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Just an hour ago, I learned about Przybylski's Star. [0] > Przybylski's observations indicated unusually low amounts of iron and nickel in the star's spectrum,

Just an hour ago, I learned about Przybylski's Star. [0] > Przybylski's observations indicated unusually low amounts of iron and nickel in the star's spectrum, but higher amounts of unusual elements such as strontium, holmium, niobium, scandium, yttrium, caesium, neodymium, praseodymium, thorium, ytterbium, and uranium. While the explanation is likely some unknown natural process, salting a star with an impossible chemical composition might also be a way for a technological species to create a monument, correct? This seems like it would involve moving less mass around than a Dyson Sphere/Swarm, although it would need a constant feed, if I understand the situation correctly. Astonishingly, there appears to be no contemporary analysis of this star. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Przybylski%27s_Star https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Przybylski%27s_Star "The Star That Shouldn't Exist" - Prof. David Kipping https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maMDGZOD3mI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maMDGZOD3mI "Why is There Plutonium in This Star? Przybylski’s Star with David Kipping" - Event Horizon https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUbjdaPy4mw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUbjdaPy4mw

consumer451 2y ago
> Astonishingly, there appears to be no contemporary analysis of this star. I should have stated: there appear to be no contemporary observations of this star. Also, one of the more interesting things to me is that ytterbium, for example, has a half-life which is measured in days.
- consp 2y ago
  > Also, one of the more interesting things to me is that ytterbium, for example, has a half-life which is measured in days. Which ytterbium are you talking about? It has 7 observationally stable isotopes[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotopes_of_ytterbium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotopes_of_ytterbium
  - consumer451 2y ago
    Yeah, you are correct. My brain is a bad model lately, since Advanced Neuro Lyme Disease. I synthesized the information from those podcasts + google poorly. This is depressing.
    - consp 2y ago
      There are plenty of possible signatures (though uncertain) of actinides in there as well, some of those -could- have short lifetimes so not that far off.
      - consumer451 2y ago
        Thanks, but I should have caught that. The good news is now that my brain is not as good at the details [0], I may finally be a good fit for a management role (: [0] It's actually getting a lot better, I hit brain-rock-bottom a year ago. I literally could not think at all. Damn those ticks.
        bloopernova 2y ago
        I'm really sorry that happened to you, Lyme is bad stuff :( I kinda want neighbourhood opossum farms, since the opossums eat those bastard ticks.
        consumer451 2y ago
        Thanks. The crazy thing is that I never noticed any bites, that's how it got so advanced. I only know that's what it was for a fact due to blood tests, which I only got after I started to lose my freaking eyesight. After recovery, my brother and I laughed about this once he pointed out that I do in-fact live in a village called Deer Mountain (loose translation.) Like what does one expect? They are deer ticks, after all. Also, I love opossums! I grew up with them in The States, but we don't seem to have them here in Europe.
        diego898 2y ago
        Thanks for sharing your experience- I hope you continue recovering and improving. I live in a high tick area as well. Did you notice any symptoms before the eyesight? I had a few bites but since the rashes went away my doc said no need for antibiotics unless rashes come back or I get flu like symptoms, etc.
bcherny 2y ago
Also see Greg Egan’s Diaspora, really great sci-fi that explores this idea.
- kryptn 2y ago
  That was my thought exactly, it sounded right out of a Greg Egan story.
api 2y ago
Maybe instead of a cosmic scale nuclear waste stir fry there’s something orbiting or around that star making its spectrum look funny. Of course that’s just as sus if not more. Aim JWST at that thing.
- consumer451 2y ago
  > Aim JWST at that thing. Yes please! It's less than 300M light-years away! It's crazy that we haven't done this from the ground recently. One of the issues is that it's in the Southern sky. According to Prof. David Kipping, ~"The guys who are into these weird things have somehow never heard about this star, it just got lost in the shuffle." Also, Kipping mentioned that some of the research was Czech-based, and not in English, which may have also been a factor. My very uneducated guess was that two planet-like objects smashed, and there is some cloud around the star which gave those weird spectrographs? However, this makes my dumb theory sound unlikely: https://youtu.be/maMDGZOD3mI?t=435 https://youtu.be/maMDGZOD3mI?t=435 TL:DW; Shortlived elements like Einsteinium should not be there. We really need to take a closer look.
  - Qem 2y ago
    > My very uneducated guess was that two planet-like objects smashed, and there is some cloud around the star which gave those weird spectrographs? Another guess: it got close to a neutron star merger, and was showered with high atomic number debris. Heavy elements can be produced in mergers of such stars.
    - consumer451 2y ago
      Something which might align with this guess is that this type of star apparently has an extremely strong magnetic field which could trap, and excite those particles? However, assuming that it's not misidentification, would it be fair to say that new physics would have to be discovered to explain things like Americium and Einsteinium?
      - Qem 2y ago
walkabilitee 2y ago
