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Comets can't explain weird 'alien megastructure' star after all
- natch 11y agoOne possibility not mentioned is that the expert who eyeballed the old photographic plates to determine that there was a slight dimming did not do so under double blind conditions, and his assessment is tainted. I don't mean to suggest this supports one hypothesis or another. But I'm not convinced his opinion on the dimming is so valuable if it was done without proper controls. There may very well have been proper controls, but unfortunately that didn't come through in the article.
- whatever_dude 11y agoThe by-eye measurement was done by the author himself, so you have a point. Still, apparently that measurement was much simpler (using only 131 of the plates; the digital measurement used 1232) and only done to be sure that the dimming was not a byproduct of the digital analysis method. In other words, the real data for the paper is based on digital analysis, not on the by-eye measurement. More importantly, according to the paper, there were 5 control stars also measured digitally. They didn't show the dimming. The paper's graph (http://arxiv.org/pdf/1601.03256v1.pdf http://arxiv.org/pdf/1601.03256v1.pdf) plots two of them.
- throwaway_yy2Di 11y agoThe author used both methods, eye measurements, as well as digitized light curves from scanned plates. The paper has a graph of the latter. It's actually easy to replicate, the data is online. http://arxiv.org/abs/1601.03256 http://arxiv.org/abs/1601.03256 http://dasch.rc.fas.harvard.edu/lightcurve.php http://dasch.rc.fas.harvard.edu/lightcurve.php (You can download this star under the name "J20061546+4427248"; the KIC identifier doesn't seem to work).
- nonbel 11y agoYes, came to say the exact same thing. I am not at all familiar with the photographic plate procedure, but it seems likely there is room for all sorts of tinkering with parameters like gain, lighting conditions, white balance, whatever that would allow any bias to shine through.
- Sanddancer 11y agoThe aperture, exposure time, etc would all be recorded with the plate, so any bias would be absolutely minimal. Additionally, photographic plates don't have a single star on them, but rather a field of stars, so any overall bias would be applied equally to the entire field and weighted out.
- alberte 11y agoThat could be possible - though we'd like to believe other wise the human eye isn't well calibrated. After all maps of the canals of mars came about from eye balling - and they never existed.
- sandworm101 11y ago>>> “The alien-megastructure idea runs wrong with my new observations,” he says, as he thinks even advanced aliens wouldn’t be able to build something capable of covering a fifth of a star in just a century. What’s more, such an object should radiate light absorbed from the star as heat, but the infrared signal from Tabby’s star appears normal, he says. That seems a rather unambitious approach to possible alien tech. We today clearly could not build, or think of how to build, such structures. That isn't to say that the technology isn't possible, just that we do not understand it. If aliens were able to create and fly structures of such size I think it safe to say they would also be in possession of tech we cannot contemplate.
- ealexhudson 11y agoIn general I agree, but the lack of radiation is a real problem - we would need to have some fundamental error in our understanding of thermodynamics for their tech to be capable of that. That, or the structure itself isn't collecting the energy but only [somehow] redirecting visible wavelength light.
- sandworm101 11y agoLike a mirror? Or a mirror that selectively reflects certain wavelengths but not others?
- perseusprime11 11y agoGuys these are just solar panels. Their race is better at alternative forms of energy than us.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- toothrot 11y agoI appreciate that the article referenced Bowie's "Space Oddity" and "Starman"
- kordless 11y ago> “The alien-megastructure idea runs wrong with my new observations,” he says, as he thinks even advanced aliens wouldn’t be able to build something capable of covering a fifth of a star in just a century. Oh, really? So we are speaking for alien's abilities now because we don't believe in them or their abilities to build things? That sounds like a cognitive bias. Here's another bias in the same vein: > “No flying machine will ever fly from New York to Paris …[because] no known motor can run at the requisite speed for four days without stopping.” - Orville Wright What Orville should have said was, "No flying machine will fly from New York to Paris until we develop a motor that can run at the required speed without stopping until it gets there."
- WiseWeasel 11y agoAnd his second justification is even more baffling: > "What’s more, such an object should radiate light absorbed from the star as heat, but the infrared signal from Tabby’s star appears normal, he says." As if intelligent beings with an interest in capturing a fifth of a star's output would only be absorbing the human-visible spectrum of its radiance.
