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The Most Mysterious Star in Our Galaxy
- suprjami 11y agoSo what's the star called? Even if it's just a boring numbers-and-letters name it'd still be nice to know.
- david-given 11y agoApparently it's just KIC 8462852, unfortunately, also known as TYC 3162-665-1 and 2MASS J20061546+4427248. Snappy names. The paper says it's 12th magnitude so it's way, way dimmer than is visible to the human eye. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KIC_8462852 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KIC_8462852
- 3solarmasses 11y agoI wanted to know this as well and looked up the research paper. It's called "KIC 8462852"
- dynofuz 11y agoThis is great. I always thought an advanced et would want to build something like a dyson hemisphere around its star.
- stupidcar 11y agoI know I shouldn't get excited about this, as a more prosaic explanation is far more likely, but my heart still skipped a beat when I read “stellar-light collectors”.
- arethuza 11y agoWhen I read the title I wondered if they had found a star that turns off for 215 of every 250 years...
- LoSboccacc 11y agojust hypothetically speaking: wouldn't a dyson array need to beam energy to the planet where those aliens live? we should be able to pick up that high energy stream with current technology, but we'd need first to guess at which frequency it transmits to (if it's there) edit: ok scratch that I stand corrected I was still thinking in earthling terms
- Filligree 11y agoNot if the aliens in question live in computers being run by said dyson array.
- david-given 11y agoThey wouldn't necessarily live on a planet --- planets are a really inefficient may to make real estate. Much easier to live on the collectors themselves. Assuming that 'live' is a useful term; thing about aliens is that they're going to be alien. Star Trek has conditioned us to think of aliens as humans in rubber suits, but real aliens are going to be anything but. We don't even know if it's a 'they'; it could be an 'it'. If this is an artifact, then all it tells us is that they (or it) builds tools and likes energy. This suggests an inner-solar-system species like us, as living where things are fast and hot. But that's not necessarily a given. It could be a cold and slow outer-solar-system species doing something uncharacteristic. Or a plasma-based solar species. Or maybe it's something that's actually weird. I know this is going to turn out to be rocks moving oddly, just like everything else, but I'm still really interested to see what the results of the radio telescope survey's going to be...
- xlm1717 11y agoI don't think a planet would be an inefficient way to make real estate. Look at the benefits we get from living on a planet: free gravity, free protection from UV radiation, free life support, huge storage of water. I would assume that a civilization capable of constructing huge light collectors would also have no problem escaping the gravity field of a planet.
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- StreakyCobra 11y ago«But that would be an extraordinary coincidence, if that happened so recently, only a few millennia before humans developed the tech to loft a telescope into space. That’s a narrow band of time, cosmically speaking. After all, this light pattern doesn’t show up anywhere else, across 150,000 stars. We know that something strange is going on out there.» It would also be an extraordinary coincidence if we find another planet with life on it, so quickly after humans started to look for it. 150'000 stars is a narrow band of universe, cosmically speaking.
- Filligree 11y agoUnless life is relatively common. In that case it's not so odd.
- jeremysmyth 11y agoLife might be common but intelligent life might be rare. Of all the countless species on this planet, only a handful (if even) have developed the ability to control fire and construct tools; considering how expensive it is on the organism, it might not be a generally successful evolutionary mutation. We might be an extraordinarily rare aberration.
- eljimmy 11y agoIt's a good point. Dinosaurs were on Earth for a very very long time. We really have no idea how rare it is for life to evolve in such a way as to become highly intelligent. Makes you wonder if Dinosaurs would have evolved to the point of becoming some sort of highly intelligent reptilian species similar to us. That is, if they hadn't been destroyed. :D There's also species' such as Parrots and Dolphins that are both considered to be quite intelligent. So maybe intelligence is a fore-gone conclusion and that final step that "snowballs" their intelligence is just another roll of the dice occurrence.
