News Scientists Are Now Even More Confused By Potential "Alien Superstructure"

[brassmonkey]

Within our own galaxy, some astronomers believe there may be a massive piece of alien technology, built to harvest energy from a distant star. The star, KIC 8462852, also known as Tabby's Star, exhibits strange behavior, flickering and dimming, that can't be explained by any known astronomical phenomena. A new, unpublished study posted to arXiv, reports the results of studying images of the star from the Kepler Telescope over the past four years. The paper shows shocking results: the star's luminosity varied, sometimes dipping by 20% over the course of the study period. Even more perplexingly, its total luminosity, or flux, diminished by 4% overall over that time.

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"The part that really surprised me was just how rapid and non-linear [the dimming] was," study author Ben Montet of Caltech told Gizmodo. "We spent a long time trying to convince ourselves this wasn't real. We just weren't able to."

Tabby's Star was first observed in the 19th century, providing scientists plenty of data to reference in their search for answers. Another researcher, Bradley Schaefer of Louisiana State University, published a study earlier this year claiming that the light output of the star has decreased by 19% in 100 years. His claims were highly disputed. Now, this data seems to back up the assertion that the star is dimming at an astonishingly rapid rate, even if Schaefer's data is not totally accurate.

One of the explanations for this phenomena, and the one that has received the most press, is the idea that the star could be flickering and dimming due to an "alien superstructure" that extraterrestrial beings are building around their star as a way, perhaps, to collect energy (these hypothetical structure are known as Dyson spheres). Though there's been no proof of this hypothesis, it also can't be ruled out. The other theories, including that the star is blocked by the debris of a smashed planet, or what's known as "gravity darkening," would go towards explaining parts of the phenomenon, but no current theory could explain it entirely.

"The new paper states, and I agree, that we don't have any really good models for this sort of behavior," Jason Wright, the Penn State astronomer who first suggested the alien superstructure theory said. "That's exciting!"


Scientists Are Now Even More Confused By Potential "Alien Superstructure"

[Bladewire]

[Serge Litehead]

Originally Posted by brassmonkey

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interesting image. if a civilization can produce such effect - a humanoid looking cloud following a planet, this would be the best way to say "Hello World!", letting universe know that you are out there. and then see if any other intelligent and capable form responds with something similar in some future.

it is also good idea if you can use some near by dying star, which definitely will attract attention of any other life form studying cosmos, like we have been doing.

[ilnjscb]

Well the most outlandish and contextually familiar is always the best!

[SilentKnight]

Just as plausible is my theory that the star is controlled by Ontario Liberal Premier Kathleen Wynne - and the aliens simply can't afford their hydro bill.

[adultmobile]

This is the arXiv doc cited and there is no any "alien" word or theory in it:

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1608.01316v1.pdf

There are several theories, of which the alien structure one is the less probable:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KIC_8462852

The pics posted are in fact about the other theories.
For nice sci-fi pictures, the non-scientific daily mail article got quite a few cute ones:

'Dyson sphere' star found to be dimming dramatically - and nobody knows why | Daily Mail Online

I would be really surprised if that was an alien thing.

[mikesouth]

amusing how anytime humans cant explain something it has to be either God or Aliens....

[_Richard_]

there was an interesting comment to the gizmodo article that was posted:

'The biggest axe against it being an alien megastructure project is the fact its an F-type star. F-types only live a couple billion years, depending on mass.

But the drop in the radiant flux... a sustained drop. That could be something far more interesting. If you could do stellar engineering... you could draw the material off an F-type star while altering its core. You could reduce the mass to a G or K star, greatly increasing its lifespan... and gaining trillions upon trillions of tons of raw material with which to build an alien megastructure. It would require core manipulation, as simply removing mass from the star would cause the core to expand and potentially nova. So you’d have to find a way to remove the helium already generated from the core in order to prevent catastrophic instability. Normally helium only migrates outwards very slowly. Most of the sun’s core hydgrogen will be replaced with helium over time, as material takes hundreds of millions of years to migrate out, so that when all the core hydrogen is used it starts fusing helium. The pressure from the outer layers is what allows this fusion collapse, and the additional heat forces the outermost layers to expand further - and that’s why the solar surface expands in the red-giant phase.

This would be a concept as far out on the edge of insanity as possible. But if you have the right technologies available then such a manipulation would be dead simple. It would be ultimately easier than trying to stabilize a red dwarf - although the oops factor would be that one mistake and your engineering effort goes *Boom*.

More importantly, you’d have all the energy you needed to run a form of Helium-to-carbon fusion process... then you could assemble with the energy the components of a Dyson island system. An F-Class star would have more than enough mass and energy to make the production of a Dyson system... a net positive. You could probably produce another sphere capable of englobing a red dwarf as a bonus prize while getting a star that could live another 7-10 billion years out of the F-type. You could even use some of the excess helium to do core manipulation on the red dwarf to stabilize it.

And for those who brush this off as fantasy - well it is. To our current technological level. But if you can operate on that scale and have achieved some form of interstellar spaceflight - especially anything to do with FTL, then you already have the tools to disrupt and destroy stars. Re-engineering them... that would be a massive challenge... BUT! If you were to master that, you would be able to create any kind of second home you like for your civilization without having to destroy an existing civilization or take away a habitable planet. '

[Adnium_Ivana]

All of this just sounds like a slow death of a star...aliens...what a bullshit article written for clickbait

[_Richard_]

Originally Posted by Adnium_Ivana

All of this just sounds like a slow death of a star...aliens...what a bullshit article written for clickbait

ahh no. this is pretty significant, and has been since it was first noticed.

furthermore, this telescope looks at planets and reflections, not the systems sun.

[AdultKing]

They should just ask Paul Markham, I am sure he has the answer!

[ilnjscb]

Originally Posted by mikesouth

amusing how anytime humans cant explain something it has to be either God or Aliens....

There you go. A more powerful being who lives in the sky.

[Phoenix]

Originally Posted by _Richard_

ahh no. this is pretty significant, and has been since it was first noticed.

furthermore, this telescope looks at planets and reflections, not the systems sun.

The more plausible explanation is a broken up planet passing in front of it in non standard orbits. although i certainly want it to be an alien megastructure

[_Richard_]

Originally Posted by Phoenix

The more plausible explanation is a broken up planet passing in front of it in non standard orbits. although i certainly want it to be an alien megastructure

i think that was one of the first explanations.. comets or something passing by the planet. If i recall the problem with the explanation is that it happens 'all the time', so they'd recognize it very quickly, and not even close to a drop of 20%.. more like 3% i think

now they're saying that is has a constant gradual diminishment, as well as that 20% decline, and i don't think they have seen anything like this before

i think at that proximity i would not want it to be an alien.. probably some event and new type of planetary ring

[The Porn Nerd]

It's a fucking Starbucks.
They're everywhere.

[SilentKnight]

Originally Posted by Phoenix

The more plausible explanation is a broken up planet passing in front of it in non standard orbits. although i certainly want it to be an alien megastructure

Have you seen Independence Day?!