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

[Streetwind]

Every new study just throws up more questions... what a fun object to observe this must be for astronomers

I maintain that JWST can't get up there fast enough, and hope that there will by some time allotted to KIC 8462852.

[Wjolcz]

What about a system like this one, except with the planet being tilted 90 degrees? Would a ring system like this be stable with the orbit lasting ~750 (IIRC) days around Tabby's star?

[magnemoe]

3 hours ago, Veeltch said:

What about a system like this one, except with the planet being tilted 90 degrees? Would a ring system like this be stable with the orbit lasting ~750 (IIRC) days around Tabby's star?

A huge ring  around a planet could block out an star, however it should show up in ir and it would be more regular than the data shows. Yes if an moon broke up interaction with other moons could throw patches out too generating clouds in solar orbit. 
I think this is ruled out as being the first obvious reason, second was an planetary crash like the one created moon. 
 

[kerbiloid]

 

First ten seconds. (Caution: loud sound)

Spoiler

 

 

[Wjolcz]

11 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

 

First ten seconds. (Caution: loud sound)

  Hide contents

 

 

Sooo aliens use their dyson sphere to mess with the climate of a nearby life-bearing planet by blocking out some light and cause long-lasting winters just for the lulz.

Money well spent.

[crazyewok]

What about a inert  black hole sitting in interstellar  space between  us and the star?

 

Its drawn in everything around it hense no X-ray  radiation  to  detect.

[Green Baron]

The long term dimming is probably an artifact cause other stars dimmed as well .

As has been stated before, the flickering could be explained through debris around the star.

No 'artificial' emissions where detected from the star. Ok, it's 1500ly away ...

 

But well, of course that will not keep people from speculating :-)

 

Edited August 10, 2016 by Green Baron

[magnemoe]

7 hours ago, Green Baron said:

The long term dimming is probably an artifact cause other stars dimmed as well .

As has been stated before, the flickering could be explained through debris around the star.

No 'artificial' emissions where detected from the star. Ok, it's 1500ly away ...

 

But well, of course that will not keep people from speculating :-)

 

Problem is that normal junk should have an IR emission, that is debris from an planet collision or an large ring system around an planet, as I understand an comet swarm from an disruption like another star could explain it.
Looking at earth for an day from 1000 light years would also probably not show any emissions. 
Now keeping an watch on the star would be interesting, see if we get more dimming or if the ones we got repeats themselves. Not sure that type of telescopes would be needed if they only watch this star. 
Yes its probably an natural event however even an comet swarm would be something like the late heavy bombardment would be interesting, could you spot an impact of an large comet hitting an planet? 
For seti I would watch it for an WOW signal event, some chance something like an search radar or communication laser in our direction if you watch over time. 

[Green Baron]

10 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Yes its probably an natural event however even an comet swarm would be something like the late heavy bombardment would be interesting, could you spot an impact of an large comet hitting an planet?

I don't know, but i don't think so. The star itself filled only like 3 pixels +/- bloom. I have no idea what the resolution of the instruments (radio wave, ir, optical) is but i think it's way above a single star at 1500ly.

There is a picture of the disc of Beetlejuice somewhere, i think it was interferometric. But that is *huge* (10 AU diameter ?) and nearer.

The brightness-measurement of a single star is quite exact, i don't know how narrow ir or radio radiation measurements are.

A piti that no astronomers are in here :-)

 

Edited August 11, 2016 by Green Baron

[magnemoe]

3 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

I don't know, but i don't think so. The star itself filled only like 3 pixels +/- bloom. I have no idea what the resolution of the instruments (radio wave, ir, optical) is but i think it's way above a single star at 1500ly.

There is a picture of the disc of Beetlejuice somewhere, i think it was interferometric. But that is *huge* (10 AU diameter ?) and nearer.

The brightness-measurement of a single star is quite exact, i don't know how narrow ir or radio radiation measurements are.

A piti that no astronomers are in here :-)

With an impact I was thinking how much energy it released compared to the star and also the frequency of the light. not see the impact itself. 
For radio or laser you could ignore the star, still you need to be lucky that it was pointed in our direction, probably years between each time. 

[kurja]

48 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

I don't know, but i don't think so. The star itself filled only like 3 pixels +/- bloom. I have no idea what the resolution of the instruments (radio wave, ir, optical) is but i think it's way above a single star at 1500ly.

There is a picture of the disc of Beetlejuice somewhere, i think it was interferometric. But that is *huge* (10 AU diameter ?) and nearer.

The brightness-measurement of a single star is quite exact, i don't know how narrow ir or radio radiation measurements are.

A piti that no astronomers are in here :-)

 

Beetlejuice 

 

There are only a dozen or so stars that have been resolved as disks, Betelgeuse being one of them, it's angular size of abt 50 milli arc seconds makes it the second largest star in our sky after the Sun (30 arc minutes) I believe.

