Kepler's 'Alien Megastructure' Star Just Got Weirder

originally posted by: SouthernForkway26
How much physical material would it take to dim a star that much? Is there even enough matter and mass in Earth to do that, if we were to try that with our sun? Also wouldn't 'choice' materials be used in a mega-structure? Entire planets would have to be destroyed to mine material for a days on sphere. The ecological impact on a solar system scale is really hard to grasp.

My WAG is that maybe it is artificial, but it would be a device that can 'suck' in energy and light in like a vacuum, somehow using gravity to bend the light to a source with different settings to capture the energy as they demand it. It could be a 'gas station' for interstellar travelers...

To build a dysons sphere around our sun would require the matter from several local star systems. If you had the ability to make it you wouldn't need to make it, It really isn't a practical idea. It litterally takes more energy to build than your star would give you. The only way I see this as practical would be a dying galaxy. And life tried to hang on around a few remainIng star system. But even than if you could move the mass of entire solar systems you could build your own star so not even sure it's ptactical than either.

not a complete structure but something that is in the process of being built

could also be due to alien technology not just blocking the light but also absorbing the energy, draining the star. like those things we see sucking plasma off our own star

a reply to: asen_y2k

what technology paradigm are you basing your ideas on? ours or theirs? what if anything do you know about theirs?


a reply to: dragonridr

originally posted by: bbarkow
a reply to: yuppa

Sorry but time travelling in Human form is a death sentence.

Might end up looking like Jeff Goldblum in The Fly.

more like a pink jelly like substance but you were close.

originally posted by: oblivvious
Well.. We definitely aren't alone out here.. How could we be?

I hope I'm around when they find out what it is

YOU GOT A PIC OF MY WAIFU!!! lol!!!

originally posted by: dragonridr

originally posted by: SouthernForkway26
How much physical material would it take to dim a star that much? Is there even enough matter and mass in Earth to do that, if we were to try that with our sun? Also wouldn't 'choice' materials be used in a mega-structure? Entire planets would have to be destroyed to mine material for a days on sphere. The ecological impact on a solar system scale is really hard to grasp.

My WAG is that maybe it is artificial, but it would be a device that can 'suck' in energy and light in like a vacuum, somehow using gravity to bend the light to a source with different settings to capture the energy as they demand it. It could be a 'gas station' for interstellar travelers...

To build a dysons sphere around our sun would require the matter from several local star systems. If you had the ability to make it you wouldn't need to make it, It really isn't a practical idea. It litterally takes more energy to build than your star would give you. The only way I see this as practical would be a dying galaxy. And life tried to hang on around a few remainIng star system. But even than if you could move the mass of entire solar systems you could build your own star so not even sure it's ptactical than either.

Ok Let Me grasp on this ...

Why in the Galaxy ... would Extra Terrestrials Build a Dyson Sphere ??

Taking from other Star Systems Planets , Brown Dwarfs Comets Etc.. Resources,

As They can Easily Terra Form ... a near Star System Planet in the Goldie Locks Zone of the Conditioning the ET's Habitat

right Make Sense...


What Other Purpose of a DYSON "SPHERE" ???

If I had to Guess .. it would be the Opposite of what your thinking right Now..

Creating a Dyson Sphere ,, Containing a Dying Star , Smothering it Out .. Perhaps

to Prevent it going Super Nova ??? ( exploding // imploding ).. reducing Damage ..

Protecting & Shielding .... other Nearby Stars that contain Life! as in the Aliens True Home land ..

Just a Plausible Guess..

well makes Sense of Team Work form other ET's Working together from other Star Systems...

well thats if you are thinking of the Dyson Sphere Theory..

Funny.. of the Star systems around this Galaxy this one in particular is going some strange Stuff ..

that has got Scientist Attention ... possible black hole nearby ??

Well just Maybe some other Aliens ETS

with the same Intelligence as we have ( CIV Type 0 ) looking at the cosmos same as Us Earthen's
are scratching their head too about this Star System in Question !

