have risen and naturally fallen millions of years ago. It doesn't really consider how many advanced civilizations might be present in the universe at any given time, only over time.

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

[Rex]

35. Interesting, thanks.

Entropy might have a lot to do with it. Still, I do remain positive with the advances in technology (and the upgraded Hubble) we will find life or signs of it in my lifetime. Hell, with water on Mars...anything now goes imo.

[hifiguy]

37. Things will really get interesting

when the James Webb telescope is in place. It will make the Hubble seem like a nice amateur astronomer's telescope.

http://www.jwst.nasa.gov/

[Rex]

40. I forgot about that!

And yet we can not fund NASA...have to spend all our money on bullets and bombs and the wonderful F-35.

[hifiguy]

41. It does make you want to scream, doesn't it.

[frizzled]

26. If you read the actual paper, it doesn't even mention aliens. It think they're comets.

nt

[Rex]

28. I am not saying it is Ancient Alien Megastructures...

[mr goodbeer]

45. I think you meant to post THIS: