That one star, you know, the one with a possible alien megastructure

[Clovis]

This a fantastic case on why we should increase space funding. We could be, on the verge, of arguably the greatest scientific discovery of mankind. A penny for NASA folks!


In case this you haven't heard - google "mysterious star" or anything along those lines and click any one of the many articles.


Example:


http://gizmodo.com/what-are-the-odds...-li-1737529525


TLDR version: There is a star, 1480 light years away with a unique light pattern, which suggests the possibility of an alien mega structure, along the lines of a Dyson sphere. But without fully encompassing the star, so Dyson ring'ish?





This story broke last week and it's been fascinating and terrifying me ever since. I hope Mr. DT weighs in! Expert in the house!


So, in case this you haven't heard - google "mysterious star" or anything along those lines and click any one of the many articles.


About 1480 light years away, there is a star with a light pattern we have never before observed and can not (yet) definitively explain the cause behind the pattern.


So far, we only have three possible explanations. Planets on some funky orbit has been ruled out. All three are low probability. But, once you rule out the likely, and the rare, you're left with the extraordinary.




But, scientist only were able to observe two transits before Kepler's gyros failed. The 3rd transit, which should have occured in April 2015 was not observed.


Possible causes:


1) A star to star passing, which caused the star to gravitational interact with the passing star's version of an Oort cloud; pulling in a massive number of comets.


2) Collisions, on a planetary scale. Unlikely though, this appears to be a mature star and it's planets would likely be past such growing pains. Then again, there are rogue planets zipping along out there...


3) An artificial, alien mega structure built by a far technologically advanced civizliation.





#1 and #2 would be very short lived (on a cosmic scale) events.
Obviously, number 3 is the one everyone is talking about. And we should be able to definitively confirm or rule out #3 with the Very Large Array next year

Another interesting thing to think about:


Kepler only looked at a relatively tiny portion of the sky and stars within The Milky Way. 145,000 stars I believe? If this does actually turn out to an alien civilization, and we just happened to find it in the tiny patch of sky Kepler observed, then one of two things:


So either:




a) We got extremly, and just happened to be looking at the right place at the right time.


OR


b) Life and civlization must be a lot more common in the Milky way then we think.





Talk about something both exciting and slightly terrifying at the same time!


Who knows? Maybe there is a real life Star Fleet Federation out they're and the just waiting for us to discover the "warp drive", before welcoming us into the Utopian fold?






That's what I'm hoping for at least... Earth joins the real life Star Fleet and then we zip around the cosmos with our Federation of Super Friends Club, banging hot aliens. Awesome!




Or... maybe that star's civilization is the fucking Klingon's and they're only 1500 lights years away. That's like what? a year at Warp 9!? Hell, Voyager did that without breaking a sweat!


Also possible and perhaps even more likely? Artificially-Intelligent, immortal space robots.
#bettergetworkingonthatbattlestar


Either way, I just know what happened to the Indians when they met a far more technologically advanced civlization. And this time, we could be the Indians.


So, how's NASA's warp drive coming along?


http://www.space.com/29363-impossibl...gine-nasa.html

[dirkterrell]

Well, I have been doing the research thing for quite a while now, and I have always tried to keep J.B.S. Haldane's comment in mind:

I have no doubt that in reality the future will be vastly more surprising than anything I can imagine. Now my own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.

(Queerer in the British sense of "stranger".). Is it possible that this is evidence of an alien civilization, sure, it's possible. But Nature is constantly surprising us. And if I had to bet, I'd say that followup observations will reveal some interesting natural phenomenon that we have (comet swarm) or have not yet thought of. The "alien civilization building a Dyson sphere" hypothesis is certainly worth exploring, but I see some obvious physical problems with it.

Dips like this in the brightness of a star are something I have worked on all my professional career. (I discovered the planet in the Kepler 64 system by analyzing such dips. Read about that here: http://blog.planethunters.org/2012/1...tial-modeling/) I will probably take a look at it and see what I think. Whatever it turns out to be, it will be interesting. We'll either conclude that it has something to do with an alien civilization, or some natural phenomenon. My money is on the latter, but only time and a lot of research will tell.