I guess we have wait , and get the actual Solved Mystery in 1,400 years time of what is going on ..
with this Star!!


but here is the Problem we dont understand

with our own Star aka SUN

just about everything that go near the Sun that has been viewed ( SOHO )

EITHER !

gets Pulled into the SUN Destroying it or Broken Up

or The Sun Whips the intruder Object (( Comets meteors exoplanets Etc... )
out of its Orbit like the Star/SUN is Alive ! as like it senses the Object!!

originally posted by: PrairieShepherd
Let me see if I've summed this up correctly:
It seems to not be a giant cloud of matter because that should show up via spectral analysis and also give off heat signatures in the infrared.
It seems to not be a black hole, because precedent of such situations show a cloud or disk of debris giving off x-rays as it is consumed by the black hole. Also we would see the effect of gravitational lensing. Also, a black hole would be a constant drain on the star's material.
It seems to not be a Dyson sphere or swarm due to the impracticality of the ROI in terms of energy recovery from construction.

So, purely from a speculative and hypothetical perspective, what if it's a different kind of device?
What if a civilization is advanced enough to create a device that acts like an energy vacuum - a gravitational field similar to a black hole, powerful enough to bend some of the light of the star toward it, but also controlled by the civilization that built it (turn off, turn on/collect or harvest the energy, etc). To be turned on when energy stores are low or when a project requires additional energy to complete.

All stars have an evolution lifecycle. There's a wallchart diagram of how a star will evolve depending on how much mass it has. Too little and it dorms a brown or warm dwarf. Large enough to achieve fusion for a while but not enough to glow brightly. Eventually they fade away to nothing or maybe a stellar sized lump of coal. Too much mass and the star becomes a red or blue supergiant, destined to burn fast and bright before going supernova. Leaving behind anything from a black hole to a neutron star, pulsar or a magnetar and a nebula.

A star gradually dimming at irregular intervals doesn't match any of these. Even planetoids coallescing together would congregate dust and make the star brighter.

The idea of a Ringworld slowly being extended from the equator to the poles sounds a cool idea. Like building a DeathStar around a real star.

a reply to: SouthernForkway26

according to people who have crunched the numbers there isnt enough materials in our solar system to create a dyson sphere around our sun. thats taking every asteroid planet etc and putting them towards that project. then theres another problem of it physically being destroyed from the different effects being exerted on it. theyve said it wouldnt be possible to build one even if u have the means, which ill take with a grain of salt. i hate the word impossible.

Does it have to be a complete planet to block the light? Could it be the planetary system is moving through a part of the galaxy that has left over dust in abundance? As the system moves through that area it would pick up the dust. Not all at once but entering the gravitational pull of the sun gradually. The dimming we see could be the dust cloud forming and moving around in orbit.
If a large wandering planet plunged through the system it could disrupt any leftovers and send them into the system in a haphazard manner. How long would it take for leftovers to condense?
How much dust would it take to make this happen?
Just thinking aloud...

originally posted by: TheScale
a reply to: SouthernForkway26

according to people who have crunched the numbers there isnt enough materials in our solar system to create a dyson sphere around our sun. thats taking every asteroid planet etc and putting them towards that project. then theres another problem of it physically being destroyed from the different effects being exerted on it. theyve said it wouldnt be possible to build one even if u have the means, which ill take with a grain of salt. i hate the word impossible.

And the whole thing would have to be very stable around the star.

Or else it could just whack the star and all that work would be for nothing.

The energy it would take to move solar systems and build the thing is more than they could get from the star.

I also doubt it could contain a nova.

MEANWHILE as we are Discussing this on this Thread about the KIC 8462852 Star


Triple signal of ‘alien megastructure’ star baffles astronomers
www.newscientist.com...

By Shannon Hall The mystery of the so-called “alien megastructure” star just deepened. KIC 8462852, as it is more properly known, flickers so erratically that one astronomer has speculated that nothing other than a massive extraterrestrial construction project could explain its weird behaviour. A further look showed it has been fading for a century. Now, fresh analysis suggests the star has also dimmed more rapidly over the past four years – only adding to the enigma. “It seems that every time someone looks at the star, it gets weirder and weirder,” says Benjamin Montet at the California Institute of Technology, who led the study. This space oddity was first spotted by NASA’s Kepler space telescope, which continually monitored 100,000 stars from 2009 to 2013. Any dip observed in a star’s light is a sign that an exoplanet has passed in front of it. These dips, which occur regularly, block at most 1 per cent of the star’s light and have revealed thousands of exoplanets. But KIC 8462852, also known as Tabby’s star after its discoverer Tabetha Boyajian of Yale University, was an outlier. Its light dipped by as much as 20 per cent and didn’t conform to any regular time intervals – so the signature couldn’t have been caused by a planet.