- jeremysmyth 11y agoMakes you wonder if Dinosaurs would have evolved to the point of becoming some sort of highly intelligent reptilian species similar to us. You're half right. Dinosaurs have evolved[1][2] to become highly intelligent[3], but not reptilian and only similar to us in the sense that they are the only other species that makes hooks to catch food[4]. [1] "The scientific consensus is that birds are a group of theropod dinosaurs that evolved during the Mesozoic Era." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_birds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_birds [2] https://xkcd.com/1211/ https://xkcd.com/1211/ [3] http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/crows-understand-analogies/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/crows-understand-a... [4] http://io9.com/the-mysterious-tool-making-culture-shared-by-crows-and-1460350033 http://io9.com/the-mysterious-tool-making-culture-shared-by-...
- joeyspn 11y agoAnd here a somewhat more mundane anti-clickbait article... "Citizen scientists catch cloud of comets orbiting distant star" https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn28191-citizen-scientists-catch-cloud-of-comets-orbiting-distant-star/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn28191-citizen-scienti...
- xlm1717 11y agoThe article dismisses natural explanations as "wanting", but then goes on to dedicate half the article to aliens? It claims that another star having a close encounter with KIC 8462852 (the star discussed in the article) and stirring up its comet cloud "would be an extraordinary coincidence". There is, in fact, evidence that such an encounter happened in our own solar system, "only a few millennia before humans developed the tech to loft a telescope into space." Calculating the speed and trajectory of a particular star, astronomers found that it would have crossed within the radius of the Oort Cloud approximately 70,000 years ago, producing exactly the scenario that "would be an extraordinary coincidence."[1] Additionally, astronomers have checked stars in the galaxy for the possibility of a close encounter with our solar system, and find dozens of such candidates to come close to our solar system, sometimes within the radius of the Oort cloud, within the next million years (some as close as 240,000-470,000 years from now).[2] The idea that a passing star would stir up the comet cloud of KIC 8462852 should not be dismissed as a coincidence, especially not to give leeway to discuss the potential for intelligence to build megastructures, when we see that such a coincidence is not even that rare for our own solar system. [1] http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2041-8205/800/1/L17/meta;jsessionid=6790524B4362615599182851A33352EC.c1 http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2041-8205/800/1/L1... [2] http://www.mpia.de/~calj/stellar_encounters/stellar_encounters_1.html http://www.mpia.de/~calj/stellar_encounters/stellar_encounte...
- an_ko 11y agoIt sounds like you've concluded that because comet-cloud stirring happened in our solar system, it is "not even that rare" elsewhere. What's special about ours? Intelligent life also happened in our solar system, but you seem to consider it unlikely elsewhere. It seems hasty to extrapolate either way without more data.
- fragsworth 11y agoYou don't need additional data when you can figure out the statistical likelihood of it happening by taking existing trajectories and number of stars in the galaxy. He is saying given what we know, it happens so frequently that it's not a surprise that it even happened to us.
- codezero 11y agoThere is so much cool science out there, I wish we could accept it as cool without it being aliens. The phenomenon that lead to this odd flux observation is more interesting than hypothetical alien megastructures. Another cool citizen science project was the observations of the epsilon Aurigae transit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epsilon_Aurigae https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epsilon_Aurigae
- anigbrowl 11y agoThe phenomenon that lead to this odd flux observation is more interesting than hypothetical alien megastructures. Discovering a previously unknown natural phenomenon would indeed by insanely cool, and I would want to know all about it in as many frequency bands as possible. But alien megastructures are just about the most interesting thing I can think of short of proof that we live in a hologram, or a simulation, or some new and robust fundamental theory of matter.
- codezero 11y agoI agree actual alien megastructures would be awesome. But hypothetical ones are the worst.
- yk 11y agohttp://arxiv.org/abs/1509.03622 http://arxiv.org/abs/1509.03622 The paper. Basically Kepler, or to be more precise the Planet Hunter crowdsourcing effort, found a star with a rather strange light curve and the Atlantic jumped the gun and babbels of aliens.