[Spooph]

Yea, we'll have to create a warp signature first for aliens to notice us. I think they're currently ignoring us.

[Clovis]

Cool, so Dirk says it could be aliens = it's definitely aliens!!

So here's an interetesting thought.

So this star is 1480 light years away, which means our earliest radio waves are still 13 centuries away from reaching this star.

What if civilizations advance to the point of sending out radio waves and this starts the clock before the bigger, older civilizations come swooping in to gobble you up and enslave your species? What if you, as a civilization, basically only have 1500-2000 years from the time you begin sending radio waves to become a space fairing species, if for nothing else then to defend yourself against the aliens?

[~Barn~]

Read the blog Dirk. (And had to reread parts!) To say I admire your dedication to the data, would be an understatement. There clearly must be an art to wrapping your head around it all, the patience (presumably) to allow what is necessary to be collected out there in outer space, and then having the steadfast to start crunching it all when you've decided you have enough. I liked how you explained having to account for the data variances caused by the nature of the "instrument" itself! Anyhow.. I just think it's a pretty cool (if not incredible) reconciliation of raw data and refined mathematics. It makes sense now why you also create more traditionally appreciated "art" as well. You do cool shit!

[dirkterrell]

Cool, so Dirk says it could be aliens = it's definitely aliens!!

After my first read of the research paper, I'm giving heavy weight to the comet swarm hypothesis. That idea requires the passage of a nearby star, and guess what they found when they did adaptive optics imaging? Incidentally, we did the same thing with Kepler 64 and found a nearby pair of stars, making it a quadruple star system with a planet. About a decade a go I was arguing that we should be looking for planets in tight binary and multiple star systems, but everyone thought they knew why we wouldn't find them. Now we see them all over the place. Someday people will learn to listen to me.

[dirkterrell]

I liked how you explained having to account for the data variances caused by the nature of the "instrument" itself!!

Thanks Brandon. Over time I have learned that it is VERY easy to fool yourself, unless you are very careful to understand the effects of the instrument itself when drawing conclusions from the data it produces. You have to also be sure that you consider the possibility of pre-conceived notions (i.e. biases) that might be affecting your conclusions when looking at a scientific hypothesis. With Kepler 64, I certainly wanted to find a planet, but the data had to show it conclusively, because riding on what I found was going to be the expenditure of time on telescopes that runs about $250K per night to further characterize the planet. You certainly don't want to whiff on something like that.

If I had a magic wand and could give everyone one capability, it would be to properly think about and discuss scientific issues. Not to make everyone experts on some subject, mind you, but the ability to discuss such topics in a logical way, based on data that we have, and understand when an idea is supported by the data or not. Topics like human-induced global warming would have a very different tenor than they do. Things like "90% of scientists support X" would raise alarms, for example, as an argument to the veracity of an idea. I believe we would be much better off if more people could better understand the process of scientific thinking.

[asp_125]

..Someday people will learn to listen to me.

Love reading your posts about the cosmos.. just don't tell me it's the death star.

[CYCLE_MONKEY]

I saw that in the blogs, just hadn't had time to read anything about it yet. I think the sheer scale of what the "Space Aliens!" crowd thought was going on made it pretty much impossible by ANY civilizations standards. So, I would guess as a SWAG it was something natural.

To expand on Jefe's concern about what happened to the American Indians, there have been any number of primitive civilizations wiped out or almost wiped out by a more advanced one even if the intention was not to wipe them out or take control of them. Think of a disease that is deadly to every lifeform on earth. I think it's a fallacy to believe in even a 50% chance that a more advanced civilization would be friendly to us. And it's not just a "man" thing, it's every more evolved species of life just on planet earth. From us down to single-celled organisms. It's simply about survival of the fittest. Always has been, always will be. And so, I'm really sketched when people want to make contact with an advanced civilization. If they have interstellar travel down, it realistically could mean the end of man, or even all life on earth if they decided they wanted to make a snack out of us or simply eliminate us and take the planet over. So, I really HOPE it's a natural phenomenon.

Always great to have our resident SuperGenius weigh in on it! I'll have to check the link out you posted. Thanks Dirk!