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And 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
by WiseWeasel 11y ago
And 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!"
- sandworm101 11y agoPerhaps they are bouncing all that energy off-axis. That we cannot see the light doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Perhaps they are reflecting it back on the star for some reason. Or maybe we are seeing a mirror that is pushing some interstellar ship away from the host star. Luckily for us it would be traveling perpendicular to our vantage point, ie not coming here. Perhaps we should be looking for a mobile IR emitter somewhere nearby but accelerating away from this star. (I call dibs on the naming rights!)
- jschwartzi 11y agoYou wouldn't be able to direct all of it off-axis. In order to do any meaningful work with it, some of it must be lost as heat or the entropy of the universe does not increase. That would violate the laws of thermodynamics. Essentially, you can reduce the entropy of an isolated collection of particles, but only at the expense of increasing the entropy of another collection of atoms, and only if you move the entropy around. There's a slim possibility that a sufficiently advanced civilization has improved the efficiency of their process sufficiently to the point where the thermal radiation isn't measurable with our technology, but there still must be thermal radiation if any meaningful work is being done with the harvested energy.
- sandworm101 11y agoYes, but not necessarily thermal radiation aimed in the narrow direction necessary for us to detect it. Thermodynamics does not guarantee that all necessary information propagate in nice measurable spheres for all to see equally.
- krapp 11y ago>unless you want to cook yourself inside a gigantic space thermos Or cook someone else.
- mrfusion 11y agoCouldn't you store the energy? Perhaps as antimatter?
- idlewords 11y agoNot without generating waste heat. It's a fundamental law of nature.