HUH???? WHAT????

Astronomers came up with an array of potential explanations, from the mundane to the bizarre. The star made headlines when Jason Wright, an astronomer at Pennsylvania State University, announced that an advanced extraterrestrial civilization could be responsible for the signal.

ok Need to read that that Again...

Jason Wright, an astronomer at Pennsylvania State University, announced that an advanced extraterrestrial civilization could be responsible for the signal

a ET CIV.. could be Responsible for the Signal !!


OHHHHH KKK !


AND THEN.....

An alien concept What about that advanced alien megastructure? “Once you’re invoking arbitrary advanced aliens doing something with technology far beyond ours, then there isn’t very much that can’t be explained,” says Simon. “But we don’t really want to resort to that until we exhaust all of the possible natural explanations we can think of.” Even Wright, the astronomer who postulated the alien megastructure in the first place, admits that it’s a last resort.

Ok im going to Step back away from the Website Now ! ..


and have My thoughts Gather UP..... Seeing this is from the NEW Scientist Website ... and SPACE.com Website..



To this !!! ^ AUG 8th 2016



From this !! in 3 months ...


Alien Megastructure? Dimming Star May Have Less Exotic Explanation
By Charles Q. Choi, Space.com Contributor | May 12, 2016 07:00am ET
www.space.com...

A mysterious darkening star might not be home to an alien megastructure after all. Instead, the dimming that apparently occurred over the course of a century may actually have resulted from how telescopes and cameras have changed over time, researchers said. Last fall, a star named KIC 8462852 made news when scientists found unusual fluctuations in the object's light. The star is an otherwise-ordinary F-type star, slightly larger and hotter than Earth's sun; it sits about 1,480 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Cygnus. But astronomer Tabetha "Tabby" Boyajian of Yale University in Connecticut and her colleagues, along with citizen scientists from the Planet Hunters crowdsourcing program, found something odd. They discovered dozens of strange instances of the star darkening over a 100-day period when they analyzed data from NASA's Kepler Space Telescope. The dimming events blocked up to 22 percent of the light from KIC 8462852, now nicknamed "Tabby's Star," making these events far too substantial to be caused by planets crossing (or "transiting") the star's face. Scientists also ruled out several other possible explanations, such as an enormous dust cloud.

Such analyses raised the possibility that astronomers had detected signs of alien life — specifically, a Dyson sphere, a megastructure built around a star to capture as much of the sun's energy as possible to power an advanced civilization. (In science fiction, Dyson spheres — which are named after mathematician and physicist Freeman Dyson — are often depicted as solid shells around stars, but they could also be spherical swarms of giant solar panels.) So far, astronomers at the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institutein California analyzing Tabby's Starwith the Allen Telescope Array have not detected any radio signals that would indicate the presence of an alien civilization. Scientists at SETI International in San Francisco and their colleagues have also failed to detect any laser signals from Tabby's Star.

What ??

So far, astronomers at the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institutein California analyzing Tabby's Starwith the Allen Telescope Array have not detected any radio signals that would indicate the presence of an alien civilization.

Well that So far is 3 months later and !! NOW!

Triple signal of ‘alien megastructure’ star baffles astronomers
www.newscientist.com...

Triple Signal of what ??

The Mysterious Star KIC 8462852 ( SETI )
www.seti.org...

Allen Telescope Array Checks Out Star KIC 8462852
www.seti.org...

KIC 8462852: No signals from 'alien megastructure' star but a big breakthrough in hunt for ET

Meti president Douglas Vakoch discusses the latest observations from Boyajian's star.

Douglas Vakoch
By Douglas Vakoch Ph.D
June 29, 2016 09:00 BST
www.ibtimes.co.uk...

a reply to: Wolfenz

space.com is a very reputable website. Its actually quite amazing to hear the world ET from them. This ET theory is a big possibility, even more after the new research during the last 4 years.

originally posted by: asen_y2k
a reply to: Wolfenz

space.com is a very reputable website. Its actually quite amazing to hear the world ET from them. This ET theory is a big possibility, even more after the new research during the last 4 years.

Right...

but some other Legit Sites ... have me running // lol

EVEN TED.com are talking about it!!

