Beginning in 2009, the Kepler Space Telescope began looking at approximately 150,000 stars for signs of objects orbiting with some recognizable pattern in an attempt to find exo-planets. Now Ross Anderson writes in The Atlantic that scientists who search for extraterrestrial civilizations are scrambling to get a closer look at KIC 8462852, a star that undergoes irregularly shaped, aperiodic dips in flux down to below the 20% level that can last for between 5 and 80 days.
"We'd never seen anything like this star," says Tabetha Boyajian. "It was really weird. We thought it might be bad data or movement on the spacecraft, but everything checked out." Dips in the light emitted by stars are often shadows cast by transiting planets especially when they repeat, periodically, as you'd expect if they were caused by orbiting objects. Boyajian, a Yale Postdoc who oversees Planet Hunters, recently published a paper describing KIC 8462852's bizarre light pattern and explores a number of scenarios that might explain the pattern—instrument defects; the shrapnel from an asteroid belt pileup; an impact of planetary scale, like the one that created our moon.
SETI researchers have long suggested that we might be able to detect distant extraterrestrial civilizations, by looking for enormous technological artifacts orbiting other stars. Jason Wright says the unusual star's light pattern is consistent with a "swarm of megastructures," perhaps stellar-light collectors, technology designed to catch energy from the star. "When [Boyajian] showed me the data, I was fascinated by how crazy it looked," says Wright. "Aliens should always be the very last hypothesis you consider, but this looked like something you would expect an alien civilization to build." Boyajian is now working with Wright and Andrew Siemion on a proposal to point a massive radio dish at the unusual star, to see if it emits radio waves at frequencies associated with technological activity.
If they see a sizable amount of radio waves, they'll follow up with the Very Large Array (VLA) in New Mexico, which may be able to say whether the radio waves were emitted by a technological source, like those that waft out into the universe from Earth's network of radio stations. "In the meantime, Boyajian, Siemion, Wright, the citizen scientists, and the rest of us, will have to content ourselves with longing looks at the sky," says Anderson, "where maybe, just maybe, someone is looking back, and seeing the sun dim ever so slightly, every 365 days."
Related Stories
UC Berkeley will use the Green Bank radio telescope to observe Tabby's Star (KIC 8462852) as part of the Breakthrough Listen initiative:
Breakthrough Listen, which was created last year with $100 million in funding over 10 years from the Breakthrough Prize Foundation and its founder, internet investor Yuri Milner, won't be the first to search for intelligent life around this star. "Everyone, every SETI program telescope, I mean every astronomer that has any kind of telescope in any wavelength that can see Tabby's star has looked at it," he said. "It's been looked at with Hubble, it's been looked at with Keck, it's been looked at in the infrared and radio and high energy, and every possible thing you can imagine, including a whole range of SETI experiments. Nothing has been found."
While Siemion and his colleagues are skeptical that the star's unique behavior is a sign of an advanced civilization, they can't not take a look. They've teamed up with UC Berkeley visiting astronomer Jason Wright and Tabetha Boyajian, the assistant professor of physics and astronomy at Louisiana State University for whom the star is named, to observe the star with state-of-the-art instruments the Breakthrough Listen team recently mounted on the 100-meter telescope. Wright is at the Center for Exoplanets and Habitable Worlds at Pennsylvania State University.
The observations are scheduled for eight hours per night for three nights over the next two months, starting Wednesday evening, Oct. 26. Siemion, Wright and Boyajian are traveling to the Green Bank Observatory in rural West Virginia to start the observations, and expect to gather around 1 petabyte of data over hundreds of millions of individual radio channels.
Also at BBC.
Previously:
Stephen Hawking and Yuri Milner Announce $100 Million "Breakthrough Listen" SETI Project
Mysterious Star May Be Orbited by Alien Megastructures
I'm STILL Not Sayin' Aliens. but This Star is Really Weird.
Recently, some astronomers and others have excitedly pointed to Tabby's Star (KIC 8462852) as a possible example of alien megastructures causing a star to dim. A new study favors a more terrestrial explanation - a planetary collision with the star:
A new study set to be published Monday in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society suggests that smart aliens aren't responsible for KIC 8462852's dimming. Instead, the authors suggest, a planetary collision with Tabby's Star is to blame. This crash would explain not only why Tabby's Star has had wild fluctuations in brightness as of late, but why the star has been dimming gradually over the course of the last century.
It seems strange that a spectacular collision between a star and planet would cause a star to become dimmer, explains Ken Shen, a UC Berkeley astronomer and author on the study. But, says Shen, "the star has to eventually go back to being dimmer—the equilibrium state—the state that it was at before the collision."
KC 8462852's more recent and erratic dimming episodes, however, can be explained by a mess of debris moving around the star and absorbing its light, sometimes making it appear significantly dimmer to us Earthlings.
Previously:
Mysterious Star May Be Orbited by Alien Megastructures
I'm STILL Not Sayin' Aliens. but This Star is Really Weird.
"Breakthrough Listen" to Search for Alien Radio Transmissions Near Tabby's Star
Tabby's Star, speculated to be surrounded by a cloud of debris or alien megastructures, has dimmed yet again, causing multiple observatories to take notice:
Among the telescopes [Jason] Wright said researchers now hope to use to catch this dimming event in the act:
—The Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia, the world's largest fully steerable radio telescope
—The Automated Planet Finder at Lick Observatory near San Jose, Calif., a robotic optical telescope
—Both telescopes at the Keck Observatory in Hawaii, which operate in optical and near-infrared wavelengths
—The MMT Observatory in Arizona, an optical telescope
—NASA's Swift Gamma-Ray Burst Mission, which operates in gamma ray, x-ray, ultraviolet and optical wavelengths
—Las Cumbres Observatory, a worldwide network of robotic optical telescopes
—Fairborn Observatory in Arizona, which operates in optical wavelengths
—The Large Binocular Telescope in Arizona, which operates in optical and near-infrared wavelengths
—The Hobby–Eberly Telescope in Texas, an optical telescope
Also at The Verge.
One astronomer has proposed looking at the nearest 43 to 85 pulsars for megastructures (arXiv):
Osmanov estimates that the habitable zone around a relatively slowly-rotating pulsar (with a period of about half a second) would be on the order of 0.1 AU. According to his calculations, a ring-like megastructure that orbited a pulsar at this distance would emit temperatures on the order of 390 K (116.85 °C; 242.33 °F), which means that the megastructure would be visible in the IR band.
Previously: Mysterious Star May Be Orbited by Alien Megastructures
I'm STILL Not Sayin' Aliens. but This Star is Really Weird.
"Breakthrough Listen" to Search for Alien Radio Transmissions Near Tabby's Star
Non-Alien Explanation for Tabby's Star Dimming: It Ate a Planet
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 15 2015, @10:32AM
Our great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great grandchildren will perhaps solve this mystery one day...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 15 2015, @10:42AM
Life extension, cryosleep, faster-than-light travel. Pick one.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 15 2015, @10:54AM
Pick one.
Bugger that. I want all three.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 15 2015, @10:58AM
why would you want cryosleep if you had the other 2?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by SanityCheck on Thursday October 15 2015, @11:11AM
why would you want cryosleep if you had the other 2?
FTL could still be a LONG FUCKIN TIME, say it's 1.01 the speed of light. And being awake 1500 years may require a lot more V1agra than being awake 50 years. (Yes your spam filter won't let me use the word)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 15 2015, @04:00PM
Don't forget relativity. At relativistic speeds, a journey of hundreds of light years could be taken within an ordinary lifetime. If one somehow travelled at the speed of light, one would not experience the passage of time at all.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 15 2015, @05:17PM
For any realistic kind of FTL travel, you're not going to actually be moving faster than light, therefore relativistic effects won't really apply. Assuming for the moment that relativity is correct on this, because there's no evidence it isn't at the moment, FTL can only be achieved through "space warping/folding" (reducing the amount of space in between you and your destination), "hyperspace" (going outside of our universe for travel), "wormholes/jumps" ('jumping' from point to point), or something like the Alcubierre drive [wikipedia.org]; while they may have the effect of moving you faster than light, none of them are technically faster than light, meaing no relativistic effects are involved.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 15 2015, @10:13PM
Whaaa? Relativity only applies when you are going faster than light?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 16 2015, @12:46AM
When I wrote about "relativistic speeds" I meant speeds that are a substantial fraction of the speed of light (say, 0.1 c and up), but not faster than light.
Wikipedia gives an example where travellers visit a star 4 light years away, going there and back at 0.8 c. The travellers age 6 years (less than twice 4) but those on Earth age 10 years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin_paradox#Specific_example [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Thursday October 15 2015, @11:38AM
Because after fifty thousand years life aboard ship might get a bit boring? Better to go to sleep as you leave Earth orbit, and wake up shortly before you arrive at the destination. There are logistic advantages too (sleeping people need less space and resources than active ones. )
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 15 2015, @12:13PM
I would say that there are always computer games and books to occupy one's time. plus, if you're immortal, I assume you're immortal in a body young enough to have sex often enough to keep boredom away. if you're into that sort of thing.
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Thursday October 15 2015, @01:17PM
For thousands and thousands of years? Aboard a tiny, cramped spaceship drinking recycled urine? I'm pretty you'd even get bored of sex before you arrived.
And if you answer is that the spaceship isn't tiny and cramped, but a lush, beautiful, spacious, artificial paradise then you're basically talking about a generation ship, which renders the whole "immortality" thing redundant anyway. As well as much of the "visiting other planets & star systems" thing.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday October 15 2015, @01:25PM
A generation ship with immortality, mandatory birth control... hold the generations. For the one percenters ready to colonize the galaxy.
I have confidence that we will find ways to occupy our time during thousands of years of continued life. If it requires something potentially horrifying like a simulated neural VR world backed by yottabytes of storage and using memory erasing/blocking technology, so be it. Or perhaps some sort of neural time dilation so 100 years feels like 1 year. An honest time waster.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 15 2015, @02:27PM
If those 100 years only feel like 1 year, then what is the point in living those 100 years? You'd just get 1 year of life time, but with an environment changing fast enough that you'll no longer understand it after a mere perceived week or so.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday October 15 2015, @03:13PM
I'm just presenting options. That option is an alternative to freezing yourself during interstellar travel. It wastes time, but the environment isn't exactly changing fast; it's the vast emptiness of space.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Funny) by Phoenix666 on Thursday October 15 2015, @03:07PM
Speak for yourself. I'm married, you insensitive clod!
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Thursday October 15 2015, @04:17PM
Upload, launch, sleep-mode, wake just before arriving.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Thursday October 15 2015, @11:49PM
I dunno, how pretty are you?
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 3, Funny) by LoRdTAW on Thursday October 15 2015, @12:16PM
Because masterbation can only get you so far before you have a breakdown and kill everyone else on board.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 16 2015, @12:48AM
Because masturbation can only get you so far before you have a breakdown and shag everyone else on board.
Fixed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 16 2015, @02:31AM
obviously you guys aren't familiar with the term "murderfuck"
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Thursday October 15 2015, @01:50PM
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Thursday October 15 2015, @10:55AM
How about Big-Asses-Space-Telescope. If we built a really massive orbital scope, or maybe one on the moon or something, maybe we would be able to see this thing a little more clearly without having to go there.
If nobody comes up with a more mundane explanation than "ALIENS!" for these unusual readings in the next few weeks or months, maybe this will capture the public's imagination enough that funding such a project might not be out of the question.
(Score: 2) by arslan on Friday October 16 2015, @12:49AM
Or it could be tomorrow when the aliens detected us voyeur-ing them, worm-hole over to whoop our arses...
(Score: 2) by Subsentient on Thursday October 15 2015, @10:32AM
They found it.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bd on Thursday October 15 2015, @10:55AM
Aliens should always be the very last hypothesis you consider
Why do they not just apply that hypothesis? That would be a good start.
The chance that something that is large enough to be detected by Kepler is actually made by aliens just seems _so_ out there... I mean... this is something on the scale of a large planet.
What chance is there that a thing of such nature is moved by anything other than celestial mechanics? How do they get to the conclusion that a (at least in two dimensions) planet sized
mechanical object is something that an alien civilization would consider useful to build? I mean, seriously?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 15 2015, @11:02AM
we (at least, those of us who understand what it means) consider a Dyson sphere useful to build, but we don't have the technology and the willpower right now.
and a planet sized object is just the start of a Dyson sphere.
(Score: 3, Touché) by isostatic on Thursday October 15 2015, @05:02PM
What would you do with a dyson sphere?
