A second Dyson sphere? Star EPIC 204278916 shows strange ‘flickering’ of up to 65 per cent

a reply to: TinfoilTP

Ok, but there are many successful binary star systems.

Which are stable, yes.
Erratic, no.

a reply to: Phage

The H-R diagrams have been our holy grail in understanding main sequence stars and separating giants, white dwarfs and neutron stars. Pulsars do not fit on the main sequence, but could there be a class of irregular pulsar that has similar spectral class, luminosity and temperature of a main sequence star? Certainly not an astrophysicist , but a discovery like that could change things considerably.

originally posted by: grey580
The thought that an alien civilization is out there building something around two suns is terrifying.

And we shouldn't try to attract their attention.

Interesting point grey580. Something to consider of the micro-macro. What would humans do if tomorrow they discovered ants had nuclear weapons? Never noticed them no more then normally, but noticed their flashes? Now consider some with advanced technologies somewhat normals in the overall layout of reality existing as usual and they noticed flashes from human nukes? And so attention attracted...

a reply to: CaptainBeno


So, I say it again without undo elaboration. The dimming can be caused by a ship or ships moving on a straight line between those stars and our star and their bulk/fields block portions of the stars light. The orbital wobbling of planets around our respective suns can account for the various variations.


That explanation is not as far out as visualizing a vastly more complex Dyson Sphere causing the dimming.

We know that UFOs are here and their various ships give the appearance of being from entirely different civilizations. That situation understood, we can easily allow that two suns, at least, have ships moving, going or coming, between us and those stars.


It would be ludicrous to stop there, however, with only two stars. I predict that several if not many other such disturbances of light from various stars will be found, all indicative of star travelers going or coming from our solar system. I wouldn't be surprised if it occurs that some of the mysterious, long-period comets happen to come from the area of those stars.

a reply to: verschickter

Would that not mean massive destruction everywhere they go and along the path?

Knowing Mr Snarl, I imagine he would regard that as a good thing.

Hee is a paper that models the dips for KIC 8462852 using the comet swarm idea: arxiv.org...

I guess the same approach would work for EPIC too. No need for dyson spheres.

originally posted by: pfishy
a reply to: SaturnFX

More than entire planets. Just to manufacture a Dyson array with 75% coverage at 1 AU would take the rest of the Solar System's resources, from Mercury to the Oort Cloud.

I believe the particles within the solar "wind" can be harnessed into a solid material.

The idea of surrounding a star to capture its solar energy just seems retarded to me.

Any civilization at that stage, if it needed a star's energy, could simply tap directly into the star and control the rate at which it extracts energy rather than being capped at the rate of the star's burning.

Or they'd just have some other source of energy.

It just seems dumb to build a thing that big of.. solar panels, really?

It seems like a caveman thinking that the biggest energy tech in the future will be 2 huge trees being rubbed together to create fire instead of 2 sticks rubbing together.

a reply to: verschickter

Would that not mean massive destruction everywhere they go and along the path? Because of the gravitional pull? And would it not take up most of the energy to just move the star?

could be, but maybe it could be possible.

Say they use some method of folding space and travel to just outside of another solar system. Then they could use sub-light space travel to more easily transfer between solar systems (admittedly still taking a good bit of time for transit).

If the civilization had advanced technology they might be able to manipulate gravity in a way to capture the light like an umbrella. Therefor needing less materials for the Dyson sphere. It would be scary if it was some kind of natural process we didn't know about. Nope no flash frozen mammoths to see here folks. Jk

a reply to: Phage

Seems pretty clear what this is all about
We've built physics models to describe star formation, life, and death.
Now we've pointed our telescopes at the sky, and discovered stars that do not match our models.
This can only be a good thing for astrophysics.

a reply to: Phage

Hey Phage --

Instead of a Dyson Sphere, how about a 'Ringworld', like the one Larry Niven wrote sci fi about?

a reply to: Fowlerstoad

And if it is erratic, a 'wobbling Ringworld' hah ... or intermittent Ringworld seen in our plane of observation? Would require fewer resources ... just trying to think outside the box!

hmm are we seeing a Failing Main Star in a failed Binary Star System which..
the Minor Became a ( Brown Dwarf )
that just got to close in orbit with the main ?

This is What Im thinking Here.. guessing ... badly



is to what is Happening ..
from the 2 star systems ... we are speaking of

from the cause of a Possible unstable orbit .. or Erratic i would much say..

a reply to: pfishy
Perhaps these stars have more material in their systems than we do to build stuff with. Just cause we can't make a Dyson sphere here, doesn't mean others couldn't somewhere else..