Reminds me of Omphalos by Ted Chiang.
'Mathematically perfect' star system being investigated for potential alien tech
111–120 of 347 posts
Re: 'Mathematically perfect' star system being investigated for potential alien tech
#112Earlier 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...
If a K1.5 wanted to do that just for shits and giggles, is there a viable way to slow down or speed up orbits of rocky planets? Like, wouldn't they be shooting a bunch of mass out of their system to even attempt this? If one could build a Dyson sphere, is that more difficult or less difficult than engineering a system like this? The sphere/swarm has some absurd amount of mass all in a very uniform orbit around the su…
> is there a viable way to slow down or speed up orbits of rocky planets?
You can fly something massive near a target planet, while using some kind of engine to keep a distance. Gravity will do the rest. It may take some time of course, but all you need is to do maintainance on an engine regularly.
> Like, wouldn't they be shooting a bunch of mass out of their system to even attempt this?
It depends on a type of an engine. If you use solar sail for example it is not the mass but light will be thrown out.
> one could build a Dyson sphere, is that more difficult or less difficult than engineering a system like this?
Sphere seems to me more difficult. Not in a sense of energies involved, but from a standpoint of engineering.
Re: 'Mathematically perfect' star system being investigated for potential alien tech
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, on an unrelated note, do you have any scifi author recommendations?
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…
Thanks. I have yet to read the first 3, so I'll add them to the list. If I'm lucky, maybe I'll stumble into that art-project novel.
Re: 'Mathematically perfect' star system being investigated for potential alien tech
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would love to see a movie where aliens show up to help us with the looming crisis that is about to destroy our civilization, and it's CSS.
It's the year 2200. The world's machines are now all AI-designed, prototyped, refined, produced, and distributed. The supply chain hasn't received human interference in over fifty years, and increasingly-accurate weather and tectonic predictions generated by computer algorithms have made supply chain errors obsolete. But humanity is dissatisfied. With no existential threats arising, people cannot find value in life.…
[deleted]
Re: 'Mathematically perfect' star system being investigated for potential alien tech
#115Wiki page for the star system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD_110067
Re: 'Mathematically perfect' star system being investigated for potential alien tech
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not convinced until they find a Dyson sphere...
Dyson spheres are probably really rare. It's just bad strategy, everyone within your galaxy knows you're there pretty much immediately when a star just up and disappears one day. Granted, the non-K2s just stare in awe maybe, but the other K2s will fuck your shit up. Can't exactly pack it up and run either, not with a medium-sized star in your suitcase.
Anyone with only mildly better tech than we have now, can see your ecosystem changing over the course of the seasons before you invented fire, let alone built a Dyson swarm. We're just starting to have this capacity already in special cases, though we've not found any sign of an ecosystem, just "boring" diamond rain etc.
A Dyson swarm will keep you safe from any threat smaller than another Dyson swarm — and while you may not be able to "pack it up", you can use one to run to other galaxies… in fact, almost all of them… at close enough to the same time that light cones matter… and get the settlers moving at a significant fraction of the speed of light… and have a lot of redundancy.
Re: 'Mathematically perfect' star system being investigated for potential alien tech
#117Imagine there are no aliens intelligent in the way humans are, and nature doesn't care about us any more than it cares about a species of gnat, and that knowledge and discovery is not the purpose of life.
Re: 'Mathematically perfect' star system being investigated for potential alien tech
#118tldr: 1. Star system 100ly away. 2. Piqued interest of astronomical community, because "The six planets orbit their central star HD 110067 in a harmonic rhythm with planets aligning every few orbits" 3. No accurate data on masses of planets. 4. No radio signals or other "technosignatures" detected. So, super unclear what #2 means and why this is interesting at all / whether it's uncommon.
This may be a silly question, but is it even possible to detect radio signals from 100ly away?
The short answer is no. Not even from Alpha Centauri 4ly away. A lot of people have misconceptions that we would immediately detect these signals - we would not. MAYBE from Alpha Centauri with a LOT of additional funding and effort, but not as is. Details here:
https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/22617/can-we-commu...
Re: 'Mathematically perfect' star system being investigated for potential alien tech
#119Re: 'Mathematically perfect' star system being investigated for potential alien tech
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or one with three planet sharing the same orbit, perfectly spaced!
This is dynamically unstable; Any miniscule imperfection ends up being magnified by the forces involved. The angular momentum of the system is conserved, but resonances build chaotically and are likely to eventually concentrate enough in a smaller body to throw it off past escape velocity. Spaced-out resonant triplets of bodies in the same plane are often dynamically stable - an imperfect ratio is damped by various o…
That's why it would require alien technology to keep it perfect.
Why they'd do this, though, would be a mystery.