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

[kerbiloid]

It's an egg. It basks.

Spoiler

19 hours ago, Green Baron said:

With future generation telescopes like 30 and 40m main mirrors and many others that are planned or under construction, including space telescopes, very large baseline interferometry.

+100!

Ptui on Mars! Go Titan!

Also we need a telescope in 550 AU from the Sun in the opposite direction.
Probably, this will take about a century.

[Streetwind]

4 hours ago, YNM said:

Just asking : does the latest dips also shows a massive reduction in brightness ?

The news article linked on the previous page showed the beginning dip to already be down 2.5% and still falling. I've not seen updated info with the full dip graph so far.

For reference: the previously recorded dips were down as much as 22%. A planet the size of Jupiter would barely occlude 1% of the light from that star.

[YNM]

24 minutes ago, Streetwind said:

The news article linked on the previous page showed the beginning dip to already be down 2.5% and still falling. I've not seen updated info with the full dip graph so far.

For reference: the previously recorded dips were down as much as 22%. A planet the size of Jupiter would barely occlude 1% of the light from that star.

Hmm...

Now this is a puzzle. I hope it's their idea of saying "hey, we're here", which makes more sense than sending garbled message in a wavelength probably not native to life.

Alternatively this is something much closer, either to the star or to us.

Edited May 21, 2017 by YNM

[Green Baron]

It is probably a mistake to think that something external is dimming these stars. Just because we find almost all of the et planets by means of the transit method doesn't mean that every lightcurve dip from a star is the result of something occulting it.

Edited May 21, 2017 by Green Baron

[YNM]

3 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

It is probably a mistake to think that something external is dimming these stars. Just because we find almost all of the et planets by means of the transit method doesn't mean that every lightcurve dip from a star is the result of something occulting it.

Well, for all it's worth it could be something to do with the star's atmosphere, maybe some weird glitch Ae/Be star kind where the bulge are somehow not aligned the usual way with rotation, but that would cause emission lines during the dips. Now I wonder does anyone bother recording the spectra during the whole dip.

Or it's a rotating nebula, like homunculus. But we should see more drama than just this...

Or is it in a flash state ?

Edited May 21, 2017 by YNM

[Green Baron]

 

Well, right now, concerning dimming stars, we are in a state of "searching for an explanation". Maybe a few models need to be reworked, idk.

Aliens would close the case immediately but then we'd have a problem in the future: What is done by aliens and what is natural ? That'll be a bad bad day for natural science as everything could be done away with as "made by aliens". That's what i'm (and others are) "preaching": he who let the aliens out of the box in the context of yet unexplained phenomena didn't serve science well, in contrary.

And i fear that as data of telescopes etc. come in, the pile of open questions will grow.

 

Edited May 21, 2017 by Green Baron

[YNM]

I know. It's a bit like beliefs. But the main point of science is, IMO, adhering to results; any explanation that doesn't cause the whole thing is not an explanation. And it gets worse that it might be a one-off thing.

This needs a good research. No matter what the outcome is. We might figure something we never knew about.

Edited May 21, 2017 by YNM

[K^2]

9 hours ago, Green Baron said:

It is probably a mistake to think that something external is dimming these stars. Just because we find almost all of the et planets by means of the transit method doesn't mean that every lightcurve dip from a star is the result of something occulting it.

It is when it is brief and periodic. Dips observed so far are exactly timed in duration and periodicity to a large cloud of something orbiting that star at 1.83AU with low ecentricity. Anything having to do with star itself would either be not nearly as pronounced or not periodic.

The only thing worth discussing is source of the cloud. Debris field of some sort is most likely, with star impact leading the polls, but I don't think planet-planet has been properly excluded. A terrestrial world passing too close to a gas giant can produce exactly this sort of field without leaving a thermal signature of an impact. Yes, prior is low for such event, but it is a much better fit for orbit of the cloud.

[Green Baron]

3 minutes ago, K^2 said:

The only thing worth discussing is source of the cloud.

