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«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 sp

«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 ago
Unless life is relatively common. In that case it's not so odd.
- jeremysmyth 11y ago
  Life 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 ago
    It'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 ago
      Makes 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-...
  - stan_rogers 11y ago
    And it's not just intelligent life, either, when you think about it; it requires intelligible life. It doesn't matter how clever the individual is; without a relatively efficient means of bundling up abstractions and hypotheticals and so on and transferring them from one individual to another, progress is slow, limited and contextually bound. There is something special about language - a serialization scheme for thought - that sets it apart from mere communication, and there is no reason to assume that it's an inevitable natural consequence of individual intelligence. Call it another term in the Drake equation.
cfontes 11y ago
It all depends on how common live and consequently intelligent life is, we currently have absolutely no clue.
david-given 11y ago
If this is life, in a life-as-we-know-it sense, then it tells us that there are two species within a couple of thousand light years in about the same stage of evolution; which suggests that life's going to be everywhere. Assuming one civilisation within a sphere 1000ly in diameter, that makes 16000 in our galaxy alone!
- codezero 11y ago
  This also assumes life follows some statistical laws at a cosmic scale :)
  - david-given 11y ago
    We know that stars follow statistical laws on a cosmic scale, because we can see them, and have mapped them. So it's a reasonable assumption that life which forms round stars, like us, will be distributed the same way as the stars themselves. It's worth noting that KIC 8462852 is an F3 star very similar to our own, which is a G2.
    - codezero 11y ago
      Reasonable assumptions lead us to lots of incorrect conclusions, but I take your point :)
- danielhunt 11y ago
  Well, it's also possible that there's something special about the Milky Way in particular that makes it just a teensy bit more life-friendly, right?
  - jessaustin 11y ago
    It might be a bit early to worry about life densities in other galaxies.
- Bouncingsoul1 11y ago
  This conclusion leads as straight to the Fermi Paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox
sbierwagen 11y ago
http://i.imgur.com/tRKbi15.png http://i.imgur.com/tRKbi15.png The actual light graph looks a hell of a lot more like a comet breakup to me than a swarm of solar collectors around the star.
tosseraccount 11y ago
if

Filligree 11y ago

Unless life is relatively common. In that case it's not so odd.

jeremysmyth 11y ago
Life 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 ago
  It'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 ago
    Makes 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-...
- stan_rogers 11y ago
  And it's not just intelligent life, either, when you think about it; it requires intelligible life. It doesn't matter how clever the individual is; without a relatively efficient means of bundling up abstractions and hypotheticals and so on and transferring them from one individual to another, progress is slow, limited and contextually bound. There is something special about language - a serialization scheme for thought - that sets it apart from mere communication, and there is no reason to assume that it's an inevitable natural consequence of individual intelligence. Call it another term in the Drake equation.

cfontes 11y ago

It all depends on how common live and consequently intelligent life is, we currently have absolutely no clue.

david-given 11y ago

If this is life, in a life-as-we-know-it sense, then it tells us that there are two species within a couple of thousand light years in about the same stage of evolution; which suggests that life's going to be everywhere. Assuming one civilisation within a sphere 1000ly in diameter, that makes 16000 in our galaxy alone!

codezero 11y ago
This also assumes life follows some statistical laws at a cosmic scale :)
- david-given 11y ago
  We know that stars follow statistical laws on a cosmic scale, because we can see them, and have mapped them. So it's a reasonable assumption that life which forms round stars, like us, will be distributed the same way as the stars themselves. It's worth noting that KIC 8462852 is an F3 star very similar to our own, which is a G2.
  - codezero 11y ago
    Reasonable assumptions lead us to lots of incorrect conclusions, but I take your point :)
danielhunt 11y ago
Well, it's also possible that there's something special about the Milky Way in particular that makes it just a teensy bit more life-friendly, right?
- jessaustin 11y ago
  It might be a bit early to worry about life densities in other galaxies.
Bouncingsoul1 11y ago
This conclusion leads as straight to the Fermi Paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox

sbierwagen 11y ago

http://i.imgur.com/tRKbi15.png http://i.imgur.com/tRKbi15.png The actual light graph looks a hell of a lot more like a comet breakup to me than a swarm of solar collectors around the star.

tosseraccount 11y ago