Kepler's 'Alien Megastructure' Star Just Got Weirder

a reply to: ArMaP

But Mass is energy, you can form mass simply by condensing enough energy. All things are energy in different forms.

It's not the same as your space chickens, it's simply real science expounded upon with suppositions taking things to a realm of theorems and plausibility.

I don't get people that think Space Unicorns building webs to block the sun, is equal in equivalence to taking scientific ideas and principals and building upon them with logic and reasoning. Now just because an idea may not be true, or a thought project may not work or come to fruition. Just because a hypothesis does not pan out. It does not mean it holds the equivalence of just pulling something out your ass with no reasoning or logic to support it.

If no one considered what could be done, if no one looked at things and thought, what may be, or where can this go if we push it and explore it further, we'd still be gatherers and scavengers.

a reply to: ArMaP

First thing I found on it in google

This tells me my idea is plausible...

Possible is a whole different kettle of fish though, but at least I'm trying to think outside the box

i might be way off -
but if there was a dyson sphere wouldnt there be something like 100% dimming?!?!

i mean, if there was a structure around it - why such "low" dimming? i get that 3% or whatever is alot - but is it not very slight if there was a structure around it?
wouldnt it block out the star completely and look more like a black hole?

how come there is dimming at all? why not complete blockage?

is the alien structure translucent? meh, i dont think it makes much sense. that DIMMING would be evidence towards a dyson sphere..

now, if there was a BLOCKAGE of light - THAT would sure as heck be interesting.......

a reply to: alienDNA

No one is saying it's a COMPLETE Dyson Sphere but might be a snapshot of one under construction.

a reply to: Puppylove

Well maybe the aliens just wants to block out the light, since it shines to bright..?

a reply to: tikbalang

That's one hell of a lot of effort for what is essentially one giant effing sunscreen O.o

a reply to: tikbalang

then they arent doing a very good job only blocking 3% of the light - . -

originally posted by: alienDNA
then they arent doing a very good job only blocking 3% of the light - . -

If we deployed a solar panel the diameter of Jupiter (blocked 3% of our sun's light, from an outsiders view), we would be generating somewhere north of 15.35 Peta watts continuously.

And, that is assuming the same level of efficiency as a solar panel on the Earth's surface.

If we could manage a fraction of that, we would consider it an extremely good job.

a reply to: peck420

imagine going outside on a really hot day, getting almost burned from 10 minutes of direct sun.
well, reduce all that by a whopping 3%.
wow... you can stay outside for an incredibly long extra 0.3 minutes ^_^


thats another way of looking at it

a reply to: alienDNA

You can fit 3 earths behind a plane that blocks 3% of the suns light. Shoot the Earth could be completely sun free if you hid it behind that.

There's another way of looking at it.

a reply to: Puppylove

My answer was about restricting what aliens may be able to do to our technological limitations, and, to me, our scientific theories are part of our technological limitations, so, basing ideas and theories in our present scientific knowledge is one thing, basing ideas and theories in something that is not part of our present scientific knowledge is only using imagination.

Considering we have free energy devices that tap energy directly from the vacuum it is unfortunate these poor aliens have to build a huge Dyson sphere around their Sun to extract solar energy...perhaps these aliens could come to earth and we could give them some of our disallowed free energy devices. It's also somewhat unfortunate that the mass of the structure around their sun would require more raw material then the mass of their home planet, and possibly their entire solar system.

originally posted by: ArMaP
Because otherwise there is no limit to what we can say, as we don't have to follow any rules. We may even say that the reason for the dimming is the giant space chickens created by the advanced aliens crossing a road from the star to their own planet.

You're absolutely correct, there is no limit to what we can say. Some people will say the wildly implausible and some the patently ridiculous. Heck, around this place, people probably already have. But, is that a bad thing? (Rhetorical, I suppose.)

Let me ask you this: when Robert Goddard first started messing around with trying to build a rocket, would space technology have suffered, or benefitted from someone telling him "you'll never get that thing off the ground"? Or the Wright brothers and aeronautics? What about even Henry Ford and automobiles (or assembly line production)? In fact, people DID tell those folks they were crazy, and honestly, maybe they were for the time - but they sure hit home runs, didn't they? Or rather, the technology they fostered hit home runs.

Allowing our imaginations to run wild is part of what makes us ingenious and inventive. Allowing our imaginations to take flight is what has been behind every incredible advancement we have had.

Henry Ford is quoted as saying, "If I had asked people what they wanted they would have told me 'faster horses.'" I think he realized that innovation requires imagination - even fanciful imagination.

Just my $0.02.

An ideal technology would be one which would use the power of the star's radiation to convert the particle flux into more building material.

That's one approach that can account for the massive material and energy involved.

originally posted by: PrairieShepherd
Let me ask you this: when Robert Goddard first started messing around with trying to build a rocket, would space technology have suffered, or benefitted from someone telling him "you'll never get that thing off the ground"?

It's not the same thing, Goddard was using known physics and equipments to evolve something that already existed for a long time.

Or the Wright brothers and aeronautics?

Same thing, they were only adding existing equipments based on other people's works.

What about even Henry Ford and automobiles (or assembly line production)?

Same thing, assembly line production was use many years before, in the Springfield Armory, for example. Ford's innovation was the moving assembly line.

All the examples you posted are not what I was talking about, as I was talking about imagination not based in existing things.

Yes, imagination is important, but not when overused or when used "just because we can", as that's a great way of wasting time going in a wrong direction.

Also, being Portuguese, I am well acquainted with people telling other people that "it will never work", as the Portuguese even have a name for people like that, "velho do Restelo" (old man of Restelo, taken from Luis de Camões' "Os Lusíadas", finished in the 16th century.

What if the dimming is an object moving away in the opposite direction, the further away the more dim it would get.
Or is hat just silly talk and it's been in the same place as long as we've known it?

originally posted by: Taggart
What if the dimming is an object moving away in the opposite direction, the further away the more dim it would get.
Or is hat just silly talk and it's been in the same place as long as we've known it?

There's one thing called redshift that shows us if a light is moving away or getting closer.

Trinary? Two brown dwarfs orbiting a brighter star? Each dwarf might have a cloud of dust around it as well.

originally posted by: ArMaP

originally posted by: Taggart
What if the dimming is an object moving away in the opposite direction, the further away the more dim it would get.
Or is hat just silly talk and it's been in the same place as long as we've known it?

There's one thing called redshift that shows us if a light is moving away or getting closer.

Thanks for that, a good read.
Can rule that out then.

Is it possible to use technologies found in transmission electron microscope, to build a similar device like a transmission electron telescope? That can see in real time.