Well, to be precise, it may well be but it is not sure whether there is a cloud or some"thing" that periodically moves in the line of sight. This solution is advertised by many, often in conjunction with a colourful picture, but it is not the only one. Right now far too little is known about possible causes, including processes inside of stars, and speculations sprawl.

[Spaceception]

Oooh, nice.

 

[Scotius]

Curiouser and curiouser. Debris cloud would be mostly oval in shape, no? Unless it is being perturbed by sufficiently big mass nearby. It might be remains of a planet torn apart by a close encounter with a gas giant. But a debris cloud big and dense enough to significantly occlude almost 1\4 of a parent star? That's a sight to behold

[kerbiloid]

Probably if it were, say a pair of gas giants, eating each other, and making a cloud of gas and dust, this would emit much heat and be locally hotter than just 29°.
So, unlikely a gas giant skyfall takes place.

21 hours ago, Green Baron said:

What is done by aliens and what is natural ? That'll be a bad bad day for natural science as everything could be done away with as "made by aliens". That's what i'm (and others are) "preaching": he who let the aliens out of the box in the context of yet unexplained phenomena didn't serve science well, in contrary.

But if aliens did it, then, in contrary, they can be trying to reinvent a game engine physics. To discover physical laws looking at PhysX rendering.

[Streetwind]

So it wasn't a super-deep dip. It only went down ~2.5%. Still significant, but not what we were really looking for, I guess...

However, the shape does match a previous Kepler event very closely:

This could definitely be some sort of orbiting debris field IMHO. It doesn't feel like a single solid object could produce this shape, and a conjunction of planets would not repeat this precisely unless there's a super unusual amount of orbital resonance going on. (And even then we'd have to have seen partial dips before.)

[Scotius]

What if we are looking at the remains of planetary collision event? Similiar to pre-Earth\Theia collision that created the Moon? Maybe there are two or more big remnants of a shattered world, surrounded by a dense cloud of dust and rocks? And all of this is in the process of coalescing back into something akin to Earth - Moon pair. More and less dense clumps in this cloud could explain weird light curve and differences between current and earlier transfer.

[Streetwind]

The problem is the sheer magnitude. If a planet the size of Jupiter would occlude roughly 1% of the light from that star, then an event that occludes 2.5%-3% is highly unusual. An object three times the size of Jupiter would be approaching brown dwarf status, and likely emit enough radiation to be detectable on its own.

And now consider that we recorded two dips way stronger than that, one of which went down to 22% less brightness. Any single object of that size that isn't artificial or a singularity would be a star itself.

So we're looking at two distinct events here, I feel. The lesser dips, which could potentially be explained with a debris field from a planetary collision... if two super-earths of considerable size collided. Like, both of them as large as you can possibly make a rocky planet, way larger than anything we have in our solar system. And it would have to be a very recent event, so the debris hasn't had time to spread out yet. But even then it would be a stretch.

And then the greater dips, which still defy all explanation - and also haven't been observed a third time so far. But here's hoping, considering the fact that the star now seems to be under near-constant scrutiny.

 

There's also an additional problem with the debris field hypothesis, which is that such a thing should distinctly show up in IR, because all that starlight caught by smallish particles would radiate off into space as heat. But we saw nothing of the sort. I'm giving it the benefit of doubt in the sense that Kepler wasn't equipped to make such observations in the first place, and this is the first time we have a chance to get actual spectra taken; but it's certainly not guaranteed.

Edited May 22, 2017 by Streetwind

[YNM]

Have to agree - debris doesn't block light, they redden it.

Hence why I was asking whether anyone took a spectrograph of the whole event.

This is not debris, IMO. Something more bizzare.

Edited May 22, 2017 by YNM

[Spaceception]

49 minutes ago, YNM said:

This is not debris, IMO. Something more bizzare.

1

You mean like, a- NO SPACECEPTION, DON'T SAY IT!!

 

Ahem, sorry for that. I agree with both you and Streetwind, and this thing must be really crazy, but what if it was debris, from an al- NO I'M NOT GOING THERE.