- idlewords 11y agoIt's a thermodynamic argument, not an anthropocentric one. Irrespective of your technology, you can't just absorb all the energy of a star without re-radiating it, unless you want to cook yourself inside a gigantic space thermos.
- WiseWeasel 11y agoUnless you can store, transmit and use it in a way that doesn't radiate energy omnidirectionally. My guess: universe's biggest indoor pot grow.
- idlewords 11y ago"Bro, point it away from that planet. That place is crawling with cops!"
- Figs 11y agoCould there be something weird going on with the star itself? For example, could it be producing super large sunspots or something like that?
- iaw 11y agoI suspect that fusion/fission models don't allow for the way it's being observed.
- Sanddancer 11y agoPossibly a new variety of variable star, like the Beta Cephi and slowly pulsating stars [1]? The article doesn't have any information as to what sort of spectrographs, etc have been taken. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slowly_pulsating_B-type_star https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slowly_pulsating_B-type_star
- duncancarroll 11y ago+1 for "Funky Star" hypothesis. This seems just as probable/improbable as any other speculation, including (meme joke) "Aliens."
- coldcode 11y agoI always wondered if perhaps a rocky planet broke apart. Could still be aliens or some kind of massive collision.
- tzs 11y ago> “The alien-megastructure idea runs wrong with my new observations,” he says, as he thinks even advanced aliens wouldn’t be able to build something capable of covering a fifth of a star in just a century. Thet could have built it over hundreds or thousands of years. All we can infer is that if it is aliens, they deployed it in just a century.
- andrewflnr 11y agoWhen we're taking some solar-system-spanning megastructures, it's not clear that the dichotomy between building and deploying actually exists.
- tzs 11y agoMaybe, but I think it is plausible there would be. Suppose we wanted to build a set of megastructures for collecting solar energy. I'd guess we'd get the materials from the asteroid belt, or by taking apart Mars (or maybe Mercury or Venus, if we want to keep Mars for terraforming). I'd guess we'd set up the construction area for building the megastructures in the same general orbit where we get the raw materials, or we might move the materials to somewhere near Earth. For deployment, though, we'd want to move these closer to the Sun, because you collect more energy per unit area the closer you are to the Sun. If we are putting them closer than Earth is to the Sun, though, we'd probably want them away from Earth's orbital plane so we wouldn't have the annoyance of them blocking out the Sun on Earth. An observer at some other solar system is only going to see our megastructures if we've got them in an orbit whose plane intersects the observer's solar system. Those who can see them when they are under construction won't see them anymore when we shift them from construction orbits to deployment orbits, and those who can see them after we put them in deployment orbits won't see them before that when they are in construction orbits. Another possibility is that what we are seeing is a redeployment. Maybe they were originally deployed in one configuration which from our vantage point was not visible, and then due to other future projects that configuration was no longer optimal and so they moved them to a new configuration which is visible to us.
- andrewflnr 11y ago
- mrfusion 11y agoI'd be curious if anyone evaluated the fluctuations to look for a signal. If aliens had the technology, dimming a star might be a smart way to communicate with less advanced civilizations.
- xgbi 11y agoWell, when the frequency of your dimming spans across a century (and only for 20%).. you'll be long dead when the bit has flipped.
- onestone 11y agoThe sci-fi novel "The Dark Forest" by Chinese writer Liu Cixin describes a similar phenomenon. In that case it was achieved by detonating bombs to produce "interstellar dust clouds", in order to cause flickering of the light from the star, visible from other systems. Maybe the aliens from KIC 8462852 read Chinese sci-fi novels.
- danek 11y agoThat's interesting. Perhaps there is some "natural" process that's producing dust clouds.
- spyrosk 11y agoDisclaimer: I have a layman's understanding (at best) of astrophysics. Couldn't this be explained by an orbiting planet colliding with another body and breaking apart? Couldn't this satisfy the number of "comets" required for the hypothesis?
- madaxe_again 11y agoI have a degree in physics... and this seems like as reasonable an explanation as any other to date. We know planets migrate, we know large collisions occur, which tend to be followed by periods of bombardment (e.g. Thea/Earth -> Moon, Jupiter from inner to outer system), so the observations, particularly coupled with the gradual but significant dimming, could correspond with Kessler syndrome on a stellar scale. Actually, I say that, but they also address this in the paper - a planetary collision would result in a huge amount of excess heat - infrared - and there isn't any. So scratch that. Whatever did this is cold from our point of view.