[Wjolcz]

Wouldn't a dyson sphere piece radiate the heat away? I probably don't know much about how radiators work, but if something gets a huge amount of solar power it also heats up, doesn't it? And what't better place than the back of the structure to get rid of excess amounts of heat?

Wouldn't that kind of heat radiation show up as well?

Edited August 13, 2016 by Veeltch

[Aethon]

Most certainly waste heat needs to be radiated away.  A swarm would glow in the infrared around 300k though an advanced society could certainly have ways to channel this waste heat up toward the galactic pole instead of out past the majority of the stars in the galaxy.

 

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/2000ASPC..213..581J

Edited August 13, 2016 by Aethon

[Wjolcz]

1 hour ago, Aethon said:

up toward the galactic pole

Why there though? To remain undetectable?

[Aethon]

Yes.  Up out of the galactic plane where the majority of other star systems are.

[cypher_00]

They have now found a second star with large dips in its brightness.

EPIC 204278916 with dips up to 65%

What could it be?

http://www.sciencealert.com/researchers-just-found-a-second-dyson-sphere-star

[kerbiloid]

3 minutes ago, cypher_00 said:

What could it be?

Vorlon _{EPIC 204278916} and Z'Ha'Dum _{KIC 8462852} .

[Green Baron]

Hypothesis from the linked article: a protoplanetary disc edge-on towards us.

http://arxiv.org/abs/1608.07291

Yet unpublished.

 

[CptRichardson]

15 hours ago, Green Baron said:

Hypothesis from the linked article: a protoplanetary disc edge-on towards us.

http://arxiv.org/abs/1608.07291

Yet unpublished.

 

I can already say that it fails sanity checks, as the star is dimming more as time goes on, and there still isn't any sign of a infrared shift from orbiting material.

[Green Baron]

4 hours ago, CptRichardson said:

I can already say that it fails sanity checks, as the star is dimming more as time goes on, and there still isn't any sign of a infrared shift from orbiting material.

If you mean that KIC-star ("Tabby's"), the long term dimming was identified as an artifact. At least that was my last info on it ... don't have the link present right now ... But even if it was so then why would a protoplanetary disc not be able to explain a long term dimming ?

Edited September 3, 2016 by Green Baron

[Streetwind]

23 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

If you mean that KIC-star ("Tabby's"), the long term dimming was identified as an artifact. At least that was my last info on it ... don't have the link present right now ... But even if it was so then why would a protoplanetary disc not be able to explain a long term dimming ?

That was months ago. Since then, new studies have argued that it is in fact not an artifact, because the dimming can be observed even with the same instrument (thus removing errors between instrument generations) over just a few years. Link can be found a few posts up here in this thread.

Edited September 3, 2016 by Streetwind

[Green Baron]

Sorry, the 100year-dimming is assumed to be artifact (study from 10 of May, equipment upgrade), the several years dimming not.

Or am i confusing something ? Pls. poke my nose at it :-)

Also, we are just mixing up Tabby's KIC-xxxx and EPIC-xxxx, the latter is the one with 65% dimming and the protoplanetary disc and basis of the yet unpublished paper i linked 4 posts above. The authors suggest to apply the same thoughts on KIC-xxxx ...

[CptRichardson]

12 hours ago, Green Baron said:

If you mean that KIC-star ("Tabby's"), the long term dimming was identified as an artifact. At least that was my last info on it ... don't have the link present right now ... But even if it was so then why would a protoplanetary disc not be able to explain a long term dimming ?

No, the 'artifact' explanation was written off as Kepler detected an overall long-term dimming trend that slowly intensified over the course of the observations and matches up with previous observations.  You are probably indeed mixing things up between Tabby's and this EPIC star.

[Green Baron]

In the other thread on memory consumption someone got little upset as well. So it might be me ... i hope not :-)

 

Tabby's long term dimming (100 years, the cause that led to the thing that someone could be building a dyson-sphere) can be an artifact: http://www.sciencemag.org/news/sifter/equipment-upgrades-fueled-alien-star-hypothesis.

Tabby's short(ish) term dimming (stuffing flying around the star) through the Kepler mission is ok.

EPIC's short term dimming (stuff flying around the star) is assumed to be caused by a protopl. disc (see my link above). EPIC has such a disc. You say that paper fails a sanity check, i say you're judging too quick if you don't have better information at hand. If you have i'd all be glad to see it.

Furthermore the authors of the EPIC paper suggest to apply the protopl. disc thoughts to KIC. KIC might have a disc as well but we may not see it as it could be perfectly edge-on, edit but it could explain the short term dimmings.

:-)

 

Edit: Tabby = KIC

Edited September 3, 2016 by Green Baron

[PB666]

Why exactly is this thread still active?