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I've often thought planet TrEs-2b [0], the darkest planet ever discovered orbiting a star, would be the best candidate for extra terrestrial life. My theory is
by thereisnoself 3y ago
I've often thought planet TrEs-2b [0], the darkest planet ever discovered orbiting a star, would be the best candidate for extra terrestrial life. My theory is that its darkness is down to the fact that the civilisation there has figured out a way to harness solar energy to near 100% capacity, along the lines of a Dyson sphere [1].
[0] https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/exoplanet-catalog/1716/tres-2-b https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/exoplanet-catalog/1716/tres-2-b
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- dmazin 3y agoThat’s an interesting exoplanet, though not sure how someone would live on a gas giant.
- thereisnoself 3y agoI don't think it makes sense for a humanoid species, but silicon based, perhaps? Iain M Banks' The Algebraist [0] has a near immortal species called Dwellers that manage it somehow :) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Algebraist#:~:text=Dwellers%20are%20one%20of%20the,the%20foundation%20of%20the%20Mercatoria https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Algebraist#:~:text=Dweller....
- dekhn 3y agothis is one of my favorites by Banks. Really mind-twisting.
- downWidOutaFite 3y agoPresumably gas planets have a layer dense enough that a solid would float.
- dotancohen 3y agoAnd not melt?
- wongarsu 3y agoMaybe they don't. They might live on a rocky planet further out and just use TrES-2b as a place to run their solar farm because it's extremely close to their star and (due to being uninhabited) didn't have any NIMBYs opposing large-scale construction projects. Note how far out from the planet's orbit NASA expects the habitable zone. We aren't very good yet at finding planets that aren't huge or nearly hugging their star, so there might be planets out there.
- exe34 3y agoTo be fair, if your solar farm can be in orbit around a planet that's not your legal address for tax purposes, it can just orbit the star?
- wongarsu 3y agoMaybe building on the planet had some advantages during construction, like easier delivery or being able to use local resources. Or maybe the atmosphere helps with thermal management. Or being on a planet is useful for the infrastructure that does something with all that power (beaming it to other planets, producing solid, liquid or antimatter fuel for export, refueling space ships or robots, etc). Tax purposes. Diplomatic reasons, maybe there are established protocols for owning planets but large scale light blocking installations in orbit would upset a neighboring nation (though you suspect their opposition has more to do with simmering tensions over the Agreppo peninsula than with concerns about the impact on agriculture). There are plenty of plausible reasons, probably all wrong.
- edgyquant 3y agoCould be legacy reasons. Maybe they initially built it around this planet, or maybe they’re from a moon in or it around it, and now it provides more than enough energy for their needs. I find people looking for aliens always expect them to be doing the most efficient thing and forgoing any semblance of history.
- exe34 3y agoAww man would be so cool to meet aliens and they show us around their stuff, and it all seems really dumb and convoluted, and they hate it too, but it would be too expensive to rip it all out and start over...
- exe34 3y agoIn accelerando by Charlie stross, they live on raft that covers a large percentage of the planet's sky.
- wolverine876 3y agoMaybe they live on a moon or two.
- julienchastang 3y agoThe NASA exoplanet visualizer is very cool. Did not know about that. Thanks for sharing. I imagine those hypothetical visualizations will improve over time as our understanding of the exoplanet data gets better. It is amazing what you can derive from a single pixel of light.
- PoignardAzur 3y agoNot sure why, but the visualizer is giving me a strong urge to boot Outer Wilds again.
- h4x0rr 3y agoLove that game
- lisper 3y ago> My theory is that its darkness is down to the fact that the civilisation there has figured out a way to harness solar energy to near 100% capacity, along the lines of a Dyson sphere [1]. Very unlikely, in light of the fact that "the air of this planet is as hot as lava".
- bloggie 3y agoIsn’t that the expected outcome when energy production eventually outpaces the planet’s ability to dissipate energy into space?
- lisper 3y agoNo. The temperature of the atmosphere has nothing to do with whether or not aliens are harvesting the energy. At equilibrium, all of the incoming energy has to get radiated back out into space eventually whether there are aliens harvesting that energy or not. The problem with an atmosphere hotter than lava is that very few materials are solid at those temperatures, and it's hard to imagine how a civilization could build an energy harvester without solid materials.
- theossuary 3y agoThis is a great video that touches on your point, the Earth must radiate the heat it receives to stay in equilibrium, even if it uses it to do work in the process. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxL2HoqLbyA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxL2HoqLbyA
- im3w1l 3y agoIf we extract the maximum possible entropy of the incoming radiation wouldn't that mean we radiated at high-intensity but low-temperature?
- landryraccoon 3y agoWhat does that mean? Everyday objects don't work like that. Saying ice cubes are cold is roughly equivalent to saying that they radiate less heat than the objects around them. If they radiated at "high intensity" then they wouldn't be cold anymore. "A cold object that radiates heat at high intensity" is a contradiction.
- holoduke 3y agoThat would be a strong alien to deal with 1.5 Jupiter gravity :)
- ars 3y ago> My theory is that its darkness is down to the fact that the civilisation there has figured out a way to harness solar energy to near 100% capacity, along the lines of a Dyson sphere That doesn't work quite the way you think. If you harness all the energy your planet will start to glow, first red, then white. Eventually becoming as hot as your star, at which point you stop gaining energy. Unless they are somehow converting that energy to matter, the laws of thermodynamics mean that all that energy eventually becomes heat.
- bjelkeman-again 3y agoTake incoming energy and make antimatter. Store for use outside of the sphere. That will be my premise for the book I am writing. ;)
- ars 3y agoMake equal amounts of matter and antimatter (you would have to anyway) and store them together in some kind of sealed power-unit. Like Starget ZPM.
- samatman 3y agoHarvesting energy is a misnomer, what we want is the syntropy: the available work. If we turned the Earth into a black body and used all Solar radiation to run computers or move stuff around at the theoretical limit, we'd still need the surrounding space to radiate off the heat as our cold well. So the temperature would be at whatever that equilibrium condition is, but wouldn't steadily increase. The equilibrium condition could be all over the place and would be largely determined by the composition of the atmosphere. For the record I'm not in favor of paperclipping the planet like this. If anyone was wondering.
- shiroiushi 3y ago>If we turned the Earth into a black body and used all Solar radiation to run computers >For the record I'm not in favor of paperclipping the planet like this. If anyone was wondering. We should do this with Venus instead. It isn't doing anything useful at the moment, and is closer to the Sun than Earth. Mercury might be easier though.
- 31carmichael 3y agoNope, we are alone....