SETI: On the Verge of a Breakthrough?

Finally proof that there are advanced aliens I love it!

Dr. Kaku has weighed in on it now....from another thread just closed by mods:

originally posted by: neoholographic
Dr. Kaku made some observations on CBS about the Kepler discovery. Here's some of the highlights.

“This could be the biggest story in the past five-hundred years,” Michio Kaku explained.

Kaku said that “this star is breaking all the rules” and that “we would have to rewrite astronomy text books” to think anything different.

“Basically if a planet eclipses a Mother Star, goes in front of the Mother Star, starlight drops maybe one percent at maximum–however starlight has been dropping at twenty-two percent,” Kaku explained.

“There is a colossal, humongous, object of some sort blocking the starlight from this star.”

“We’ve ruled out all of the usual suspects; rouge planets, comets, asteroids” and the only thing left is an ‘alien superstructure’ of some type.

“We’re talking about what’s called a Type Two Civilization that could build a gigantic [Dyson] sphere possibly bigger than Jupiter to absorb starlight” to produce energy, which Kaku admits “is right out of science fiction.”

www.intellihub.com... -earth/

Here's a link to the CBS video.

www.cbsnews.com...

I think the fact that this structure reduces starlight by 22% is pretty amazing. Also:

Also, it turns out there are lots of these dips in the star’s light. Hundreds. And they don’t seem to be periodic at all. They have odd shapes to them, too. A planet blocking a star’s light will have a generally symmetric dip; the light fades a little, remains steady at that level, then goes back up later. The dip at 800 days in the KIC 8462852 data doesn’t do that; it drops slowly, then rises more rapidly. Another one at 1,500 days has a series of blips up and down inside the main dips. There’s also an apparent change in brightness that seems to go up and down roughly every 20 days for weeks, then disappears completely.

Also, they have been studying KIC 8462852 since 2009. I think it's smart not to jump to conclusions but these things are exciting because we're infants when it comes to space exploration and we're already making these discoveries. This is just the tip of the iceberg.

I can bet, that "Humans" would kill the type 2 Civilization, "human" history showed before how they deal with Civilizations.

can anybody tell me why a sci-fi thing such a dyson sphere is rapresented as sculpture inside the vatican? hahahah!

a reply to: Hyperia

lol, I would like to see our pissy little type 0 civilisation try attack a type 2.

It would be a bit like one ant trying to attack a human.

Ouch......that stung a bit........squash.

originally posted by: FormOfTheLord
Finally proof that there are advanced aliens I love it!

Evidence there could be, not proof there are.

a reply to: LightAssassin

Somehow i think a type 2 Civilization gave up arms long ago, i would think that a type 2 Civilization is highly xenophobic against human cultural influences..

Like you said ants

originally posted by: FormOfTheLord
Finally proof that there are advanced aliens I love it!

This is not proof of anything other than Kepler detected unusual light fluctuations indicating there is possibly matter surrounding a star. It is not clear what is causing these fluctuations in light and scientists are engaging in exploring possible hypotheses to try to explain this.

Stating this is 'proof of advanced aliens' is pure conjecture with a large dollop of hyperbole.

also if it's a civilization we have to remember they put it there 1500 years ago, i wonder what they are doing now after 1500 years!!!

I heard on my local Am radio station AM 640 Toronto ON. With an interview involving a SETI researcher. The guy said they were not to 'alarmed' by the findings. And they aren't really in a hurry to point their radio telescopes in that direction.

Basically, they don't think it's anything ground breaking and we won't hear anything from SETI until Feb, march.
But they said they can detect anything significant from that direction within' 30 minutes, they just need to jump through a bunch of hoops to get the approval... it's killing me.

While it’s fun to speculate about this observation, and invent all sorts of science fiction scenarios, in the end it’s still just speculation. It may be awhile before anything conclusive is formulated. And while Michio Kaku may have once been a hardcore scientist/mathematician, I think these days he’s more focussed on self-promotion and making money.

I don’t mean to be a party crasher here. I’m really fascinated by what’s transpired recently, and my imagination has shifted into overdrive, as well. Not much surprises me, and I’ve seen a lot of strange things come to light over the years. It’s like I’ve got one little guy sitting on my left shoulder whispering, “Man, what if this turns into the real deal and by accident we’ve stumbled onto an advanced intelligence”, and then sitting on my right shoulder is this other little guy saying, “Don’t get your shorts in a wad. There’s probably a perfectly logical, and thoroughly boring, explanation for this”. And so, I guess I’ll reserve my opinion until more evidence is presented. Remember, extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence.

