from the they-are-just-constructing-a-Dyson-sphere dept.
"The star KIC 8462852 (aka 'Tabby's Star') got a lot of press late last year because it was acting funny. It was undergoing a series of apparently random dips in brightness. Some of these dips were serious, with the amount of starlight dropping a staggering 22 percent.
That's a lot. It couldn't be a planet passing in front of the star, because the dips weren't periodic, and the amount of starlight blocked is different every time. Plus, even a planet as big as Jupiter (which is about as big as planets can get) would block less than one percent of the star's light at best.
[...] That left some speculation about, um, aliens. While it's incredibly unlikely, it does kinda fit what we're seeing.
[...] But still, the star is weird. We just found out it's even weirder than we thought.
Bradley Schaefer is an astronomer at Lousiana State University... [who] found that Tabby's Star has been photographed over 1,200 times as part of a repeated all-sky survey between the years 1890 – 1989.
What he found is rather astonishing: The star has been fading in brightness over that period, dropping by about 20 percent!
That's... bizarre. Tabby's Star is, by all appearances, a normal F-type star: hotter, slightly more massive, and bigger than our Sun. These stars basically just sit there and steadily turn hydrogen into helium. There have been times where the star has dimmed quite a bit, then brightened up again in the following years. On average, the star is fading about 16 percent per century, but that's hardly steady.
So it appears Tabby's Star dims and brightens again on all kinds of timescales: hours, days, weeks, even decades and centuries.
Again. That's bizarre. Nothing like this has ever been seen."
Above excerpted from Article: http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2016/01/18/tabby_s_star_faded_substantially_over_past_century.html
They say it can't be caused by large dust cloud because they would see a known and detectable IR signature. So, aliens? Are they blinking at us in their 'morse code'? Building a hyperspace bypass? Got a better idea?
Schaefer's paper: KIC8462852 Faded at an Average Rate of 0.165±0.013 Magnitudes Per Century From 1890 To 1989 http://arxiv.org/pdf/1601.03256v1.pdf
F-type stars: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-type_main-sequence_star
Original about oddness in Oct 2015: http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2015/10/14/weird_star_strange_dips_in_brightness_are_a_bit_baffling.html
FYI: The dimming is not caused by rapid rotation of star: https://twitter.com/Astro_Wright/status/689163586749333504
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: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 20 2016, @04:17PM
"It couldn't be a planet passing in front of the star, because the dips weren't periodic"
Just unlikely speculation
Maybe there are several planets, comets, and other objects passing by.
Granted a 20% dip in intensity makes that hard to believe. Perhaps it's a binary or multi star system where one star is active and the other ones are burned out? When one burnt out star passes in front of the working star it blocks much of the sunlight? Unlikely but what are some other thoughts?
Also if this has been doing this rather consistently since 1890 that makes it unlikely to be aliens. First of all they would have to have some amazing capabilities to be able to really affect the brightness of a star that much and secondly they would have to have a lot of determination to endure the trouble and cost for so long. I don't know how long these aliens supposedly live but I imagine this length of time would constitute a few of their generations. Politics change in that time from generation to generation. What does their society get out of the expense?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 20 2016, @05:02PM
Any culture capable of creating a Dyson-sphere must be capable of sustaining an effort across centuries.
I don't know anything about this but, say a tri-star system where two stars are very dim brown dwarfs?
(Score: 1) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Wednesday January 20 2016, @05:54PM
Was going to say we used to have that capability.
However, I can't find the story about some British University (Cambridge?) growing replacement timbers for a meeting hall at the moment (over a period of 300 years).
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 20 2016, @06:27PM
I heard the about the story from some people who went through "Woodbadge" training for the Boy Scouts. They said the timbers were for a monastery in Scotland. A quick Google search turned this up instead: http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/oak-beams-new-college-oxford [atlasobscura.com]
(Score: 1) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Wednesday January 20 2016, @08:33PM
Thank sfor that. My google-foo was failing because I was searching for Cedar (and wrong college apparently). Now that I think about it, are Cedars even native to Great-Britain?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 20 2016, @07:48PM
By the time a culture reaches that stage I doubt it's made up of biological lifeforms anymore. IMO much more likely is AI.