Did we just discover aliens? Scientists aren’t ruling it out
Apr 7, 2016 / Brian Greene
ideas.ted.com...

among other Real legit Websites are Practically saying like the other Legit Sites Saying ...


Mega Structure ...

So what Im thinking is top Notch Websites and Groups of Company's

Say Mega Structures and NOT Backing out ... and NOT Ruling out the Possibility
High Alien Civilization's somewhere out there in the Cosmos

Makes me think ... some of the Few Knows a little more.. then what they are saying ...


but the Biggest Question on MY Mind.. right now

is what about the other Near By Stars around KIC 8462852

are they re-acting ( slightly ) to this Bizarre event Also???

any change .. seems like no one is Mentioning this !

and if a Super Nova did Happen.. would these near by stars closest to KIC 8462852
be in the way ??

well to me seems like ET's Are Racing ... Repairing a Sinking Ship ... before it goes under..


I think ive seen/ read this before

in some Pulp SCIFI Magazine or some SCIFI Digest

Aliens Racing to Secure Shielding around a Dying Star that is about to Implode ...

( note : Im a Big PULP N Digest Scifi Fan )


OR

Jump starting it
well kinda like the Movie called Sunshine

Intriguing developments + thread!

It could be a star undergoing an unknown natural process (macrocosmic heart-attack?), but the ETH is fun to explore...

I know Dyson Spheres (Stapledon Spheres) are pretty unwieldy because of the energy needed to construct the damn things, but there's a radio program that happens to be playing in the background that gives me a different angle. A woman who works for NASA is being interviewed & she's talking about Super Pressure Balloons. Inflated, the balloon she was referring to inflated to the size of a football stadium.

Could a nano-thin balloon/curtain/shield be used to harvest, or even redirect stellar energy? If reflected, this could then be harvested on a convenient nearby planet... a sort of huge, ultra-thin mirror redirecting a large portion of light/radiation/energy.

I'm not the most scientifically minded, so this may be utter #. But I'd imagine a simple/self-replicating nano structure (possibly only a mirror) would require far less energy & material for construction than contained in a solar system. I'm not saying it's likely, but it still seems somewhat feasible, imo.

a reply to: Wolfenz

You didn't quote something I think is important, talking about the "triple signals".

Schaefer’s work was immediately called into question. However, with so few astronomers who have an expertise in these plates, no one seemed able to settle the debate. That is until Montet and his advisor Josh Simon realised that an answer might be hidden within the Kepler data.

They found that for the first 1000 days of the Kepler mission, Tabby’s star decreased in brightness at roughly 0.34 per cent a year – twice as fast as measured by Schaefer. What’s more, over the next 200 days, the star’s brightness dropped another 2.5 per cent before beginning to level out. It was a much more rapid change than before.

That means the star undergoes three types of dimming: the deep dips that first made it famous, the relatively slow decline observed by Schaefer and verified by Montet and Simon, and the intermediate rapid decline that occurred over a few hundred days.

So, not only is the star dimming, it appears to do it in three different ways.

a reply to: asen_y2k

what makes you think that when they do get a clear pic of what it is they would disclose it?

a reply to: Phatdamage

The astronomer who KIC 8462852 is named after , Tabetha Boyajian , is crowdfunding a year long observation of the star , she currently has 1,762 backers who will want to know the outcome of the observations.
I believe when she knows we will know.

originally posted by: Phatdamage
a reply to: asen_y2k

what makes you think that when they do get a clear pic of what it is they would disclose it?

The star's behaviour was first noticed by a group called 'Planet Hunters' who are just average people working for free on Zooniverse. If you want to join, you can - it's free and only costs time. It's quite dull too although you might enjoy it.

This implies that the popular conspiracy of a 'they' keeping everything to themselves isn't quite accurate. It shows that Kepler's images are not being vetted to redact all the interesting stuff. It also shows that we don't have enough astronomer man-hours to pan for gold in the massive amounts of data coming in.

All I'm saying is, no, we don't *know* that good evidence will be disclosed and we've no good reason to believe they won't because all this is already out there and disclosed.

a reply to: Kandinsky

ok,

but just saying, what if they see a huge alien mega-structure, along with large ships, Terra-forming and other alien artifacts,

will the powers that be allow it to be released? think about it, these scientists have the ability to answer that age old question "are we alone" even though most people have a "feeling" that aliens are real, and governments have tech, they remain tight lipped,

I really hope truth comes out, and not buried