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Astronomers may have found giant alien 'megastructures' orbiting a star in the Milky Way


andrew123

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No, because they just ruled out some other natural possibilities except of the cold comets. After all, I expect dusts to glow at some wavelength... Where is that ?

Regarding location of obstruction: you'll need more lightcurve to tell that. Much like how mythbusters won't pass rigorous peer review : not enough data.

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4 minutes ago, YNM said:

No, because they just ruled out some other natural possibilities except of the cold comets. After all, I expect dusts to glow at some wavelength... Where is that ?

Regarding location of obstruction: you'll need more lightcurve to tell that. Much like how mythbusters won't pass rigorous peer review : not enough data.

You dare insult Mythbusters? :(

Unless you have a huge budget, and was strictly 100% science based.... then Mythbusters wont stand up to anything... its an entertainment show first and foremost and doesn't claim to be super geeky with the science.... having said that, Scientists love the show and cannot fault the show at all... some have tried to duplicate the findings and end up coming out in support of Jamie and Adam.

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I never really agreed that comets can block as much as 22% of a F-type star, so for the past few months I have been studying the possibility of KIC 8462852 being a long period binary, which as far as I can tell wasn't been ruled out by the original kic paper.
Here are some intriguing images.
http://imgur.com/a/6335i

Edited by Beduino
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Maybe you should look up the difference in radial velocity due to their movement... For a star to be eclipsing binary, they'll have to be in a near-90 degree inclination, so have no worries in not getting any double-spectrum data. Then buy some telescope time, at sites equipped with michelson interferometer.

Unless it's not going that way, or is beyond limit (too small radial velocity). I haven't checked.

Edited by YNM
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39 minutes ago, YNM said:

Maybe you should look up the difference in radial velocity due to their movement... For a star to be eclipsing binary, they'll have to be in a near-90 degree inclination, so have no worries in not getting any double-spectrum data. Then buy some telescope time, at sites equipped with michelson interferometer.

Unless it's not going that way, or is beyond limit (too small radial velocity). I haven't checked.

Actually you do have a problem with getting double spectrum if one star outshines the other which seems to be the case, one star is likely 4 times more luminous than the other, so you get a single line spectrum. This isn't measured with a interferometer but with a spectroscope, including the radial velocity.

Regarding the radial velocity, they only measure it for a year, when it could takes decades to see say half of the periodicity, so there's still not enough data to rule out anything using radial velocity. I have not detailed it there, but the theoretical wobble in radial velocity of long period binaries fits the data just as well as their original interpretation of constant radial velocity.

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18 hours ago, Stargate525 said:

It wouldn't increase efficiency if they needed to burn several thousand dV to get down to the lower orbit. If they built the panels in the orbit of an asteroid belt or something, you save on logistics.

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

If there are asteroids near the star (or a inner planet) then the Delta V problem is mitigated significantly.

 

And in any case, it's probably more economical to fuze hydrogen from a ice/gas giant directly and beam the power... Does this star have any giant planets orbiting it?

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13 hours ago, Beduino said:

Regarding the radial velocity, they only measure it for a year, when it could takes decades to see say half of the periodicity, so there's still not enough data to rule out anything using radial velocity. I have not detailed it there, but the theoretical wobble in radial velocity of long period binaries fits the data just as well as their original interpretation of constant radial velocity.

Well, take a data each week ?

Edited by YNM
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19 minutes ago, RenegadeRad said:

We need to build a wall

If this is indeed an alien megastructure, we'll have enough bricks.

 

But let's hope this just a giant space moth somewhere between us and KIC 8462852, from time to time flapping with its wings.

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On 26.3.2016 at 5:13 PM, Beduino said:

I never really agreed that comets can block as much as 22% of a F-type star, so for the past few months I have been studying the possibility of KIC 8462852 being a long period binary, which as far as I can tell wasn't been ruled out by the original kic paper.
Here are some intriguing images.
http://imgur.com/a/6335i

Interesting. Would we not discover the radial movement of the stars?  its another method to find planets, limited to larger ones but this is stars. 
The two stars would also have different emissions, on the other hand it might be so simple its stupid :) You look for planets so you don't see stars

Off topic would the outer planets in your system around the large star be stable?