(Score: 3, Funny) by VLM on Wednesday January 20 2016, @07:01PM
What does their society get out of the expense?
If they're not powerful, they are now, because they're gathering an insane quantity of solar power. Or their solar sail ships happen to be headed right toward us and we'll be re-enacting "District 9" in a couple years.
If they are powerful, this could the space alien equivalent of Burning Man and some space hippies are just chilling out in solar orbit and putting up temporary art structures to impress each other. They'll all go back home to the Andromeda galaxy once the drugs run out or when they get too sunburned.
(Score: 3, Funny) by jdavidb on Wednesday January 20 2016, @08:00PM
If they're not powerful, they are now, because they're gathering an insane quantity of solar power
I've discovered their nefarious plan: http://what-if.xkcd.com/141/ [xkcd.com]
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 21 2016, @01:35AM
A follow up on my original comment
After thinking about it for a while and reading through some of the other comments I thought of a more likely but simpler/boring possibility (and I guess this would be the more conventional answer but the point is that the intensity fluctuates too much for this answer to make sense),
Our very own sun has bright and dark spots. As it rotates and as we revolve around it the light we are exposed to changes. Also the light intensity from any given spot fluctuates naturally.
So perhaps part of the explanation is that the star has dark and light spots and as it rotates we are exposed to different spots. Perhaps this star rotates faster than most stars or something. Before stars begin to burn out do they (all) burn out uniformly or do they first begin to have bright and dark spots? and different stars that rotate at different velocities may present to us different patterns of light intensity.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 21 2016, @02:00AM
and in a sense this explanation may make the most sense. I mean, just because most stars have a stable intensity doesn't mean there aren't inbetween stars. The mechanism that stars burn is akin to the weather, it can be unpredictable. If it's a star that's borderline burning it may have moments of bright burning 'weather' and moments of darker burning 'weather'. Things like rotation speed can affect them just like they affect the weather. A star that rotates faster probably has more 'turbulent weather' (the Coriolis effect) and hence more volatile intensity fluctuations at any given spot and it presents to us more area in less time.
Also it could be a star that's sorta borderline burning so it has moments of brighter and moments of dimmer intensity. Maybe it's a smaller star that's not quite heavy enough to have a consistently bright glow and as the chemicals move around and the chemical composition changes the intensity varies. Maybe the star just doesn't have as much of the required fuel. Maybe the star has areas with greater and other areas with less gravitational pull and that may impact the trend in bright and dark spots.
Just some brainstorming thoughts for the mind. Feel free to refine these thoughts and contribute.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 21 2016, @01:55PM
Another interesting thing to consider, though it doesn't make that much sense, is if the star rotates about the polls and not the equator. That would result in different parts of the star presenting difference gravitational fields to us and hence different intensities. It may also result in different 'weather'. A star probably has much more gravitational variation from poll to equator (in absolute numbers) and said variation could have a large impact on light intensity. Of course centrifugal force tries to make it so that bodies rotate about their equator.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 21 2016, @01:57PM
Err ... more gravitational variation than a (much smaller) planet.*
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 21 2016, @09:06PM
Right, because at no point in our own human history have we EVER decided to create a structure that required multiple generations of people to build. Nope, not even once have we ever done something like that, no way nah uh...... Oh except for all those times when we did (AND NOT EVEN BECAUSE WE NEEDED TO, BUT BECAUSE WE LIKED THE GUY WHO WANTED US TO MAKE IT). Do you really think its that far fetched for an alien species to build a structure that possibly takes more than a single generation to build (especially if its a facility to generate power, or something else critical)?
tl;dr you're an idiot, humans have built structures that have taken many generations to complete, and we did it because we wanted to, not because we had to. Get your fucking head out of the sand and think.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 22 2016, @04:15PM
OK then, mystery solved. It is aliens. Thanks for your insightful proof.