- kyberias 11y agoI don't get it. Couldn't it have cooled down already and we're only seeing the junk?
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- madaxe_again 11y agoUnlikely. The only place for thermal energy to escape is into deep space, in the form of infrared radiation. Given that the dimming has been large and recent, it would have to have been a recent collision - which would take millions of years to cool.
- spyrosk 11y agoI see, very interesting. Thank you for the reply!
- JackFr 11y agoIf you take a a purely reductionist approach to existence and sentience, there is no qualitative difference between comet dust cloud and alien megastructure. They're both natural processes, just differing in the degree of complexity.
- idlewords 11y agoHydrogen + time = message board wank
- cnp 11y agoMost would disregard this as a simplistic, unscientific thought, but the problem is they haven't studied the other side of things with any effort. I feel more and more that reality exists as a fractal, and any direction you focus upon yields its own profound truths. Time exists as a constellation of attention -- and this particular go around it happens to lie within the measurable, observable spectrum.
- michaelbuddy 11y agolet's face it, this article was put out for the chance the publication could use the words 'alien megastructure' to grab some views.
- BuckRogers 11y agoMr. Wright claims that these megastructures don't make sense with our technology, but perhaps even for these very advanced aliens this is not easy? Perhaps these are their pyramids? They may well be tossing immeasurable robotic efforts or genetically modified biological suffering at building these megastructures. It's worth considering that this is something extraordinary even for this civilization that is far more advanced than we are. Rather than a hum-ho project for an extremely advanced species (or sentient AI). This is probably a pyramid-scale project.
- pilif 11y agoReminds me of the beginning of "Pandora's Star" by Peter F. Hamilton. If you don't know him already, but you like Sci-Fi, you should definitely consider having a look at his work.
- rbanffy 11y agoTo be fair, the SETI people kind of ruled out radio-emitting aliens as the source. "Aliens did it" is still the worst explanation. It just happens that we ruled out all a lot of better ones.
- n0us 11y agoTo me it is in the same league as those "theories" that support intelligent design that run along the lines of "Well we can't prove God didn't do it" and Ancient Aliens theories where that manic guy with the crazy hair says the same stuff. Filling in knowledge gaps with the the word "aliens" is a laughably childish approach to science in my opinion.
- CamperBob2 11y agoThis line of reasoning is so frustrating. There is no reason to believe that God(s) exist. Someone who claims that they do has the burden of proof. There is also no reason to believe that we Earthlings have the universe all to ourselves. It is an extraordinary claim to suggest that we do. Someone who makes such a claim also bears the burden of proof. The idea that gods and Type II civilizations are equally implausible is, to put it bluntly, ridiculous.
- givan 11y ago> Filling in knowledge gaps with the the word "aliens" is a laughably childish approach to science in my opinion. You are talking about probability of life in the universe based on a tv show, replace aliens with "earth is round" and you will see how ridiculous it sounds.
- mcv 11y ago> To be fair, the SETI people kind of ruled out radio-emitting aliens as the source. That just means they're not aiming a tight radio beam directly at us. But I don't see why they'd be doing that anyway. Aliens that are not trying to talk to us are still a possibility.
- rbanffy 11y agoTo be fair, the SETI people kind of ruled out radio-emitting aliens as the source. "Aliens did it" is still the worst explanation. It just happens that we ruled out all a lot of better ones.
- sakopov 11y agoThere is a thing called the Kardashev Scale[1], which is a way of measuring technological advancements of a civilization. According to the scale there are 3 levels of civilizations and we are not even at the 1st. I've done some reading on this before and the general assumption of many futurists and theoretical physicists is that our brain wouldn't even be able to comprehend what we'd see if we ever witnessed a civilization of the 3rd level. I know it's way out there, but couldn't this be the case here? [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale
- matthewbauer 11y agoCan we get this title changed? It seems excessively click-baity while not making sense. If comets could explain it, it wouldn't be an 'alien megastructure' star, right?
- mangeletti 11y agoThe first thing that comes to mind is that this is probably due to something like a giant dust cloud somewhere close to the star or close to us, and we are or it is moving into position behind it, leading to this dimming.