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Star exhibits strange light patterns which could be a sign of alien activity

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UltimateUnknown

UltimateUnknown

Member
I wouldn't jump to conclusions on aliens. New objects/phenomenon are always being discovered in space. Last time something similarly big happened where aliens were postulated to be the source after astronomical observations of continuous radio signals from space, pulsars, a new type of object were discovered as the source.

Regardless, this is a very interesting object nonetheless and I'm really curious to know if this will lead to the discovery of something exotic we haven't seen before.
 
DiscoJer

DiscoJer

Member
That it's an F3 star really means aliens are probably not the answer. F stars in general may have life, but realistically, only the cooler, older ones (higher numbers mean cooler) are likely to actually be able to not only support life, but to have that habitable zone be stable long enough for life to evolve. Stars get hotter as they age, so the habitable zone moves, and in this case, the lifespan of the star is really not that high to begin with.

We really only have one data point when it comes to how life evolves, us, but it took 4.5 billion year for us to be here. For a hotter F star, its lifespan is probably only 3 billion. My math is rusty, but basically it's 4x the luminosity of the Sun, but only about 1.5x as massive. That means it's got a much shorter lifespan because it's using up fuel at a much faster rate and only has about 50% more.

Indeed, now that I think about it, maybe this is happening because it's running out of hydrogen? Like a car running out of gas, it would probably sputter for a bit before its completely out.
 
E

Ether_Snake

安安安安安安安安安安安安安安安
DiscoJer said:
That it's an F3 star really means aliens are probably not the answer. F stars in general may have life, but realistically, only the cooler, older ones (higher numbers mean cooler) are likely to actually be able to not only support life, but to have that habitable zone be stable long enough for life to evolve. Stars get hotter as they age, so the habitable zone moves, and in this case, the lifespan of the star is really not that high to begin with.

We really only have one data point when it comes to how life evolves, us, but it took 4.5 billion year for us to be here. For a hotter F star, its lifespan is probably only 3 billion. My math is rusty, but basically it's 4x the luminosity of the Sun, but only about 1.5x as massive. That means it's got a much shorter lifespan because it's using up fuel at a much faster rate and only has about 50% more.

Indeed, now that I think about it, maybe this is happening because it's running out of hydrogen? Like a car running out of gas, it would probably sputter for a bit before its completely out.
Click to expand...

Forget it, a sufficiently enough advanced civilization would not be organic anyway. They don't need to be where life is supported.
 
Q

qcf x2

Member
Ether_Snake said:
Forget it, a sufficiently enough advanced civilization would not be organic anyway. They don't need to be where life is supported.
Click to expand...

Possibly. Also, the "not in the a habitable zone/star" handwave argument is pretty silly when you're talking about hypothetical advanced intelligence. It could be their 2nd or 3rd or even 200th solar system. They could and probably would be simply harnessing the energy from a host star. And that's ignoring that we still don't have a clue what conditions are necessary for life to arise. We speculate, and those speculations change frequently.

Tangentially, the idea that an actual highly advanced civilization would still be on their home world is kind of odd to me. I imagine any hypothetical life we find on an earthlike world would be similar to or far behind us technologically. For as awesome as Earth is --and it's perfect, as compared to anything else we've discovered -- it's probably not sustainable long-term. We know the Sun has a time limit, we know there are supervolcanoes and asteroids with our names on them. We are gonna have to spread out, and the place with the most space is... well, space.
 
T

The Mule

Member
qcf x2 said:
Possibly. Also, the "not in the a habitable zone/star" handwave argument is pretty silly when you're talking about hypothetical advanced intelligence. It could be their 2nd or 3rd or even 200th solar system. They could and probably would be simply harnessing the energy from a host star. And that's ignoring that we still don't have a clue what conditions are necessary for life to arise. We speculate, and those speculations change frequently.

Tangentially, the idea that an actual highly advanced civilization would still be on their home world is kind of odd to me. I imagine any hypothetical life we find on an earthlike world would be similar to or far behind us technologically. For as awesome as Earth is --and it's perfect, as compared to anything else we've discovered -- it's probably not sustainable long-term. We know the Sun has a time limit, we know there are supervolcanoes and asteroids with our names on them. We are gonna have to spread out, and the place with the most space is... well, space.
Click to expand...
This reminds me.

Although the idea of terraforming planets like Mars might be an appealing and romantic idea, the practical reality of it isn't very... well, practical. By the time we have the ability to terraform a planet like Mars in any meaningful way, it's likely that we will have a way to store consciousness in artificial vessels, that don't have the sorts of requirements that life, as we traditionally understand it, needs i.e. temperature, moisture, air, food etc.

It would (probably) be far more economical to manufacture new artificial vessels that can house consciousness that it would be to transform an entire planet to support life.

Of course, that's only a solution for preserving human consciousness. If our objective is to preserve all forms of life, then we will probably need to terraform planets (or build massive space stations, that can support life, as artificial nature reserves).
 
U

Unai

Member
DiscoJer said:
That it's an F3 star really means aliens are probably not the answer. F stars in general may have life, but realistically, only the cooler, older ones (higher numbers mean cooler) are likely to actually be able to not only support life, but to have that habitable zone be stable long enough for life to evolve. Stars get hotter as they age, so the habitable zone moves, and in this case, the lifespan of the star is really not that high to begin with.

We really only have one data point when it comes to how life evolves, us, but it took 4.5 billion year for us to be here. For a hotter F star, its lifespan is probably only 3 billion. My math is rusty, but basically it's 4x the luminosity of the Sun, but only about 1.5x as massive. That means it's got a much shorter lifespan because it's using up fuel at a much faster rate and only has about 50% more.

Indeed, now that I think about it, maybe this is happening because it's running out of hydrogen? Like a car running out of gas, it would probably sputter for a bit before its completely out.
Click to expand...

No, that was also discarded long ago. A star running out of hydrogen don't blink.
 
D

DrROBschiz

Member
LookAtMeGo said:
Alien deniers are the worst.
Click to expand...

The speed of light, light years etc..

Just modern physics knowledge in general has done a huge amount of damage to our imaginations regarding interstellar travel

Lol at the OP

over 1000 light years away? An existing life will likely be long gone by the time we discovered this
 
H

HStallion

Now what's the next step in your master plan?
DrROBschiz said:
The speed of light, light years etc..

Just modern physics knowledge in general has done a huge amount of damage to our imaginations regarding interstellar travel

Lol at the OP

over 1000 light years away? An existing life will likely be long gone by the time we discovered this
Click to expand...

If a species could build a mega structure around their star they would have probably been around for a lot longer on the galactic scale than a thousand years.
 
P

PantherLotus

Professional Schmuck
Just thought of something that somewhat solves the 'yes but this star is X light years away and communications with them would be impossible / this activity around this star happened 2000 years ago':

Y'all ever think about the fact that a civilization capable of building something able to block out 20% of its home star's light probably thinks in millenia rather than years (or days, or seconds)? Once a civilization solves the aging problem it's not hard to imagine that 2000 years might be like a day or even an hour from their perspective. Meaning time distances are largely solved by the perspective of the sender and receiver of a message -- and that civilizations capable of sending intra-galactic messages might as well be talking in real time.

Just a thought.
 
G

gofreak

GAF's Bob Woodward
tKRiaLA.png


? ;)
 
R

Respect

Member
Remembered hearing about this a couple years ago. Do aliens exists? Probably. Is it aliens? Well, it could be, it's not impossible, but it's very unlikely.

As a comparison, someone from that same solar system observing our solar system would see a dip of 1% in the suns brightness when the planet Jupiter crosses in front of the sun (1,300 earths = 1 Jupiter).

I'm personally much more excited about the potential discovery of planet nine in our own solar system. (RIP pluto)
 
O

opticalmace

Member
Respect said:
Remembered hearing about this a couple years ago. Do aliens exists? Probably. Is it aliens? Well, it could be, it's not impossible, but it's very unlikely.

As a comparison, someone from that same solar system observing our solar system would see a dip of 1% in the suns brightness when the planet Jupiter crosses in front of the sun (1,300 earths = 1 Jupiter).

I'm personally much more excited about the potential discovery of planet nine in our own solar system. (RIP pluto)
Click to expand...

IIRC, I heard from someone that January-ish will be a good window for possibly discovering that planet nine you mentioned.
 
O

Ovid

Member
New theory.

