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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe strange star that has serious scientists talking about an alien megastructure
It was kind of unbelievable that it was real data, said Yale University astronomer Tabetha Boyajian. We were scratching our heads. For any idea that came up there was always something that would argue against it.
She was talking to the New Scientist about KIC 8462852, a distant star with a very unusual flickering habit. Something was making the star dim drastically every few years, and she wasnt sure what.
Boyajian wrote up a paper on possible explanations for the stars bizarre behavior, and it was published recently in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. But she also sent her data to fellow astronomer Jason Wright, a Penn State University researcher who helped developed a protocol for seeking signs of unearthly civilization, wondering what he would make of it.
To Wright, it looked like the kind of star he and his colleagues had been waiting for. If none of the ordinary reasons for the stars flux quite seemed to fit, perhaps an extraordinary one was in order.
Aliens.
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More at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/10/15/the-strange-star-that-has-serious-scientists-talking-about-an-alien-megastructure/
Rex
(65,616 posts)It will be interesting to see what comes from this as technology advances.
Logical
(22,457 posts)Art_from_Ark
(27,247 posts)I just know it is.
Rex
(65,616 posts)Could be worse, could turn out to be a borg home world!
katsy
(4,246 posts)over the gop
Rex
(65,616 posts)It is like an unwritten rule that everyone knows the GOP is worst group of lifeforms in the known galaxy.
Angry Dragon
(36,693 posts)Basic LA
(2,047 posts)Good one.
LongTomH
(8,636 posts)Fumesucker
(45,851 posts)Which means it has a considerably shorter lifespan than Sol, the brighter stars are the shorter lived they are.
That means any aliens there either came from somewhere else or evolved intelligence a good bit faster than we have.
Interestingly for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere the star is almost directly overhead at sunset this time of year.
longship
(40,416 posts)From hottest, most massive, shortest lived to coolest, least massive, longest lived.
The stellar classes of main sequence (ordinary) stars are:
OBAFGKM, with 0-9 sub-classes, 0 being the hottest, down to 9.
Sol (the Sun) is a G3, for comparison.
Stellar classifications
So as Fumesucker indicates, this star is a whole class hotter, more massive, shorter lived than Sol.
backscatter712
(26,355 posts)...when you remember the above star classes as "KGB FOAM". OK, I get them out of order this way, but this is how I remember which classes of stars I can surf with the fuel scoop to refuel.
Good to remember - you probably don't want to try to scoop fuel from a neutron star...
longship
(40,416 posts)Because even a teaspoonful...
As Mr. Spock might say, "this material is likely pure neutronium. It is unlikely that any phaser would disrupt its structure."
backscatter712
(26,355 posts)Even if you had transporter technology from the Enterprise, if you beamed a teaspoonful of neutronium onboard your ship, if it wasn't contained somehow, say inside the warp core, it would immediately explode like a few zillion nuclear bombs.
And then you've got some hazards like spaghettification, intense radiation, magnetic fields so strong they'll rip you to atoms and scramble your credit cards.
Oh, and the entire neutron star, with the mass of an entire star, crammed into a space the size of Manhattan, is spinning as fast as a kitchen blender.
Rex
(65,616 posts)But grinding for the python and then the anaconda can get a little bit tedious.
Humanist_Activist
(7,670 posts)they could be, for lack of a better word, emigrated to a previously unoccupied system.
Fumesucker
(45,851 posts)I kind of suspect that any civilization creating structures that size has moved beyond the merely biological anyway, sacks of impure water are so fragile and impermanent and require ridiculously stringent environmental standards lest they involuntarily expire.
Fun to talk about but more than likely there is some entirely reasonable explanation that does not involve sentient aliens building Ringworld-sized objects.
Humanist_Activist
(7,670 posts)Marr
(20,317 posts)ladjf
(17,320 posts)fluctuation is possibly due to alien causes. Unless there are other examples of unexplained changes, this dilemma needs to be studied by physicists.
Logical
(22,457 posts)lumberjack_jeff
(33,224 posts)Rex
(65,616 posts)Astrophysicists. So maybe they know of what they speak about, far better than any of us.
LongTomH
(8,636 posts)On Phil's Bad Astronomy page: Did Astronomers Find Evidence of an Alien Civilization?
Now lets have a care here. The paper doesnt mention aliens, and it doesnt even imply aliens. Not directly, at least. But the astronomers found a star so odd, with behavior so difficult to explain, that its clear something weird is happening there. And some of the astronomers who did the work are now looking into the idea that what theyve found might (might!) be due to aliens.
After discussing the possibility that these 'dips' might represent an alien 'Dyson Sphere' under construction, Phil still asserts:
Logical
(22,457 posts)Takket
(21,562 posts)from the hubble maybe?
Logical
(22,457 posts)Takket
(21,562 posts)ZX86
(1,428 posts)A very large gas giant planet in a large orbit? Or perhaps a small black hole orbiting the star? Sounds more plausible than an intelligent civilization building an artificial structure large enough to dim a star's brightness.
Logical
(22,457 posts)Fumesucker
(45,851 posts)Plus gas giants only get so big, Jupiter is close to the maximum diameter of a gas giant.
http://www.universetoday.com/13757/how-big-do-planets-get/
Bear in mind that due to increased gravity compressing the gases further a 15 Jupiter mass gas giant isn't 15 times the size of Jupiter, about the same size actually.
http://astronomy.stackexchange.com/questions/8440/maximum-and-minimum-gas-giant-ice-giant-densities
yuiyoshida
(41,831 posts)Tommy_Carcetti
(43,174 posts)Takket
(21,562 posts)Xyzse
(8,217 posts)Yep, we dropped the ball.
Omaha Steve
(99,593 posts)Very good article.
K&R!
OS