One could also imagine a huge rotating, sun-orbiting ring with alternating openings that blinks a out message to astronomical observers, perhaps in some form of Morse code or binary.
- consumer451 2y ago
  That is what I always used to imagine as our monument, maybe the Fibonacci sequence via orbiting star shades. Or maybe that's too natural, maybe a binary sequence via orbiting star shades. However, while I ain't no city-slickin' Kardashev Type II orbital mechanic, all those star shades might not be in a stable orbit over hundreds of millions of years. They might require some propulsion for station keeping. That sounds hard for anyone, across those time scales, especially as the star grows. It might be "easier" for longevity, to terraform a Mercury type planet with unnatural chemicals, then smash a large off-plane comet into it, to create a band of non-star weird chemicals which would fall into the star and should last for millions of years, giving it a one-in-a-billion spectrograph? edit: Come to think about it a bit more, I would argue that the latter solution is entirely within our technological grasp nearly today, as a pre-Kardashev scale civilization.
  - paulddraper 2y ago
    The typical sci-fi answer is primes Irregular but mathematically significant/recognizable.
    - walkabilitee 2y ago
      [dead]
supportengineer 2y ago
I feel like it is the duty of every intelligent species in the universe to create such monuments. Because we all have the same question. Are we alone?
- m_a_g 2y ago
  It's just the opposite, actually. Game theory reveals that the best thing an intelligent species can do is to hide. (The dark forest hypothesis)
  - macintux 2y ago
    I imagine it depends on whether interstellar travel is practical. If intelligent species come to the conclusion that they’re forever isolated, a monument seems a rational, almost inevitable choice.
    - m_a_g 2y ago
      And how do you know you're forever isolated? There are things you don't know that you don't know. No rational species would ever build a monument IMO, and again, game theory supports this so far.
      - kolinko 2y ago
        If you have physics solved then you may be able to prove that you are isolated. As for the game theory - in practical scenarios you want to use conflict theory by shelling, because game theory is too simplistic.
    - aurareturn 2y ago
      You can build a Dyson sphere and channel the radiation of a star directly to the planet to destroy it that way.
  - IncreasePosts 2y ago
    How can game theory tell us that hiding from a malicious civilization is a safer choice than exposing ourselves to a benevolent civilization that could rescue us from some danger impossible for us to handle?
Udo 2y ago
> salting a star with an impossible chemical composition might also be a way for a technological species to create a monument, correct? It's an impossible composition from a nuclear physics point of view, since the star shouldn't be producing these atoms, and they can't be part of the initial makeup of the star since they're unstable elements and would long be gone by now. The most likely explanation is still that something randomly collided with the star. If it's a monument, then it certainly is the right one to send a (very vague) message far into the future, "we were here". > This seems like it would involve moving less mass around than a Dyson Sphere/Swarm It's a bit weird to compare two endeavors we haven't even tried yet, but making a Dyson swarm seems vastly easier than this. To pull off the salting of a star, you'd need to constantly manufacture vast amounts of exotic radioactive materials. A Dyson swarm may be massive (although there would be very light-weight ones you could build if the only function was to be a monument), but it's "just" a lot of solid bodies orbiting a star. A star salter, on the other hand, would require way more complex engineering.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
jakeogh 2y ago
Listening to the second vid @50min 298-flevorium (ununquadium) was mentioned: https://www.rsc.org/periodic-table/element/114/flerovium https://www.rsc.org/periodic-table/element/114/flerovium
seanhunter 2y ago
No contemporary analysis. Except maybe https://www.nature.com/articles/189739a0.pdf https://www.nature.com/articles/189739a0.pdf Or perhaps https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/477/3/3791/4964763?login=false https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/477/3/3791/4964763?lo... Or maybe you mean https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02702326 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02702326 Ok sure but there's definitely nothing like https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11963-008-1005-7 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11963-008-1005-7 or https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1086/127965/pdf https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1086/127965/pdf or https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/3-540-09994-8_43 https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/3-540-09994-8_43 or ... There are hundreds of contemporary analyses of that star. Just search for HD 101065 and you'll find tons and tons of them.
- consumer451 2y ago
  Thanks, I missed the edit window to fix that to read: no contemporary observations,[0] though thanks to you I now realize even that might be not correct. Given your research on these papers, do you think that this is still an object worthy of closer observation with even more modern tools? [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40400059 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40400059
  - seanhunter 2y ago
    Not an astrophysicist by any stretch of the imagination, but it's definitely an object that's worthy of close research. People are for sure doing that research as well. It takes time to produce serious scientific research though.