(Score: 3, Funny) by art guerrilla on Friday October 16 2015, @12:59AM
vacuum interstellar dust ? ? ?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by takyon on Thursday October 15 2015, @11:13AM
Almost all of astronomy is about detecting light. Some patterns of light observed will correspond to the existence of intelligent alien life.
Why would aliens build megastructures capable of dimming the light output of a star? Because we have proposals that would do the same thing:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere [wikipedia.org]
http://www.universetoday.com/102348/hunting-for-alien-megastructures/ [universetoday.com]
The Atlantic article suggests that a "mess" of objects surround the star, not a planet-sized object. That could indicate a Dyson swarm/bubble.
Whatever is happening at KIC 8462852, it is going to be interesting. Kepler has transformed our understanding of the universe. It's more like Spaceman Spiff now, more planets in the galaxy than we can possibly explore.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by bd on Thursday October 15 2015, @11:25AM
Yeah, I love science fiction too. I just don't buy that a dyson sphere is something a rational, intelligent and advanced alien civilization could, or would, build. Simply due to the amount of material required and the sheer scale of the project. What do you want to do with that much harvested energy, anyhow?
A planetary impact or something like it is so much more likely that I just don't get how one looks at that strange signal and condludes... aliens!
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 15 2015, @11:33AM
times are tough. how to be persuade congress to give us moar monies? ....aliens!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Thursday October 15 2015, @11:51AM
A Dyson swarm would be much more practical than a Dyson sphere (which could be impossible to build). In fact, you don't even need the swarm. You can just keep on adding satellites as you need them. The rings and bubbles are just useful configurations for having many satellites.
The harvested energy would be used to support a population. Photovoltaics and photosynthesis.
We know how planets affect the Kepler data, that's why the transit detection technique works. Something aberrant could be something interesting.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by sudo rm -rf on Thursday October 15 2015, @03:15PM
And a swarm is exactly what the scientists from TFA think as the most probable cause of the strange fluctuation (see linked PDF, last paragraph). They were talking about a swarm (or rather 'family') of comets though, not artificial satellites.
Artificial or not, it is an exciting time to live in, with so many new discoveries in the sky and so many stars showing unexpected characteristics. We've come a long way since the first apes stared at the moon and there is still a long and exciting way ahead!
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 15 2015, @12:18PM
Use it to build a Dyson sphere.
No, wait, I've got it -- to build a Dyson sphere requires energy, lots of it. So you contact a Dyson-sphere-possessing race, and negotiate an energy loan. When your Dyson sphere is built, you let them to use the output, to pay back the loaned energy (with ludicrous interest). Once you pay it back, you have surplus energy, which you can loan to some younger race -- charging your own ludicrous interest, of course. Basically, the end-state of civilization is a bunch of bankers boarding-up every star in the galaxy to maintain the exponential growth their economic system needs.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 15 2015, @02:37PM
Ah, now things start making sense. After all, didn't the universe start with a massive inflation? And isn't space a big bubble with accelerated expansion?
Finally the problem of where the matter in the universe comes from is solved: From a big loan. And we now know, the end of the universe will not be a big crunch, big rip or heat death. And it also won't be judgement day. It will be payment day.
(Score: 4, Funny) by DECbot on Thursday October 15 2015, @03:43PM
I could make a religion out of this!
In the beginning there was nothing. Then the Bank said, "Let there be a Loan." From that Loan, the Banker created the heavens and the earth, and it was good. The banker separated the Light from the Dark and created Power and Profits, and it was good. On the 5th day, the Banker created Money, and it was good. On the sixth and seventh day the Banker vacationed in the Bahamas. In the end, the Loan will come Due. The Banker will cast Judgement against the Creditworthy and Uncreditable. If He finds that the Debt is not paid in full, the Banker shall call upon the Repo-man to take what is good and leave the impoverished Uncreditable in the Dark. And there will be much gnashing of teeth. But the faithful Creditable shall be worthy and be rewarded with young supermodels, and mansions, and yachts, and a Loan of their very own. They shall known as the Banker's chosen people and be called the 1%.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 3, Funny) by tfried on Thursday October 15 2015, @07:13PM
The big bank theory.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 16 2015, @02:09PM
You just described modern day Californian Judaism.