We really have to think outside the box to figure this out, maybe we could set up a huge chat and have everyone throw in their craziest ideas (That doesn't include you-know-who), then we break them down one by one, and mold them with other ideas until we have something that could make sense. It could be overseen/helped by astronomers working on it, we could name it the chat, W T F is this

Get it?

Edited May 22, 2017 by Spaceception

[Green Baron]

17 minutes ago, Spaceception said:

*snip* W T F is this

Get it?

W T F ? I got it :-)

I don't participate in the guessing until more is known. I have not seen any more publications on KIC 8462852 or any other dimming star in the last half year, and i actually find the waiting for more serious thoughts an this more thrilling than the speculations about aliens, superstructures and sunken civilisations (which btw. all are human concepts).

:-)

Edited May 22, 2017 by Green Baron
where's the flux ? not what !

[Spaceception]

12 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

W T F ? I got it :-)

I don't participate in the guessing until more is known. I have not seen any more publications on KIC 8462852 or any other dimming star in the last half year, and i actually find the waiting for more serious thoughts an this more thrilling than the speculations about aliens, superstructures and sunken civilisations (which btw. all are human concepts).

:-)

 

Well, the purpose would be to provide possible explanations for them to test more thoroughly, but I can see where you're coming from.

[Mitchz95]

Could it be something, or a bunch of somethings, in our Oort cloud rather than in that system? There'd be a lot less light to block.

[Spaceception]

4 hours ago, Mitchz95 said:

Could it be something, or a bunch of somethings, in our Oort cloud rather than in that system? There'd be a lot less light to block.

I don't think so. It'd be a pretty big coincidence that a few objects in the Oort cloud just happened to line up to pass in front of this star, what is it, every 2 years or so? It's definitely in that system. 

Edited May 23, 2017 by Spaceception

[Green Baron]

1 hour ago, Spaceception said:

... port cloud ...

How about the starbord cloud ? 

Edited May 22, 2017 by Green Baron

[K^2]

7 hours ago, Green Baron said:

How about the starbord cloud ? 

Out!  ()

Anyways, since this was just a 3% event, my 756 day estimate is slightly off. But the degree to which this matched the last 3% event is astonishing. This suggests another 20% event is incoming. If anything, that makes orbit more Earthlike, in terms of solar flux. As likely as that is to be a coincidence, that's still amazing.

I hope, all doubt of this periodicity being due to orbital period of something is burried at this point. That kind of perfect repitition would have to be artificial otherwise. But the fact that we missed a whole event in 2015 is highly unusual. The only explanation that comes to mind is a gas giant orbiting at high inclanation w.r.t. orbit of whatever this cloud is, causing the star to shift out of plane of orbit.

Do we have red shift data on Boyajian's star? I would love to run it through a model to see if it happens to confirm such oscillations. If we are lucky on inclanations, of course.

 

P.S. No change in spectrum observed so far. So solid objects then, at least hundreds of microns range. That mostly excludes dust and gas. So much for comets. But also excludes fresh impact.

I've ran out of ideas that don't involve aliens, and I'm not ready to accept aliens.

 

P.P.S. Scratch that, I have a plausible explanation! The 20% dip is caused by a dense asteroid ring. The 3% dip by a brown dwarf. It is massive enough to wobble the star in and out of the plane of the belt. 3% dips are half as frequent as 20% and later can vary in intensity based on density of the asteroid field. It matches, and you've read it here first.

Unfortunately, totally not habitable zone then, nor aliens. But might be publishable. I'm going to go check numbers.

Edited May 23, 2017 by K^2

[Streetwind]

@K^2 - Tabetha Boyajian and others around her are very active on Twitter, if you want to talk to them directly. There's also a subreddit she links to, and probably is active on.

[monophonic]

8 hours ago, Spaceception said:

I don't think so. It'd be a pretty big coincidence that a few objects in the Oort cloud just happened to line up to pass in front of this star, what is it, every 2 years or so? It's definitely in that system. 

Likewise if a single something in the Oort cloud happened to orbit another something there with circa 2 year period. Infinitesimal probability?