consumer451 2y ago

> Astonishingly, there appears to be no contemporary analysis of this star. I should have stated: there appear to be no contemporary observations of this star. Also, one of the more interesting things to me is that ytterbium, for example, has a half-life which is measured in days.

consp 2y ago
> Also, one of the more interesting things to me is that ytterbium, for example, has a half-life which is measured in days. Which ytterbium are you talking about? It has 7 observationally stable isotopes[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotopes_of_ytterbium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotopes_of_ytterbium
- consumer451 2y ago
  Yeah, you are correct. My brain is a bad model lately, since Advanced Neuro Lyme Disease. I synthesized the information from those podcasts + google poorly. This is depressing.
  - consp 2y ago
    There are plenty of possible signatures (though uncertain) of actinides in there as well, some of those -could- have short lifetimes so not that far off.
    - consumer451 2y ago
      Thanks, but I should have caught that. The good news is now that my brain is not as good at the details [0], I may finally be a good fit for a management role (: [0] It's actually getting a lot better, I hit brain-rock-bottom a year ago. I literally could not think at all. Damn those ticks.
      - bloopernova 2y ago
        I'm really sorry that happened to you, Lyme is bad stuff :( I kinda want neighbourhood opossum farms, since the opossums eat those bastard ticks.
        consumer451 2y ago
        Thanks. The crazy thing is that I never noticed any bites, that's how it got so advanced. I only know that's what it was for a fact due to blood tests, which I only got after I started to lose my freaking eyesight. After recovery, my brother and I laughed about this once he pointed out that I do in-fact live in a village called Deer Mountain (loose translation.) Like what does one expect? They are deer ticks, after all. Also, I love opossums! I grew up with them in The States, but we don't seem to have them here in Europe.
        diego898 2y ago
        Thanks for sharing your experience- I hope you continue recovering and improving. I live in a high tick area as well. Did you notice any symptoms before the eyesight? I had a few bites but since the rashes went away my doc said no need for antibiotics unless rashes come back or I get flu like symptoms, etc.

bcherny 2y ago

Also see Greg Egan’s Diaspora, really great sci-fi that explores this idea.

kryptn 2y ago
That was my thought exactly, it sounded right out of a Greg Egan story.

api 2y ago

Maybe instead of a cosmic scale nuclear waste stir fry there’s something orbiting or around that star making its spectrum look funny. Of course that’s just as sus if not more. Aim JWST at that thing.

consumer451 2y ago
> Aim JWST at that thing. Yes please! It's less than 300M light-years away! It's crazy that we haven't done this from the ground recently. One of the issues is that it's in the Southern sky. According to Prof. David Kipping, ~"The guys who are into these weird things have somehow never heard about this star, it just got lost in the shuffle." Also, Kipping mentioned that some of the research was Czech-based, and not in English, which may have also been a factor. My very uneducated guess was that two planet-like objects smashed, and there is some cloud around the star which gave those weird spectrographs? However, this makes my dumb theory sound unlikely: https://youtu.be/maMDGZOD3mI?t=435 https://youtu.be/maMDGZOD3mI?t=435 TL:DW; Shortlived elements like Einsteinium should not be there. We really need to take a closer look.
- Qem 2y ago
  > My very uneducated guess was that two planet-like objects smashed, and there is some cloud around the star which gave those weird spectrographs? Another guess: it got close to a neutron star merger, and was showered with high atomic number debris. Heavy elements can be produced in mergers of such stars.
  - consumer451 2y ago
    Something which might align with this guess is that this type of star apparently has an extremely strong magnetic field which could trap, and excite those particles? However, assuming that it's not misidentification, would it be fair to say that new physics would have to be discovered to explain things like Americium and Einsteinium?
    - Qem 2y ago

walkabilitee 2y ago

One could also imagine a huge rotating, sun-orbiting ring with alternating openings that blinks a out message to astronomical observers, perhaps in some form of Morse code or binary.