Now, where was I? Oh yes, “Warp speed, Mr. Sulu!”

originally posted by: ninjadan9
I'm guessing it's a planet the size of Jupiter that happens to be in the right place at the right time. It's very plausible that it was a planet that is 22% the size of the star than extra-terrestrial objects. Eclipses happen all the time and this is more likely to be found on other stars.

It cant be a planet though. There's an upper limit for how large a planet can be before gravity takes over and keeps compacting the matter into higher densities while the diameter stays the same. At some point fusion will start and it will become a star. That upper limit is no where near 22%, its not much more than the size of Jupiter. Jupiter is only 1% the size of the sun and this star is larger than our sun. Also the dimming and duration of the transits were variable.

It can't be planets or dust or a black hole. If you're looking for a natural explanation then it has to be something like comets or a debris field from a collision, but those explanations have a lot of problems as well.

a reply to: Ross 54
It's not that no planets are there. It's just that none cross in front of the star relative to our position. It could have planets revolving perpendicular to our view. Thus they never darken the light of the sun and could very well be invisible to us.
I wonder if they are also using the sun based method of finding planets. Wrong term but that method looks for the wobbles plants create in the sun while they orbit it. I don't believe that is a directional based method. They could find if there are any large planets. They have to be about 2 1/2 times larger than Jupiter to show up.

If that is a swarm of comets it would be very bad news for any planet around that sun.

Weird thing is if the swarm is that big it would seem to be much larger than anything our OORT cloud. So far we have not discovered any single item that large in our OORT cloud. Only sub-Pluto sized items.

There are dusty areas out there. Could some of this come from the star passing through a large dust cloud? A large dust cloud with a large width might create a darkness. Hard to have a dust cloud that big without it coalescing into a planet/s. Gravity wins so a sight difference in texture would sweep the dust cloud clean. They are talking about multiple Jupiter's within the orbit so that seems real unlikely.

Just a few musings on the subject.

originally posted by: FormOfTheLord
Finally proof that there are advanced aliens I love it!

It's impossible to assume that extra-terrestrials built something around the star. You know how much material is needed to build something of that size? I don't think there is even enough material in the solar system to build something around our sun.

oh,oh. Dyson spheres and only 1500light years away.Lets hope they haven'tsent any von Neumann machines our way

originally posted by: ninjadan9

originally posted by: FormOfTheLord
Finally proof that there are advanced aliens I love it!

It's impossible to assume that extra-terrestrials built something around the star. You know how much material is needed to build something of that size? I don't think there is even enough material in the solar system to build something around our sun.

What on earth are you talking about? I never said they built around a sun.

Here maybe Michio Kaku can clear it up for some who may be confused as to what the massive jupiter sized object may be.

Hate to say it, but "diversity" may make humans more aggressive and territorial compared to homogeneous (pardon the term) aliens. It's been argued that war drives technological innovation, but an entire civilization dedicated to scientific achievement may be able to develop amazing techno-societies.

Not to disparage diversity, but one factor that may inhibit global civilization on Earth is the language barrier. Most planetary civilizations are likely to be based on a single language model, and therefore more "efficient", with less strife. Earth may be a bad model in this respect.

If they have been monitoring this star since 2009 then surely they will have already checked the radio waves and they will have showed if there is a technological structure of some kind. Is this more disclosure spoon feed! And they know what it is already.

The skepticism about the alien hypothesis expressed early on is good and healthy. The media is being stupid. Check this out:
www.dw.com - Alien megastructures, or just a whole lot of gas?...

"We find that the break-up of a exocomet provides the most compelling explanation," it reads.

If the report implicitly rejects the alien hypothesis, astronomer Joachim Wambsganss does so explicitly.

"I would certainly bet my car that this is not an astrophysical megastructure. And I'm tempted to even bet my house."

Gas seems to be a common theme, as well as exocomets. I think that'll very likely be the explanation for all this. I've also read about CME's maybe causing it, but there're some problems with that idea.

No matter what this ends up being, there're still a lot of things to look at in the data we have and a LOT more stars to examine. I imagine many more of these "alien?" stories will come up likes seeds sprouting.

But as more years pass by, Fermi's Paradox becomes more important. Not finding intelligent aliens eventually means they're not here.. When do we pass that threshold? Depends who you ask, I think. Personally, I think we haven't. Jadestars thread here is a good review:
www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread1063819/pg1