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'Mathematically perfect' star system being investigated for potential alien tech

space.com

171–180 of 347 posts

Re: 'Mathematically perfect' star system being investigated for potential alien tech

#171

I think the authors do not understand how planetary resonances work and how precise (or imprecise) the orbits need to be for the resonance to hold. Resonances are very common. We have lots of resonances in our Solar system in all different places between bodies. For the resonance to be stable, two bodies do not need to have mathematically precise orbits in relation to each other. There is quite a wide margin for erro…

The article does not claim anything like that even though the headline could be interpreted that way, and maybe that was not accidental.

Scientists are investigating the system simply because it has properties that might make it easier to detect signals from.

Re: 'Mathematically perfect' star system being investigated for potential alien tech

#172
post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have so many . In real life, this is where I get a very intense look in my eye, and about 50% of the time, I can see that the person I'm speaking with has realized that they're now trapped in an hour-long conversation with me. I'll make it a short list of recent authors I've liked: - Adrian Tchaikovsky. He's best known for his Children of Time series, but his other scifi books are also excellent; I haven't read the…

I'm convinced Tchaikovsky must be a collection of writers or using a generative AI heavily because nobody can write that many interesting books in such a short time. I'm working through The Final Architecture series right now, it's got some absolutely great SF.

That's an interesting point. It seems though the man has written many books prior getting published so maybe he is just running through his back catalogue. Remarkable perseverance to keep going after all the rejections.

Re: 'Mathematically perfect' star system being investigated for potential alien tech

#173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Upvoted ya cuz you’re correct. However, I’d add that while nature can absolutely create straight lines, it is often advisable to investigate for prior human activity if you stumble upon a straight line in a cave or under the ocean.

My point is that the phrase "mathematically perfect" is very misleading because it makes us think of straight lines and perfect circles but this simply is not the same kind of mathematical "perfection." I suspect this is more like an unusually high-quality gemstone than it is an perfectly round rock - very rare but not particularly mysterious. In particular this is an example of the six -body problem and orbital reso…

The gemstone comparison is quite apt. Hadn’t thought of it that way. Of course, humans will place meaning in anything/everything if they don’t train themselves not to do so. I’d love someone to do a blog where all it is is tearing apart junk articles. That’d be a fun Sunday morning read.

Re: 'Mathematically perfect' star system being investigated for potential alien tech

#174
post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Holy cow. ChatGPT 4 actually decoded this. It went into analysis mode, wrote some python, ran it, and gave the correct answer.

Its base64. Its not an encryption.

Sure, but it’s pretty amazing to me that ChatGPT didn’t just hallucinate a response to a generic request to decode a string. It recognized the string as base64, wrote a valid program to decode it, and returned the correct response.

Maybe I’m just old and amazed, but that seems pretty cool (terrifying?) to me.

Re: 'Mathematically perfect' star system being investigated for potential alien tech

#175

I've often thought planet TrEs-2b [0], the darkest planet ever discovered orbiting a star, would be the best candidate for extra terrestrial life. My theory is that its darkness is down to the fact that the civilisation there has figured out a way to harness solar energy to near 100% capacity, along the lines of a Dyson sphere [1]. [0] https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/exoplanet-catalog/1716/tres-2-b [1] https://en.wikiped…

The NASA exoplanet visualizer is very cool. Did not know about that. Thanks for sharing. I imagine those hypothetical visualizations will improve over time as our understanding of the exoplanet data gets better. It is amazing what you can derive from a single pixel of light.

Not sure why, but the visualizer is giving me a strong urge to boot Outer Wilds again.

Re: 'Mathematically perfect' star system being investigated for potential alien tech

#176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good idea! Um9iZXJ0IEogU2F3eWVyIC0gU3RhcnBsZXgK

Holy cow. ChatGPT 4 actually decoded this. It went into analysis mode, wrote some python, ran it, and gave the correct answer.

It can also decode w/o analysis mode. Try GPT Classic

Re: 'Mathematically perfect' star system being investigated for potential alien tech

#177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It would be like saying that because the period of our Moons rotation is so precisely the same as period of its orbit around Earth that it always faces Earth with one side, that somebody must have put the Moon on the orbit I don't think that's the implication though. Life on earth would not be the same without the moon's orbit to provide stable ocean current rides. I would imagine not having that would add extra co…

He's saying that tidally locked bodies are products of simple physics and you can't extrapolate deeper meanings from them.

Ah okay and I agree. I was just saying that they do seem to promote the growth of life easier from what we can study at least.

Re: 'Mathematically perfect' star system being investigated for potential alien tech

#178
post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why it would require alien technology to keep it perfect. Why they'd do this, though, would be a mystery.

seems like it'd be a primitive way (in one way, obviously not in the tech sense) of displaying power

Perhaps it's just a giant advertising billboard.

Re: 'Mathematically perfect' star system being investigated for potential alien tech

#179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Holy cow. ChatGPT 4 actually decoded this. It went into analysis mode, wrote some python, ran it, and gave the correct answer.

Base64 encoding is a common way of jailbreaking LLMS. The llm just deals with vectorspaces so to it, base64 is just another language for the encoding/tokenization layer to learn.

Yeah - I’m just shocked I didn’t get a hallucinated response for the query.

Re: 'Mathematically perfect' star system being investigated for potential alien tech

#180

> radio waves from satellites and telescopes beaming out in the plane of our solar system Surely radio telescopes don't "beam out" radio waves? They receive them. If they are configured to transmit, like the Deep Space Array, they don't beam in the plane of the solar system; they beam at whatever spaceship they are trying to communicate with. Satellites even less; they have to conserve power, so they don't send radio…

Not to mention if we did pick up an alien signal it would have been sent a very very very long time ago
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