Tabby's star is dimming at an incredible rate
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Tabby's star is dimming at an incredible rate
1–10 of 179 posts
Re: Tabby's star is dimming at an incredible rate
#2I really like mysteries like this one. They defy simple explanations and force us to work harder to learn more about our world. Sort of like the bright spots on Ceres, which are still pretty awesome.
Re: Tabby's star is dimming at an incredible rate
#3Please correct the title, it is about a Tabby's star, not alien megastructures.
Re: Tabby's star is dimming at an incredible rate
#4> In the meantime, we would remind you that it's very, very unlikely that this strange flickering star has anything to do with aliens (and is even more exciting if it doesn't - because, hello new space phenomena!).
I think aliens would be a little bit more exciting... Might just be me though.
Re: Tabby's star is dimming at an incredible rate
#5Could an astronomer weigh in as to why the dimming effect isn't due to a 'rogue' blackhole entering orbit with the star and both blocking light and draining material from the star? I haven't seen that hypothesis dismissed yet.
Re: Tabby's star is dimming at an incredible rate
#6So it's flickering rapidly and slowly dimming. Perhaps it's because they are completing more of the dyson sphere.
Re: Tabby's star is dimming at an incredible rate
#7>What they saw was that, not only did the star's light output occasionally dip by 20 percent - the weird behaviour scientists first spotted last year - but over the course of the observations, its entire stellar flux actually dimmed.
It would be interesting if this turned out to be like the OnOff star from A Deepness in the Sky.
Re: Tabby's star is dimming at an incredible rate
#8It's not like this is right on our doorstep but I'd still be more comfortable if this was happening more than 1480 light years away.
Re: Tabby's star is dimming at an incredible rate
#9Could an astronomer weigh in as to why the dimming effect isn't due to a 'rogue' blackhole entering orbit with the star and both blocking light and draining material from the star? I haven't seen that hypothesis dismissed yet.
Not entirely sure why, but I suspect because they haven't been able to determine if there's any lensing going on of the star that you'd expect to see if something like that entered the system. But I do believe that they'd see higher energy (x-ray, gamma?) bursts if it was removing material from the star which would lead to a different kind of variability. We know roughly what that should look like because of other binary systems where one star is being consumed and I don't think I've seen anyone say this looks a bit like that.
Though I'd love to have someone that's actually knowledgeable on the subject to weigh in and tell me how wrong I have this.
Re: Tabby's star is dimming at an incredible rate
#10Could an astronomer weigh in as to why the dimming effect isn't due to a 'rogue' blackhole entering orbit with the star and both blocking light and draining material from the star? I haven't seen that hypothesis dismissed yet.
the star isn't distorted or emitting x ray radiation in such a way as to suggest it's within close vicinity of a black hole . A black hole is too small to block light . I'm pretty sure scientits have rule that out
more information https://disownedsky.blogspot.com/2016/02/tabbys-star-for-per...