Being eaten from the inside out by a black hole?
Tabby's star is dimming at an incredible rate
51–60 of 179 posts
Re: Tabby's star is dimming at an incredible rate
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
Reddit user sigbjoernwilderness's idea is pretty wild... can it be easily ruled out? > Is this the last remaining explanation after Montet/Simon? > The dimming comes from the shadow of a spaceship traveling on an (almost) straight line from KIC8462852 to Earth. The slow continuous dimming results from the increase of the apparent size of the approaching ship while Earth/Kepler is in the penumbra. The irregular dips h…
How can a ship 100 km in diameter cause any significant dimming of a star, which is 21,980,000 km in diameter? It would have to be pretty close to here and lined up just so perfectly. Why even assume it's a spaceship and not an asteroid or a rogue planet?
The moon is smaller than the sun, and yet still we have eclipses. It's just a matter of perspective.
The object[s] would have to be lined up. That's why an artificial object intentionally traveling to Earth is in some sense more plausible than an asteroid, which could be headed in any direction.
Re: Tabby's star is dimming at an incredible rate
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
"So this is about two orders of magnitudes away, which means the effect will be two orders of magnitude lesser." Inverse square applies here; moving 100 times farther away makes the effect 10,000 times less. (I have to say it "applies here" because people sometimes overapply the law. It only applies when something is spreading out in an even sphere. However, that applies to supernovae, or at least close enough.) You'…
> Inverse square applies here; moving 100 times farther away makes the effect 10,000 times less. Oh, bah. Yes, of course. My upbringing in Flatland is obviously showing.
Excellent riposte, good sir!
Re: Tabby's star is dimming at an incredible rate
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
Reddit user sigbjoernwilderness's idea is pretty wild... can it be easily ruled out? > Is this the last remaining explanation after Montet/Simon? > The dimming comes from the shadow of a spaceship traveling on an (almost) straight line from KIC8462852 to Earth. The slow continuous dimming results from the increase of the apparent size of the approaching ship while Earth/Kepler is in the penumbra. The irregular dips h…
How can a ship 100 km in diameter cause any significant dimming of a star, which is 21,980,000 km in diameter? It would have to be pretty close to here and lined up just so perfectly. Why even assume it's a spaceship and not an asteroid or a rogue planet?
"Ok, one last time... these are small, but the one's out there are far away" - Fr. Ted Crilly
Re: Tabby's star is dimming at an incredible rate
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
that headline though ?, online journalism at its worst, the chase for clicks, there really needs to be some solution to this problem journalism is dying and clickbait is where is at.
I think a big part of the answer is not to care. Or rather to just silently auto-discount. Imagine the 60s-90s and advertising just overwhelm with sexualised figures. We don't notice, because we just silently pass by. I don't see any way of turning back the tide of hyperbolic titles on articles. Better to just ignore them and move on. Buzzfeed headlines worked on me the first few times, now I know not to go there.
Yeah, this is what I do to a tee. I just say "well, can't credit them as a reliable source of quality journalism." Then I move on and find some coherent research on what I need to know.
Re: Tabby's star is dimming at an incredible rate
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Well whatever it is, we probably have 1000+ years to save ourselves right?" No. That time has already passed. If we see signs that the star will go nova "in one year", we have one year, not 1481. The popular idea that we see "the past" in the sky is not really the best way to think about it. It is far more accurate to say that there is no such thing as "the" present, and what we see in the sky really is our present.…
From an intelligent life angle, what would really save us is that, aside from a number of planets to observe, we haven't really been all that interesting until the last 100-200 years; when we started actually emitting signs of intelligent life in to space.
Ah, but this is only true about we, humans rather than earth/solar system.
It cannot be excluded that other sources of radio have been around here in the past :)
Re: Tabby's star is dimming at an incredible rate
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
How can a ship 100 km in diameter cause any significant dimming of a star, which is 21,980,000 km in diameter? It would have to be pretty close to here and lined up just so perfectly. Why even assume it's a spaceship and not an asteroid or a rogue planet?
The moon is smaller than the sun, and yet still we have eclipses. It's just a matter of perspective. The object[s] would have to be lined up. That's why an artificial object intentionally traveling to Earth is in some sense more plausible than an asteroid, which could be headed in any direction.
Why would it be only one object? It could be a belt of random sizes and shaped asteroids that is between us and the star?
Re: Tabby's star is dimming at an incredible rate
#58Two reddit discussion that might be able to answer some questions we have here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Astronomy/comments/4waozn/new_paper... https://www.reddit.com/r/KIC8462852/comments/4w7qfi/ben_mont... They also contain links to the resulting paper itself
Reddit user sigbjoernwilderness's idea is pretty wild... can it be easily ruled out? > Is this the last remaining explanation after Montet/Simon? > The dimming comes from the shadow of a spaceship traveling on an (almost) straight line from KIC8462852 to Earth. The slow continuous dimming results from the increase of the apparent size of the approaching ship while Earth/Kepler is in the penumbra. The irregular dips h…
Do spaceships travel in a straight line? I thought their trajectories are heavily curved in really weird ways due to the garvities of stars and planets around them. Please enlighten me!
Re: Tabby's star is dimming at an incredible rate
#59Two reddit discussion that might be able to answer some questions we have here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Astronomy/comments/4waozn/new_paper... https://www.reddit.com/r/KIC8462852/comments/4w7qfi/ben_mont... They also contain links to the resulting paper itself
Reddit user sigbjoernwilderness's idea is pretty wild... can it be easily ruled out? > Is this the last remaining explanation after Montet/Simon? > The dimming comes from the shadow of a spaceship traveling on an (almost) straight line from KIC8462852 to Earth. The slow continuous dimming results from the increase of the apparent size of the approaching ship while Earth/Kepler is in the penumbra. The irregular dips h…
There's a comment [1] in the other reddit thread that somewhat rules this out.
> That doesn't even make sense when you're flying within the Solar System. Stuff moves, so you have to fly towards where it's going to be, not where it is.
> The star is far enough away to be treated as a point source, with its light forming an apparent cone with the Earth's diameter. It doesn't intuitively make sense, at least to me, that the ship would stay within that cone as it corrects for the motion of our Solar System (and its own) within our galaxy. Remember that this dimming effect has been observable for several decades.
Then again, aliens don't have any obligation to make sense to us.
[1] : https://www.reddit.com/r/Astronomy/comments/4waozn/new_paper...
Re: Tabby's star is dimming at an incredible rate
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence", and this is the weirdest star we've seen. Your claims of clickbait are out of line, because we really don't know and alien megastructures is a reasonable theory. And 'alien megastructures' isn't even the most ridiculous idea: https://www.reddit.com/r/KIC8462852/comments/4w7qfi/ben_mont...
This is an amazing theory. What could possibly be more out there than alien life? Alien life in a gigantic spaceship accidentally coming between you and a star.
Would it be "accidental" if they were traveling in a direct vector approaching us?
Incredibly implausible idea for the sheer improbability, but fun to imagine nevertheless.