The dimming is probably a dark matter nebula passing between it and us.
Dark matter, by definition, does not interact with light. Therefore, it cannot cause the dimming.
Tabby's star is dimming at an incredible rate
121–130 of 179 posts
Re: Tabby's star is dimming at an incredible rate
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
IMHO the aliens will not be specifically seeking life that is intelligent. Singularities and interstellar traveling alien civilizations share a problem. If one is in essence immortal the only purpose that can endure forever is the pursuit of new knowledge. Even if alien entities are able to learn all there is to know about all the other sciences, biology will be inexhaustible as the novel patterns that can be produce…
Thinking that pursuit of knowledge is only activity for immortal is naively idealistic. Elimination of of all life not like me. Or simply eliminate life that might singularity and become a threat. Even if, who's to say one aliens pursuit of knowledge latest experiment dose not require and earth sized amount of raw materials.
Our aggression reflects the zero sum physical resource context of our evolutionary past. Knowledge in contrast grows fastest through cooperation. As power including the power to defend oneself grows with knowledge, knowledge seeking entities will quickly evolve to maximize cooperation. And as many have pointed out, unlike most of our sci fi, it is very unlikely for two alien civilizations to meet where their technology levels are similar - one will be permanently vastly advantaged over the other. Aggression will be pointless - the pecking order will be obvious. As to your last point I am sure lifeless planets will do for any experiments.
Re: Tabby's star is dimming at an incredible rate
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well whatever it is, we probably have 1000+ years to save ourselves right? If whatever caused it comes at us at 50% light speed, which sounds unlikely given how fast that already is, we'd still have 700 years. I'm pretty sure that if human's resources were suddenly all turned towards getting the hell out of here, we could certainly pull it off for a good part of the population in a few hundred years. Whether we'd eve…
"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.…
I think you'll like to read this:
Re: Tabby's star is dimming at an incredible rate
#124how about multiple nutating disks of debris who's centres are the star in question.
Re: Tabby's star is dimming at an incredible rate
#125Maybe its the On/Off star
Re: Tabby's star is dimming at an incredible rate
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
Spectral type isn't 1-1 correlate with the star estimated life. Depends on the star mass. Our Sun was one time a F type star.
Question for you Timex Eclair, can I use a star as the engine for my megaship? Pointing all the photons in direction?
You can you use a giant mirror, that directs light to your ship's sail.
Re: Tabby's star is dimming at an incredible rate
#127Anyone else thinking of the beginning of the utterly excellent "Pandora's Star" by Peter F. Hamilton?
MorningLightMountain!
Re: Tabby's star is dimming at an incredible rate
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
It also assumes that outside observers have the same difficulty understanding the make-up and probable evolution of a system as we do. If they were able to observe that Earth would have some properties they were interested in, or would be a likely candidate for such, then they wouldn't need us to announce our presence to guess it.
IMHO the aliens will not be specifically seeking life that is intelligent. Singularities and interstellar traveling alien civilizations share a problem. If one is in essence immortal the only purpose that can endure forever is the pursuit of new knowledge. Even if alien entities are able to learn all there is to know about all the other sciences, biology will be inexhaustible as the novel patterns that can be produce…
>> biology will be inexhaustible as the novel patterns that can be produced by evolution are effectively infinite
But why do you assume they would be interested in observing the patterns that actually have been produced, instead of running high-precision evolutionary emulators that can generate patterns that could be produced at a much higher rate, and maybe even some automated filters to condense it down to "interesting" stuff? It's still knowledge, and there's no innate value scale for knowledge which says that things that have "actually happened" are more valuable.
In fact, how's that for Fermi paradox? Civilizations that are sufficiently technologically advanced to communicate, much less travel, across the stars, are also sufficiently technologically advanced to simulate the things they are interested about and get answers faster that way.
Basically, the end result of any civilization is creating, maintaining and expanding a simulation of the universe. Which, of course, goes recursive...
Re: Tabby's star is dimming at an incredible rate
#129Could it have been hit by a large planet that lost its orbit somehow (perhaps from another system)? (And out of interest, is this an event that has been recorded before?)
Re: Tabby's star is dimming at an incredible rate
#130Earlier 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…
can it be easily ruled out? Yes: parallax breaks it. If something's colinear with a star today (and occults it), it won't be colinear 6 months later, when the Earth's on the other side of the sun. At 2 light years for instance, that spacecraft would trace an apparent ellipse 3.3" in diameter, while Tabby's star (1,480 ly) would be stationary (0.004" parallax). In comparison, the star's apparent disk is just 30 μas wi…
If I'm doing that math right, it works out that to not be ruled out by parallax, the object would have to be almost 2 AU in diameter if it was within a few light years of Earth. That seems pretty ridiculous--now we have them not only building a megastructure, but flying it to Earth!
However, I wonder if there is a way to save the idea without requiring a ridiculously large spacecraft? Suppose instead of one ginormous ship, it is a fleet of big ships each big enough to cause irregular dimming if that ship happens to get between Earth and KIC8462852. If the fleet is spread out, it could then be that one ship or another ends up between Earth and KIC8462852 at several times during one Earth orbit around the Sun.
That would give us the irregular dimming throughout the year.
For the slow continuous dimming, perhaps that is something going on with the star itself. That could be what made the inhabitants of the system decide to build a fleet of big ships and leave their weirdly behaving and very scary star.