(Score: 2) by DECbot on Friday October 16 2015, @03:29PM
Ah, but my version, the Banker's one and only son, born in poverty, becomes a home furniture manufacture/entrepreneur. But at 33 years of age, he resigns as CEO to become an economics teacher and prophet. He is crucified in bankruptcy court, and in three days time, he rises again to lead the 1% to maximum profits.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 15 2015, @11:32AM
I mean... this is something on the scale of a large planet.
The point is this is not on the scale of a large planet.
A large planet is not nearly big enough to result in such a massive dip in light output, it can can make a star's output (towards us) decrease by 1% or less.
This is an order of magnitude more.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by isostatic on Thursday October 15 2015, @11:43AM
I agree it's not aliens. However our sun outputs 10^26 Watts. That's enough to power a beowulf cluster capable of storing all my porn!
That would also be capable, with perfect energy->mass conversion, of magiccing up 100 million tons of matter every second.
Why a civilisation would need even a fraction of that energy, I'm not sure. Our civilisation uses 10^13 watts. Even at the rate of consumption since the industrial revolution, about an order of magnitude per century, it would take until the end of the universe before we needed that much power.
(Score: 3, Touché) by ticho on Thursday October 15 2015, @12:18PM
I imagine that if your comment somehow gets preserved for the future, our descendants might chuckle at it in the same way we now chuckle at "640kB should be enough for everybody", or "IPv4 should have enough addresses for the foreseeable future", or "human body can't travel faster than 20mph or it will explode".
(Score: 4, Interesting) by isostatic on Thursday October 15 2015, @02:23PM
Perhaps, these comments always come up, but some numbers are shockingly large.
The only things I can think of needed a significant portion of solar output would be something like moving a planet.
To fly the earth (not just the people, the whole planet) to another star system requires:
1) Mass of earth to escape velocity of our solar system
- deltav of 42km/s, mass of 10^24kg = 2*10^33 J
2) Mass of earth from escape velocity into new solar system
- deltav of 42km/s, mass of 10^24kg = 2*10^33 J
3) Modest acceleration upto say 1/10,000th speed of light (30kps) and back, : 2*10^24* 10^9 = 10^33J
4) Travel time at current energy use of mankind (i.e. the total solar radiation we receive on Earth, which is way beyond what we use), for say 1 million years (giving us a choice of stars within the nearest 100ly) 10^26J.
So about 10^34 J
If you collected all the solar energy for about 3 years you could do it, you could move the entire frickin planet. I haven't done the sums, but I suspect that for 20 years collection you could move Mars, Earth, Venus, Mercury and most of the Oort cloud anywhere in the galaxy.
So aside from massive planet-scale moving, or massive mass-creation devices, or some form of exotic physics we don't now about, what else is there. High speed spaceships don't. Take a US Aircraft carrier. 100,000 tons. 5,500 people. Sounds like the right scale for a large spaceship. Accelerate to 1/10th light speed (where relativity barely applies) would take 10^25J. Lets say the ship needs to do that constantly, and accelerates at 1G for about a month, reaches top speed, then slams the breaks on. I.e it does this 10 times a year. It's going to need 10^26J per year.
You could refuel the ship in 1 second.
Say you sent 10,000 of these ships off into the universe to explore on 100 year missions, visiting a star in the 5-10ly distance and then coming back. It would take 16 minutes to charge the fleet before they leave.
(Score: 2) by ticho on Thursday October 15 2015, @03:01PM
You are right, of course. We currently lack the means to even imagine what could be possible. That was part of my point.
Of course, what is more probable is that mankind just kills itself off before any of this becomes relevant.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Thursday October 15 2015, @03:42PM
I suspect harnessing even a noticable fraction of the solar power reaching Earth would be enough to destroy mankind.
If you did capture that energy, and used it, unless you converted it to mass somehow, that energy would still be released. You'd need a heatsink the size of the sun. And as hot as the sun. Surely the only explanation for any arbitarilly advanced civilisation to need to capture even 1% of solar output would surely be exotic physics where the energy vanishes off in hidden dimensions or similar, or matter creation (not just re-arranging).
If it were aliens (which it isn't), that presumably implies that there's some very exciting exoticness to discover.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 15 2015, @04:00PM
Only the surface matters. And whatever megastructure you use to collect some of the solar energy definitely will have a larger surface than the surface of the sun releasing the same amount of energy that structure collects.