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8 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Interesting. Would we not discover the radial movement of the stars?  its another method to find planets, limited to larger ones but this is stars. 
The two stars would also have different emissions, on the other hand it might be so simple its stupid :) You look for planets so you don't see stars

Off topic would the outer planets in your system around the large star be stable?

About the radial velocity, yes we can see the wobble for binary stars much easier than planets, because it's big wobble, the problem is that they only took measurements for a year after the RV was maximum near the possible periastron and concluded it was constant, but the catch is, the orbital period can be several decades, you will barely see any change in radial velocity in one year of data.

I superimposed the data, to the theoretical radial velocity plot and it fits the data just as nice as their interpretation of constant velocity. See here. http://imgur.com/Eb6fCGR

So it would be better to have at least 5 to 10 years of RV data to conclude anything.

Regarding your last question, yes it's possible to have more planets and maybe some dwarf stars inside the hill spheres of both stars. This would alter the mass of the system, it could make the large star have a smaller semi major axis, hence smaller radial velocity.

So yeah, it's a hard problem that could only be really solved with more data, bigger telescopes, better tech.

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  • 4 weeks later...
Quote

Most of the proposed scenarios are ruled out due to the lack of any infrared excess.

So, not Dyson, too.

A giant space cocoon, and they are building it at least since 1890.
"Star is faded by 0.2..20%"
So, we have (2016 - 1890) / 20 * 80 = 500 years until they finish.

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On April 27, 2016 at 0:54 PM, kerbiloid said:

So, not Dyson, too.

A giant space cocoon, and they are building it at least since 1890.
"Star is faded by 0.2..20%"
So, we have (2016 - 1890) / 20 * 80 = 500 years until they finish.

Earth has been able to see it since 1890. The star is thousands of lightyears away. So presumably they started 1606 years ago. 

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What if an interstellar body - like a much smaller group of comets, or dust, or unbound planets, were trans-versing the empty space between our system and theirs, and just got in the way. It wouldn't have to be large to block that much light, and it could be a spherical body with planets or rings that could cause the (uneven at times) drops in light. I'm sure somebody more educated than I can deduce what it would take to give the same results using interstellar objects.

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7 minutes ago, WestAir said:

What if an interstellar body - like a much smaller group of comets, or dust, or unbound planets, were trans-versing the empty space between our system and theirs, and just got in the way. It wouldn't have to be large to block that much light, and it could be a spherical body with planets or rings that could cause the (uneven at times) drops in light. I'm sure somebody more educated than I can deduce what it would take to give the same results using interstellar objects.

Just so you know, I read that in Obi Wan's voice.

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2 hours ago, WestAir said:

What if an interstellar body - like a much smaller group of comets, or dust, or unbound planets, were trans-versing the empty space between our system and theirs, and just got in the way. It wouldn't have to be large to block that much light, and it could be a spherical body with planets or rings that could cause the (uneven at times) drops in light. I'm sure somebody more educated than I can deduce what it would take to give the same results using interstellar objects.

considering it happened twice, aliens might be more likely

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1 hour ago, Spaceception said:Oh.

I was about to say;

lLxCoWM.jpg

:(

Hoping we find another example in the near future!

Don't get so excited, let the scientist do their job, aside from that we think a dyson like sphere would be the best way of making lots of power, in a 100 years that could be a quaint silly idea.

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12 hours ago, WestAir said:

What if an interstellar body - like a much smaller group of comets, or dust, or unbound planets, were trans-versing the empty space between our system and theirs, and just got in the way. It wouldn't have to be large to block that much light, and it could be a spherical body with planets or rings that could cause the (uneven at times) drops in light. I'm sure somebody more educated than I can deduce what it would take to give the same results using interstellar objects.

Hmm... I don't know the precise way to calculate it, but assuming two equal stick on different distance will have it's angular size inverse wrt distance, then :

A Jupiter-sized object passing the star within the system (doesn't matter where) : 1% -> 0.1 "angular diameter"

Measured brightness dip : 20% -> 0.4 "angular diameter", four times larger

Distance needed for the Jupiter-sized object to appear 4 times larger would be 4 times closer to home than KIC 8462852, which corresponds to ~110 pc away.

 

Still plausible. Maybe a loose binary rogue planet ?

Edited by YNM
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