Abstract
To test alternative hypotheses for the behavior of KIC 8462852, we obtained measurements of the star over a wide wavelength range from the UV to the mid-infrared from 2015 October through 2016 December, using Swift, Spitzer and AstroLAB IRIS. The star faded in a manner similar to the long-term fading seen in Kepler data about 1400 days previously. The dimming rate for the entire period reported is 22.1 ± 9.7 mmag yr−1 in the Swift wavebands, with amounts of 21.0 ± 4.5 mmag in the ground-based B measurements, 14.0 ± 4.5 mmag in V, and 13.0 ± 4.5 in R, and a rate of 5.0 ± 1.2 mmag yr−1 averaged over the two warm Spitzer bands. Although the dimming is small, it is seen at gsim3σ by three different observatories operating from the UV to the IR. The presence of long-term secular dimming means that previous spectral energy distribution models of the star based on photometric measurements taken years apart may not be accurate. We find that stellar models with ${T}_{mathrm{eff}}=7000mbox{--}7100$ K and ${A}_{V}sim 0.73$ best fit the Swift data from UV to optical. These models also show no excess in the near-simultaneous Spitzer photometry at 3.6 and 4.5 μm, although a longer wavelength excess from a substantial debris disk is still possible (e.g., as around Fomalhaut). The wavelength dependence of the fading favors a relatively neutral color (i.e., ${R}_{V}gtrsim 5$, but not flat across all the bands) compared with the extinction law for the general interstellar medium (${R}_{V}=3.1$), suggesting that the dimming arises from circumstellar material.
Click to expand...

http://iopscience.iop.org/article/1...E69D428486198F83420B1D05CB682E.ip-10-40-2-120

Less scientic explanation:

The mystery of the "alien megastructure" star may finally be settled. In 2015, a rumor spread about the star KIC 8462852.

It was proposed that the star might harbor an alien race. The rumor stemmed from the star's unusually unstable brightness. One explanation for the behavior was an alien megastructure called a "Dyson swarm." Now, that possibility has been ruled out.

So, what's actually going on? To find out, scientists used telescopes in space and on the ground. They observed the star in wavelengths invisible to the human eye. What they saw couldn't be explained by a Dyson swarm. They published their findings in The Astrophysical Journal.

When the star dimmed, it dimmed more in the ultraviolet than in the infrared.
This wouldn't be possible with a Dyson swarm because the Dyson swarm would block all light equally. Instead, it's likely a cloud of dust orbiting the star every 700 days. This would explain the long-term dimming of the star over years.

But there's still more research needed. There's also short-term, daily dimmings from this star.
The scientists aren't sure yet if a dust cloud can explain both. Either way, we can now say with more certainty than ever. It's not aliens.
Click to expand...

https://amp.businessinsider.com/tabbys-star-kic-8462852-mystery-explained-dust-cloud-2017-10

Edit: It seems it was already mentioned in the thread. I missed it.
 
K

Koren

Member
The less scientific explanation isn't correct though... Elements in a dyson swarm would heat up, and probably radiate IR back in space, so I can see UV more dimmed than IR.
 
K

Khaz

Member
This wouldn't be possible with a Dyson swarm because the Dyson swarm would block all light equally. Instead, it's likely a cloud of dust orbiting the star every 700 days.
Click to expand...

Why doesn't dust block all light equally though?
 
H

Hermii

Member
Cloud of dust? That’s the most ridiculous thing I ever heard.

The scientists obviously got visited by men in black suits from an unspecified agency.
 
D

DarthWoo

I'm glad Grandpa porked a Chinese Muslim
Hermii said:
Cloud of dust? That’s the most ridiculous thing I ever heard.

The scientists obviously got visited by men in black suits from an unspecified agency.
Click to expand...

Maybe the dust is an alternate form of grey goo that consumed every planet in the system after the aliens lost control? :p
 
L

Lovely Salsa

Banned
The space is so vast that its bound to have a solar system that hit the jackpot that has 2 planets with intelligent life in it.

We, however, will never find any aliens
 
K

Koren

Member
Khaz said:
Why doesn't dust block all light equally though?
Click to expand...
Because energy can't go to nowhere.

A dust particle (or anything for that matter) touched by a photon can basically do two things:
- diffuse the photon
- absorb the photon

In the second case, the temperature of the particule raise (there's also a momentum change, but that's also the case with diffusion).

Any object that has a temperature above 0K emits energy. So the dust particule reemits photons, but now with the same wavelength.


So even if the dust cloud is homogeneous, the spectrum of the light will be changed (probably more IR, less UV).


And if it's not homogeneous, the diffusion can alter the spectrum too. Just look at the sky, especially at dusk. The light you receive directly from the sun is red (blue has been diffused) and the light of the sky is blue/purple, and the result of diffusion by gases in atmosphere.

Imagine a cloud with similar properties in our like of sight, the star will appear redder (and less bright). And a cloud in a different direction than the line of sight will male the star brighter and bluer.
 
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