No. Unless the aliens have found a way around the laws of thermodynamics, a heat sink as hot as the sun would guarantee that the captured energy you can use to do productive stuff is exactly zero.
Of course that cooler heat sink would need an even larger surface to radiate away the same energy. But that doesn't change the fact that you absolutely need that lower heat sink temperature to be able to make any use of the solar energy. The cooler the heat sink, the more efficient the energy use.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 15 2015, @09:25PM
You are right, of course. We currently lack the means to even imagine what could be possible. That was part of my point.
Of course, what is more probable is that mankind just kills itself off before any of this becomes relevant.
The people over at the Orion's Arm site have been imagining it for years now: including things like creating solar sails big enough to change the direction of stars (moving their entire planetary systems as well) or a war where partial dyson spheres were used to create giant rayguns with ranges measured in light years.
(Score: 2) by Yog-Yogguth on Sunday October 18 2015, @09:32PM
For others who (like me) had never noticed/remembered/heard of this I'll add some links to what the parent AC is talking about: the Wikipedia page [wikipedia.org] (functoning as an introduction) and the Orion's Arms [orionsarm.com] page.
Bite harder Ouroboros, bite! tails.boum.org/ linux USB CD secure desktop IRC *crypt tor (not endorsements (XKeyScore))
(Score: 4, Funny) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Thursday October 15 2015, @03:09PM
> Say you sent 10,000 of these ships off into the universe to explore on 100 year missions, visiting a star in the 5-10ly distance and then coming back. It would take 16
> minutes to charge the fleet before they leave.
Wow, those Tesla supercharger stations have really improved. Must be a pretty thick charging cable. Still, I regularly commute 10.5ly in each direction, with biannual road trips of 40ly or more, so I'm afraid this technology isn't ready to replace my SUV just yet.
(Score: 2) by DECbot on Thursday October 15 2015, @04:00PM
Space Utopia Vehicle?
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 1) by Delwin on Thursday October 15 2015, @04:23PM
Actually creating micro-black-holes for use in propulsion systems of interstellar craft could use a measurable amount of the output of a star.
http://arxiv.org/abs/0908.1803v1 [arxiv.org]
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Thursday October 15 2015, @05:04PM
From the paper:
The sun releases the equivalent of 2 million tonnes of
energy in less than half a second, which is enough energy to make a BH with
an effective radius of a few attometers.
So that would be 63 million blackholes per year. That's a lot of blackholes for a single-starsystem civilisation.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 15 2015, @02:51PM
So I conclude the universe ends in 13 centuries (1026 W is 13 orders of magnitude higher that 1013 W, and thus with the assumed rate of one order of magnitude per century would be reached in 13 centuries).
(Score: 5, Insightful) by gman003 on Thursday October 15 2015, @12:57PM
They have already ruled out a lot of hypotheses. It's not a planet. It's not starspots. It's not dust clouds. It's not an equipment malfunction. It's probably not comets.
The scientist proposing this is not saying "OMG it's aliens guys". He's saying "aliens would actually fit the data we have. It's low-probability but high-gain, so let's look for more evidence specifically for or against an alien megastructure", then proposing several tests to distinguish it from other hypotheses.
In short: the media is overhyping it, but the actual scientists know what they're doing, and they're doing it right.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Marco2G on Thursday October 15 2015, @02:09PM
Actual science at work using actual scientific method... you don't see that every day anymore.
(Score: 2) by Mr Big in the Pants on Thursday October 15 2015, @07:05PM
Certainly not in the news media.
Almost all real science does not fit into sound bytes.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 15 2015, @05:07PM
Yes, but "aliens would actually fit the data" can apply to any scenario you can drum up.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 15 2015, @05:29PM
True, after all they based an entire TV series on that concept.
(Score: 2) by gman003 on Thursday October 15 2015, @06:22PM
Well, the hypothesis here isn't just "aliens" but "alien megastructures", which does not fit quite a lot of data. A change in star color, for instance, indicates some sort of change inside the star, not an orbiting object. A regular, symmetric decrease in brightness on the order of 1%, with highly sloped sides, indicates a planet with an atmosphere, not a megastructure (megastructures would not use gravity to enclose their atmosphere - far, far too wasteful).