I was just brainstorming. You don't have to be a jerk about it. You can respond more politely with your counter argument.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday January 20 2016, @04:25PM
Got a better idea?
Well you asked for it.
There's only been like 50 bazillion articles about ringworlds not being statically stable, and back when computers were make of vacuum tubes and the sci fi ringworld series was new, this was a problem. Seems to be a bit less of a cognitive block now.
So I'd postulate they have a partial dyson sphere or partial ringworld and being dynamically unstable someones the 50% of the surface area devoted to louvers are flipping open or closed to either let light pressure and solar wind out or closed to bounce back as a thrust.
Imagine the "fun" mechanical engineering and astronomical calculations to keep the thing more or less centered and oscillations under tensile limits and things. The mathematical model must be very entertaining.
The advantage of the ring being little islands or segments unlike the book series is when the room temperature superconductor plague eats all the superconductor in island #25235 then the whole ring doesn't end up screwed.
So yeah, its a big universe, the odds of us detecting another gang of idiots using simple RF carrier modulation like we used to use is about zilch, but given an infinite number of astronomers and data points, we're gonna eventually detect evidence of ringworlds and dysons and stuff like that.
We're pretty stupid and even we only used the dumbest simplest RF modulations (the ones we're searching for in SETI....) for about a century. But you can't hide a ringworld after only a century or whatever.
Another astronomical anomaly to try and detect would be failed ringworlds. Just like there's probably more cars in the world's junkyards than on the worlds roads...
(Score: 3, Funny) by ikanreed on Wednesday January 20 2016, @04:44PM
detect ... failed ringworlds
Asteroid belts?
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday January 20 2016, @04:48PM
Yeah, at convenient locations and where a couple billion years of orbit cleaning by the big planets should have eliminated them 4 billion years ago, so they must be newer.
Another good fun weird idea to think about for chaotic light output is large solar power stations inside the orbit of mercury that run a net energy profit even if solar flares wipe 1% per year.
(Score: 2) by morgauxo on Thursday January 21 2016, @04:35PM
"the odds of us detecting another gang of idiots using simple RF carrier modulation like we used to use is about zilch"
"We're pretty stupid and even we only used the dumbest simplest RF modulations (the ones we're searching for in SETI....) for about a century."
Um... No.
SETI isn't really searching for modulation. It's just searching for a signal. The only modulation it is looking for is the natural modulation caused by the transmitter being on a spinning planet orbiting a star and our receiver being on a different spinning planet orbiting a different star. If you assume a transmission comes from a planet's surface with a simlar day orbiting within a similar habitable zone to our own solarsystem it gives you predictable rises, dips and dopler shifts to look for. That's a lot of assumption! But.. you need something to go on to filter the signal from the noise. Just like NASA's "follow the water" it's really only looking for life that is similar to us. Because... that's the only life we have a good idea how to even begin looking for.
If a signal was actually detected it would be weak due to distance. It is debatable if it is even possible that it would be strong enough to actually demodulate! Therefore, how they modulated it really isn't a primary concern. Unless of course.. it was intended to be received from this far away. In that case the simplest possible modulation would be used... turn it all the way on and off, similar to how we send morse code using CW. To be detectable among background noise from so far away it would have to be done really really slowly. Hams do this today, it's called QRSS and it sometimes allows reception all the way across our planet using only milliwatts. But... usually nothing more than a callsign is sent and that might take 1/2 hour or more! That would be a very tough way to exchange the collected knowlege and wisdom of two alien races but that's still just fine for saying "you are not alone".
Our own terrestrial transmissions may use more complicated modulation methods than they used to but from such a distance it doesn't matter. They would probably only be detectable as carriers anyway. It's the movement of our planet that would give it away as coming from us. You might argue that our current modulation methods don't include a steady carrier as for instance AM did but at that distance even the starts and stops in our signal would be so blended together it might as well be a steady carrier.
Of course.. some people like to make the argument that civilizations would only use radio at all for a small period and then develop something better. That very well may be true BUT... we cannot ASSUME that to be true until someone on this planet proves that such communication methods are even possible! Current physics does hint that it might be but it isn't proven yet.
(Score: 2) by morgauxo on Thursday January 21 2016, @04:51PM
"We're pretty stupid"
How do you figure that? We've come a long way from our beginings as pre-biotic stuff. Sure, we have problems left to solve but we've accomplished a lot already. Unless you know something that most of the world does not you have experience with only one inteligent civilization. That is nowhere near a sample size large enough to estimate where we stand in the universe.
When scientists first found ways to measure the age of the universe it seemed aparent that statistically most other civilizations would be far more older than us. The logic was that the universe has been around a lot longer than we have. So.. most civilizations probably started long before ours. That's where the idea that aliens are so far beyond us came from and it perpetuates because it makes for good scifi.
There are two assumptions hidden in there though. First... that the age of the universe is representative of how long civilizations have been coming to be and second is that civilizations continue to advance over long time. Scientists debate all the time about just when in the history of the universe that habitable zones first started apearing. This may very well have been long before us but we don't know that yet. I think I remember reading an article just recently giving reasons why the universe's habitable period may have only 'recently' begun and the answer to Fermi's Paradox could simply be that we are first.
Second.. would an older civilization necessarily have continued advancing it's whole existence? How smart can life get? Do you have a way to estimate that? How much more undescovered technology does physics make possible? We haven't hit a wall yet although in certain areas we are certainly reaching points of diminishing returns. I don't think we can even begin to answer that until we get there.. and at that point we ARE at least tied for 'most advanced'. Finally... maybe older civilizations just blow themselves up. The fact that we even survived the cold war may indicate that we are well beyond everyone else already.
This is all idle speculation so long as we are working with a sample size of one. Neither you nor I know just how stupid or smart we are.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday January 21 2016, @09:09PM
They would probably only be detectable as carriers anyway.
No, they wouldn't, that's exactly the point I'm making. A transit nav sat on 200/400 MHz from 1960s looks like a plain carrier you are correct about that and some are still transmitting AFAIK! Ditto LORAN, although those shut down. But that's ancient history. What does GPS look like on a spectrum analyzer? Below the natural noise floor psuedo random data modulation unless you decode it. You can't detect it unless you know its there and Exactly how its modulated, and unlike 50 year old systems the speculation is to keep ICBMs on their toes the GPS satellite antennas only point to the ground. So ICBMs "can't use GPS" for guidance, but as a side effect the antennas are pointed away from the space aliens.
Another fine example is military radar. In my grandpa's day it was CW pulse or sweeps as per your alien detectable stuff at kilowatt plus levels because of crud tier RF receive circuitry at those frequencies. Now the weather radars use 30 dB less power and the nexrads transmit about a watt because the doppler receivers are so amazing (why pay to generate kilowatts when you need watts?) The military radars are even crazier, look at how synthetic aperture systems work or "unjammable" spread spectrum radars.
There's nothing wrong with ham radio or ancient modulation technologies, but our own planet has moved on from it aside from hobbiysts and legacy whereas the SETI guys are gearing up to detect a, lets say, pre 1980s Earth. Thats nice, but probably a waste of time.
Space aliens could realistically detect our cool planetary radar experiments, pre 2000s analog UHF TV, maybe a couple other legacy technologies (1960s era radars, etc). But we in 2010 are otherwise radio silent unless you're in an antenna lobe AND know the modulation scheme.
(Score: 1) by joshuac on Friday January 22 2016, @10:36PM
speculation is to keep ICBMs on their toes the GPS satellite antennas only point to the ground. So ICBMs "can't use GPS" for guidance,
Tangential to your main argument of EM emissions looking more like noise over time, while this is an interesting speculation geosynchronous orbit is ~ 26,000 miles up. The maximum altitude of an ICBM would be at least an order of magnitude lower. And while the signal is certainly available I doubt any ICBM is dependent on a working GPS system due to the nature of when they'd be used.
I suspect directional antennas on a satellite simply have more to do with using power efficiently.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 22 2016, @09:48PM
Or maybe there is a cloud of space debris scattered around the star or in between us and the star and as it moves about or orbits the star we are presented with different light intensities.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by CHK6 on Wednesday January 20 2016, @05:20PM
I kept reading that what could be causing the star to dim. I like to think of it as the opposite, what could be making it go brighter? It could be the star be being feed in fusion-able material in mass quantities. The scale is crazy to think of at 22% increased output. But then the burn off isn't sustained and the star dims. It's hard to imagine something consuming 22% of star output and it's easier to think of something increasing the output by 22%.
If we feed Saturn and Jupiter into the Sun, would we notice an output increase?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 20 2016, @05:23PM
Check figure 1: http://arxiv.org/abs/1509.03622 [arxiv.org]
It is clear why they are talking about dimming.
(Score: 1) by Osamabobama on Wednesday January 20 2016, @08:54PM
Figure 2 is the Fourier analysis that I know everyone wants to see.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by jdavidb on Wednesday January 20 2016, @08:11PM
If we feed Saturn and Jupiter into the Sun, would we notice an output increase?
Wow - would you please send that marvelous question to XKCD's What If?
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday January 20 2016, @10:06PM
It's not going brighter. It's just not dimming as much. You're somehow assuming that the ETs only got their megascale construction project started recently, and that they're both decreasing and increasing the star's output. They've been at this for ages (they're probably 1000 years or more ahead of us technologically), so when you see "22% increased output", that's just relative to our earlier measurements, not to the star's normal output. The "increased" output is just the minimum dimming on their part, probably where the Dyson swarm is least dense. Then when the swarm's denser part gets between the star and us, we see it as dimmer.
This is of course assuming a Dyson swarm or similar is responsible for this oddity. But the point is, increased output doesn't require more energy output, it just requires less diversion of the star's energy than before. If you have a light bulb, and put a shade over it, and show it to someone, and then take the shade off while they're watching, do they think you magically made the bulb glow brighter? Of course not, you just removed a blockage.
(Score: 2) by q.kontinuum on Wednesday January 20 2016, @10:51PM
I understand parent poster the other way around. If we started photographing the star 10 years ago and it was 20% brighter then, it might have been increased at that time by consuming a Jupiter-like amount of gas and is just now back to normal.
I can't imagine it works that way since the sun is not a conventional fire leaping out to a new gas-supply, but a fusion process with lots of energy-reserves anyway, so I'd assume adding to this reserve wouldn't change much.
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 20 2016, @05:21PM
If something really massive (like a mini blackhole/brown dwarf/neutron star) were orbiting it, could it cause enough deformation of the star to cause seemingly random output effects?
(Score: 2) by Bobs on Wednesday January 20 2016, @05:51PM
Possible, but given that we still haven't observed any pattern it seems like there would have to be a large collection of things orbiting and colliding to keep changing the timing.
But we don't see any detectable amounts of dust. Seems to me if you had all these collisions to create constantly changing orbital patterns then a large cloud of dust would have been thrown off as well.
And they would have to be a collection of rather big things moving really fast to create that much dimming over minutes and hours.
(Score: 1) by hedleyroos on Wednesday January 20 2016, @08:33PM
Since we're all speculating I say it's a triple star system with chaotic orbits.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday January 20 2016, @06:56PM
I don't know about mini-black holes, but I doubt the stars would produce random effects. After all, Kepler has discovered.... 2,165 eclipsing binary stars [nasa.gov].
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by an Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 20 2016, @05:24PM
Personally, I'm curious if this star's apparent brightness would be consistent between observatories located in different portions of our star system. The behavior makes me think of an object in between us and the star, but much further out than a planet, maybe even closer to us. As for the randomness: Irregular shape? Relatively small size/mass? Gravitational anomalies?
(Score: 2) by Bobs on Wednesday January 20 2016, @05:43PM
The behavior makes me think of an object in between us and the star, but much further out than a planet,...
Interesting idea, but if this were the case then either
1) the blocking object was close to Sol: then it would be dimming more than one star, particularly over long periods of time, or
2) the blocking object is close to KIC8462852: then it would have to be amazingly and uniquely massive to intermittently block for a century plus. Our solar systems have moved a bit since we first started taking pictures of it.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday January 20 2016, @06:57PM
the blocking object was close to Sol: then it would be dimming more than one star, particularly over long periods of time, or
It would make a good lovecraftian horror type story to have the aliens so pissed off we're here, that they build and maintain a shield thing between us and them.
Imagine an infinite power civilization, maybe they write a self replicating virus that once unleashed spreads to all stars for X lightyears then builds and maintains a little shield between every star and the home world. It might even provide an interesting filtering effect, that once a culture is of a high enough cultural and technological level to mostly see around the shield, they don't feel so scared anymore, for better or worse.
Or maybe a 3rd party is hoping we're not going to get scared. Or that star is the interstellar empire equivalent of area 51 and they're going to be all bent out of shape that we're observing.
I'm not claiming this is true, but it would make an interesting sci fi novel plot.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Webweasel on Thursday January 21 2016, @03:26PM
Greg Egan: Quarantine
ISBN-10: 0575081724
ISBN-13: 978-0575081727
It's more based on the multi universe quantum theory, but as part of the plotline the whole "quantum events must be observed" is played on.
The rest of the universe is populated by quantum beings and humanity causes mass genocide by collapsing the events when looking out and observing the universe.
As a result, there is a sphere around our solar system to stop us observing the real universe and killing everything!
Priyom.org Number stations, Russian Military radio. "You are a bad, bad man. Do you have any other virtues?"-Runaway1956
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 20 2016, @07:03PM
Alternatively it could simply be the first evidence of an orphan planet somewhere in between. Some models predict dozens of planets forming per star with unstable orbits and flung out to wander the darkness alone and difficult to detect.
(Score: 1) by an Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 21 2016, @01:07AM
I was going to mention the relative velocities involved in regards to the overall decline in apparent brightness. But, I was pressed for time and it was removed in the interest of brevity.
Looking at the data in the first article, the sudden dimming events seem to occur just shy of two years apart, which might be noteworthy. What if a relatively small object was located just so, so that it eclipsed that star at a particular point in our orbit, but not always since our path actually wobbles slightly due the effects of bodies other than the earth and sun. But, how would that account for the overall dimming?
For the overall dimming issue, there is also the possibility of a light emitting object beyond and partially eclipsed by the star in question. But, wouldn't the spectral line leave very obvious traces of two different star pattens, with one fading in and out with the variations in luminosity? The post mentions that they already ruled out a debris cloud by looking for unexplained IR output. I would assume the emission pattern in such a case would have been noticed long ago. It also would not explain the sudden dips.
The talk of aliens has an inverted version of "sometimes the light at the end of a tunnel is a train" rolling around in the back of my mind.
(Score: 4, Funny) by GungnirSniper on Wednesday January 20 2016, @05:49PM
Maybe aliens are draining the sun of its energy [nationalreport.net], which will cause them to look for a new energy source, possibly another star closer to us. We need to arm ourselves against this alien threat before they destroy Israel.
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday January 20 2016, @07:09PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KIC_8462852 [wikipedia.org]
Wikipedia thinks they're 1480 LY away so at light speed we got awhile... depending on their launch date of course. Assuming they haven't already launched.
Betelgeuse is about half the range and is expected to supernova, while the scientists think we'll be OK when it does. So even if they blow this thing up twice as far away, it won't matter much.
Figuring -12 magnitude for Betelgeuse supernova aka about as bright as the full moon. So blowing this star up would be very exciting but not really damaging.
Well, probably. I suppose if the astronomers are all wrong and we're fried by the gammas, we won't be able to ruin their careers very well to get even.
(Score: 4, Funny) by linkdude64 on Wednesday January 20 2016, @09:25PM
"Maybe aliens are draining the sun of its energy,"
So not a Dyson sphere, but a Dyson vacuum?
"As the aliens descended upon Washington DC with their lasers firing, psychic wavelengths burning with messages of wailing doom for our species, a unified cry of resistance could be heard from Capital Hill...'PROTECT ISRAEL!!!'"
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday January 20 2016, @06:27PM
So, how hard would it be to conceive of rogue planetoids or an asteroid field not orbiting a star, between us and this star? I mean, really - what if there's a semi-dense pocket of comets in the outer reaches of the Oort cloud - could we distinguish between what we are seeing and occulting by random non-glowy stuff inbetween?
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(Score: 2) by Bobs on Wednesday January 20 2016, @07:02PM
We can conceive of it but why would it be occluding 1 and only 1 star, and not others for more than 150 years?
How would you conceive that? With station keeping engines?
(Score: 1) by YeaWhatevs on Wednesday January 20 2016, @07:26PM
Maybe there was just a smudge or defect on the lens, and the star happened to be there.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday January 20 2016, @09:28PM
So, not our Oort cloud, but the equivalent cloud around the occluded star...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday January 20 2016, @07:41PM
What a timely remark. There's an interesting story appearing in 8 hours.
I doubt that is the explanation since Kepler monitors star brightness over a long period of time to find transits at regular intervals.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by legont on Wednesday January 20 2016, @07:50PM
They perhaps have booms and busts, politics and wars? The pattern fits, it seems.
Peaceful guys would enclose their stars completely, which would take just a few years going from a measurable dimness confused with a planet to a total darkness. That's probably why we rarely see them.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Thursday January 21 2016, @02:42AM
What if they're scooping or tractor beaming hydrogen from the star, to use more directly?
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 20 2016, @10:08PM
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but that star is about 1,500 light years from us. So, whatever is happening, actually happened about 1,500 years ago, give or take. If they are/were building a laser cannon to kill us, they're done with it and the laser beam is about to hit. Get over it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 21 2016, @05:14AM
So what you are saying is that the laser has already been fired so 7 billion humans are already dead so what difference does it make.
I wonder how much their government paid to the Clintons, Clintons love money from foreign adversaries.
(Score: 2) by arulatas on Thursday January 21 2016, @09:56PM
Or they have sent a ship in our direction that wakes its pilots every so often to do the course corrections needed to reach us. Other than that time on life supports/suspended animation.
----- 10 turns around
(Score: 4, Funny) by arslan on Thursday January 21 2016, @05:15AM
Umm someone beta testing Starkiller Base?
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Thursday January 21 2016, @12:22PM
So it's probably not aliens, but just imagine if it were... what would the implications be?
The first and most obvious ramification is that we'd have an answer to the "are we alone" question, which of course has all sorts of philosophical implications, and is huge news all by itself.
However, and perhaps more importantly, we'd have proof that the kind of megascale engineering dreamed of by science fiction writers really is possible. Hard evidence that if we get our puny fleshy arses off this planet then we really can turn all of (well, some of) those awesome utopian space opera fantasies into reality. OK, we aren't anywhere near capable of building a dyson sphere yet, but it would certainly give us something to aspire to. Confirmation of a real live dyson sphere might give concepts like moon colonies, ONeill cylinders and space elevators a lot more mainstream credibility than they currently enjoy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 21 2016, @07:47PM
...we just don't know.
This is a bit like how religious people deal with unknowns in nature, they can't accept not knowing a cause or reason so they plug the gap with God.
We don't know why our observations of this star are coming out this way but there are a number of plausible explanations, including aliens. But no need to jump to that conclusion, just accept it as an unknown.