- yarou 11y agoWhile they are prematurely speculating about intelligent life, it certainly warrants further investigation. Given that the Atlantic's target audience is lay-people, of course they would play up the "extraterrestrial" hypothesis, because that's how they grab readers' attention.
- yk 11y agoWell, there are a lot of stars and some fraction has anomalous light curves in one respect or another. I am not against investigating, but I believe that overhyping science does more harm than good.
- ryandvm 11y agoHmmm, looks like somebody threw Occam's razor in the trash...
- MrBra 11y agoYes but, how many light-years away is that star?
- Procrastes 11y agoI had the same quesiton. It looks like it's only 1500 Light Years [1]. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KIC_8462852 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KIC_8462852
- pjungwir 11y agoJust supposing we really are seeing the space construction projects of a distant civilization, it seems not impossible that ironically we might be seeing them before they can see us.
- vectorjohn 11y agoThat's a good point, I'd never really thought of that! Almost any life we could find in another system, we'd see before our first radio waves got to them. On the other hand, if I was some ancient super advanced civilization, I'd have probes all over the galaxy, and they'd report as soon as anything interesting happened with evolution on a planet. So they could know what life was like on Earth about 1500 years ago, and extrapolate from that. Not that I can guess what a super advanced civilization would think like :P
- marcosscriven 11y agoLove the last sentence.
- berkeleynerd 11y agoI'm not sure we should expect only cold, sterile data and the most banal hypothesis from a magazine targeting the general public. Moreover, I think it's good to spark the public's imagination through informed speculation. Yes, maybe what lies over the horizon is not a mysterious land full of strange wonders but -- you know what? -- maybe it is. So to all those out there who feel it is their duty to defend the orthodoxy that we're alone in the universe from the human imagination I say just let others have their dreams. One day you may live in a very different, more wondrous world because they refused to accept the limits you seem so eager to impose on them.
- berntb 11y agoCentauri Dreams, write about this: http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=34260 http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=34260 (It is a favorite web site. Academics writing about interstellar flight, etc.)
- awinter-py 11y agoMaybe they stopped transmitting because a bacterium ate all their room-temperature superconductors.
- interpol_p 11y agoPossibly a bacterium that initially formed on unsanitized telephone handsets.
- uxcn 11y ago> Jason Wright, an astronomer from Penn State University, is set to publish an > alternative interpretation of the light pattern. SETI researchers have long > suggested that we might be able to detect distant extraterrestrial > civilizations, by looking for enormous technological artifacts orbiting > other stars. Wright and his co-authors say 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. I guess the theory is that an advanced civilization would be building particle accelerators on the scale of solar systems, or maybe constructing wormholes?
- bonobo 11y agoBy "swarm of megastructures" and "technology designed to catch energy from the star" I think he's referring to a Dyson Swarm: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere#Dyson_swarm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere#Dyson_swarm
- uxcn 11y agoI'm just not entirely convinced of the premise that energy consumption on that scale would be necessary for an advanced civilization. Particle accelerators would be a reasonable possibility though.
- hyperpape 11y agoNot sure if I agree with this blogpost, but it's not a crazy idea if you extrapolate from economics on Earth: http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist/ http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2012/04/economist-meets-....
- uxcn 11y agoThe math is essentially correct, but it oversimplifies some things, and it skips a number of factors. Larry Summers recently shared his opinion on the topic https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-global-economy-is-in-serious-danger/2015/10/07/85e81666-6c5d-11e5-b31c-d80d62b53e28_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-global-economy-i....
- eutropia 11y agoFollowing up with radio telescopes in hopes of finding evidence of technologically emitted radiation seems pretty hopeless. Encryption of signals, advanced tech, too many things get in the way of getting a conclusive signal. Just point the James Webb at it once it's up and running to get a better picture of what's observable.