In fact, the data we see isn't consistent with a completed alien megastructure, which would block all light above the infrared. We don't see that - we see highly irregular blockages. This is consistent with what we would expect for a megastructure under construction (we of course do not know what we would actually see from an in-progress megastructure, having never observed one before).
The current leading hypothesis is a heavy comet bombardment, which could easily generate the type of signal we see, but it would have to be an absolutely massive event. Not impossible, and there's other supporting evidence for it, but it's still quite improbable.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 15 2015, @07:47PM
someone above said "moon creating collision". I wonder whether 2 Jupiters colliding would also spread enough material around to generate something like this. although I find it hard to imagine 2 Jupiters colliding (in the sense that once planets form their orbits are extremely stable, otherwise the planets wouldn't form).
(Score: 2) by gman003 on Thursday October 15 2015, @08:20PM
Such a collision could create enough material, but it would radiate in the infrared from the energy of the impact. We do not observe an infrared glow.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 15 2015, @10:11PM
I only skimmed the paper, but I did not see any mention of anything related to aliens in it.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Thursday October 15 2015, @04:35PM
Because aliens will grab the publics' attention like nothing else can. That highly speculative supposition that it could be intelligent aliens is all about publicity, not reasonable probabilities.
Seems far more likely that a dense cloud of matter is causing this. Perhaps this matter is in the process of coalescing into a star, and the system will soon (soonish) be a binary. Perhaps it is also possible for the energy output of some kinds of stars to fluctuate that hugely. Maybe some mass transfer is going on between that star and a companion which is somehow causing fluctuation. What would happen to a star if a Jupiter sized planet fell into it?
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Thursday October 15 2015, @11:50AM
If the time to produce any given article is analysed with respect to the time-constant of production, it does not take much imagination to realise that human production is not even close to optimal.
Eventually, accepting the possibility that some jackasses drive use to extinction, humans will be able to have fully autonomous manufacturing.
The thing about technological progress is that it has been so far, mildly exponential due to the exponential decrease cost/increase capability of a whole range of electronics.
There is nothing to suggest a fully autonomous system would be so pedestrian, and that is the one building the Dyson sphere....
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 15 2015, @01:29PM
Just shut up.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 15 2015, @03:45PM
Your only way of doing this is to A) stop the financial rewards he has earned by turning his career into posting these. Notice that he pays attention to the sites; he came here with the rest of the flock from Slashdot. And he still goes there and posts the same stuff.
B) Post other things better than this
C) Post the same things he does but before he does
Remember, he has all day to do this. It's all he does. Unless he's blocked via conventional capitalistic methods, he will thrive in weak soil regardless of the dirt you throw at him. You have to get the tap root and kill it off from the bottom.
Posting anon since I dont want him finding my blog
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 15 2015, @05:27PM
I enjoy his posts. They are almost always interesting and on-topic for this site. They are typically a nice repose from the standard articles, most of which fall in the "OMG! XXX technology can spy on you!!!!!" or it is some red meat political topic that drums up the same standard breathless arguments for/against it (with lot's of "SJW" epitaphs thrown around).
Your cases B and C are always true for anyone, and in fact, B is the standard retort to anyone complaining about stories. Your A point is pure envy and jealousy, I'm afraid. If he can make a living doing this, more power to him as far as I'm concerned. He cross-posts to Slashdot?? Who cares? Do you really expect that this site should only post items that aren't over at Slashdot? Are we to constantly look over our shoulder to see if we have tacit approval of what we post here?
So let's recap: you want to cut off a regular contributor who posts articles that jibe very well on this site, and you further want to only post items that aren't posted to Slashdot (if an article shows up here first, are we under obligation to take it down if Slashdot posts it too? What if he posts his article here first, then at Slashdot? It would seem we are "in the right" by your standards then.).
By the way, how much money does this site send him for all his posts? I wasn't aware I could make a living off of Soylent largess.
Well whoop-dee-the-fuck-doo. Who gives a rat's ass why you're posting anon. I'm posting anon because it is none of your fucking business.
(Score: 2) by Covalent on Thursday October 15 2015, @03:33PM
That's a space station. :)
You can't rationally argue somebody out of a position they didn't rationally get into.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Thursday October 15 2015, @07:43PM
Well, we know it's no moon.
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Thursday October 15 2015, @08:23PM
Have the megastructures cleared their orbit? If not, they are not a planet.
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings