'Mathematically perfect' star system being investigated for potential alien tech • Hacker News Board

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

#211

Post by aylmao » Wed, Feb 28, 2024, 8:15 PM UTC

lisper wrote: post #181

thereisnoself wrote: post #133

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…

> 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]. Very unlikely, in light of the fact that "the air of this planet is as hot as lava".

I wonder how temperature is measured for an object this far away. If it's calculated based on the expected energy absorption of a planet with this level of reflectivity, the measurement would be wrong anyway, assuming alien tech.

Instead of the energy being absorbed as heat by the planet, it'd instead be stored in some other form or used for interstellar travel, construction etc, right?

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

#212

Post by UberFly » Wed, Feb 28, 2024, 8:23 PM UTC

empath-nirvana wrote: post #189

cbsmith wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah... feels like someone isn't familiar with the law of large numbers...

I think it's mostly that people didn't read the article. The planets are interesting to study because of the angle we're looking at them and for no other reason. They happened to be aligned in such a way that we can get interesting measurements from them.

Yea the headline is misleading making it sound like the planet orbits were engineered.

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

#213

Post by wolverine876 » Wed, Feb 28, 2024, 8:38 PM UTC

dmazin wrote: post #144

thereisnoself wrote: post #133

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…

That’s an interesting exoplanet, though not sure how someone would live on a gas giant.

Maybe they live on a moon or two.

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

#214

Post by wolverine876 » Wed, Feb 28, 2024, 8:41 PM UTC

hermitcrab wrote: post #198

tromp wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As detailed in the companion article [1], for every 54 orbits of planet 1, planets 2..6 orbit 36, 24, 16, 12, and 8 times respectively, giving successive ratios of 2/3, 2/3, 2/3, 3/4 and 3/4. After those 54 planet 1 orbits, all planets are in the same relative position. [1] https://www.space.com/six-sub-neptunes-found-100-light-years...

It is not at all clear to me why the harmonics makes it any more worth searching for aliens than any other solar system. a) Why would aliens expend the enormous energy required to engineer this? b) Isn't it vastly more likely to occur naturally as some sort of resonance effect?

> a) Why would aliens expend the enormous energy required to engineer this?

Maybe they built the system, and being lazy like we are they chose some simple numbers

> b) Isn't it vastly more likely to occur naturally as some sort of resonance effect?

Alien intelligence may be less likely than a natural effect, but alien intelligence in this system is much more likely than in a random system.

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

#215

Post by cal85 » Wed, Feb 28, 2024, 8:42 PM UTC

duxup wrote: post #139

We make a lot of observations, doesn't it make sense that we would see some improbable stuff?

Yes, and it makes sense that we take a closer look at the improbable stuff in case it's aliens.

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

#216

Post by jdmichal » Wed, Feb 28, 2024, 8:43 PM UTC

awesomeideas wrote: post #193

bloggie wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t that the expected outcome when energy production eventually outpaces the planet’s ability to dissipate energy into space?

Well, it's not going to outpace it, exactly. Unless the temperature is actually increasing (or decreasing), the energy in matches the energy radiated away, less the non-heat work.

> less the non-heat work.

Doesn't all the non-heat work eventually just become heat? Or am I misunderstanding your usage? Like a car with a solar panel still ends up radiating work as heat, by either air resistance (heat) or brake friction (heat).

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

#217

Post by ebcode » Wed, Feb 28, 2024, 8:49 PM UTC

lisper wrote: post #191

bloggie wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t that the expected outcome when energy production eventually outpaces the planet’s ability to dissipate energy into space?

No. The temperature of the atmosphere has nothing to do with whether or not aliens are harvesting the energy. At equilibrium, all of the incoming energy has to get radiated back out into space eventually whether there are aliens harvesting that energy or not. The problem with an atmosphere hotter than lava is that very few materials are solid at those temperatures, and it's hard to imagine how a civilization could bu…

They could be using iridium. When we're talking about aliens, we're already in the realm of hard-to-imagine, but it's worthwhile, I think.

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

#218

Post by wolverine876 » Wed, Feb 28, 2024, 8:53 PM UTC

onetimeuse92304 wrote: post #101

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…

> I think the authors do not understand ...

The authors are scientists from SETI, Berkeley, Oxford, and NASA. Probably they understand anything you (or I) understand about the topic, and quite a bit more. (A funny phenomenon is that if they posted here, starting their comment with 'SETI researcher here ...', we would all listen to them and ask questions. If they 'post' a paper to a journal, a paper they spent years researching and revising, alongside other scientists, we disregard them.)

Like many similar HN comments, I think there's a valid question in there. IMHO it's a mistake to immediately conclude that, perceiving some inconsistency, the other person must be wrong, obviously ridiculous, etc. That doesn't make sense unless I am omniscient: the inconsistency between my idea and theirs could just as easily be a problem on my end - much more easily when comparing my ideas of orbital physics with those authors. Here is how I have learned to think of it (using this example):

To me, it seems clear that planetary resonances explain the observed phenomenon. Obviously the authors thought of that; how did they address that issue?

Humility is truth, unless you are a god.

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

#219

Post by gembeMx » Wed, Feb 28, 2024, 8:54 PM UTC

NooneAtAll3 wrote: post #121

Reminds me of Titius–Bode law[1], where simple equation correctly gave orbits of all the known planets, while predicting one more in asteroid belt and correct distance to Uranus. Only was considered disproven when Neptune didn't work. I would not trust these relations even existing (other than by pure chance). Even less I'd trust any intelligent design behind it [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titius%E2%80%93Bode_l…

[dead]

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

#220

Post by landryraccoon » Wed, Feb 28, 2024, 9:10 PM UTC

im3w1l wrote: post #209

theossuary wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a great video that touches on your point, the Earth must radiate the heat it receives to stay in equilibrium, even if it uses it to do work in the process. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxL2HoqLbyA

If we extract the maximum possible entropy of the incoming radiation wouldn't that mean we radiated at high-intensity but low-temperature?

What does that mean?

Everyday objects don't work like that. Saying ice cubes are cold is roughly equivalent to saying that they radiate less heat than the objects around them. If they radiated at "high intensity" then they wouldn't be cold anymore.

"A cold object that radiates heat at high intensity" is a contradiction.