consumer451 2y ago
That is what I always used to imagine as our monument, maybe the Fibonacci sequence via orbiting star shades. Or maybe that's too natural, maybe a binary sequence via orbiting star shades. However, while I ain't no city-slickin' Kardashev Type II orbital mechanic, all those star shades might not be in a stable orbit over hundreds of millions of years. They might require some propulsion for station keeping. That sounds hard for anyone, across those time scales, especially as the star grows. It might be "easier" for longevity, to terraform a Mercury type planet with unnatural chemicals, then smash a large off-plane comet into it, to create a band of non-star weird chemicals which would fall into the star and should last for millions of years, giving it a one-in-a-billion spectrograph? edit: Come to think about it a bit more, I would argue that the latter solution is entirely within our technological grasp nearly today, as a pre-Kardashev scale civilization.
- paulddraper 2y ago
  The typical sci-fi answer is primes Irregular but mathematically significant/recognizable.
  - walkabilitee 2y ago
    [dead]

supportengineer 2y ago

I feel like it is the duty of every intelligent species in the universe to create such monuments. Because we all have the same question. Are we alone?

m_a_g 2y ago
It's just the opposite, actually. Game theory reveals that the best thing an intelligent species can do is to hide. (The dark forest hypothesis)
- macintux 2y ago
  I imagine it depends on whether interstellar travel is practical. If intelligent species come to the conclusion that they’re forever isolated, a monument seems a rational, almost inevitable choice.
  - m_a_g 2y ago
    And how do you know you're forever isolated? There are things you don't know that you don't know. No rational species would ever build a monument IMO, and again, game theory supports this so far.
    - kolinko 2y ago
      If you have physics solved then you may be able to prove that you are isolated. As for the game theory - in practical scenarios you want to use conflict theory by shelling, because game theory is too simplistic.
  - aurareturn 2y ago
    You can build a Dyson sphere and channel the radiation of a star directly to the planet to destroy it that way.
- IncreasePosts 2y ago
  How can game theory tell us that hiding from a malicious civilization is a safer choice than exposing ourselves to a benevolent civilization that could rescue us from some danger impossible for us to handle?

Udo 2y ago

> salting a star with an impossible chemical composition might also be a way for a technological species to create a monument, correct? It's an impossible composition from a nuclear physics point of view, since the star shouldn't be producing these atoms, and they can't be part of the initial makeup of the star since they're unstable elements and would long be gone by now. The most likely explanation is still that something randomly collided with the star. If it's a monument, then it certainly is the right one to send a (very vague) message far into the future, "we were here". > This seems like it would involve moving less mass around than a Dyson Sphere/Swarm It's a bit weird to compare two endeavors we haven't even tried yet, but making a Dyson swarm seems vastly easier than this. To pull off the salting of a star, you'd need to constantly manufacture vast amounts of exotic radioactive materials. A Dyson swarm may be massive (although there would be very light-weight ones you could build if the only function was to be a monument), but it's "just" a lot of solid bodies orbiting a star. A star salter, on the other hand, would require way more complex engineering.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

jakeogh 2y ago

Listening to the second vid @50min 298-flevorium (ununquadium) was mentioned: https://www.rsc.org/periodic-table/element/114/flerovium https://www.rsc.org/periodic-table/element/114/flerovium

seanhunter 2y ago

No contemporary analysis. Except maybe https://www.nature.com/articles/189739a0.pdf https://www.nature.com/articles/189739a0.pdf Or perhaps https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/477/3/3791/4964763?login=false https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/477/3/3791/4964763?lo... Or maybe you mean https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02702326 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02702326 Ok sure but there's definitely nothing like https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11963-008-1005-7 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11963-008-1005-7 or https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1086/127965/pdf https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1086/127965/pdf or https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/3-540-09994-8_43 https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/3-540-09994-8_43 or ... There are hundreds of contemporary analyses of that star. Just search for HD 101065 and you'll find tons and tons of them.

consumer451 2y ago
Thanks, I missed the edit window to fix that to read: no contemporary observations,[0] though thanks to you I now realize even that might be not correct. Given your research on these papers, do you think that this is still an object worthy of closer observation with even more modern tools? [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40400059 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40400059
- seanhunter 2y ago
  Not an astrophysicist by any stretch of the imagination, but it's definitely an object that's worthy of close research. People are for sure doing that research as well. It takes time to produce serious scientific research though.