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

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

#341

Post by ben_w »

foofie wrote: post #153
ben_w wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To use, not to collect. And thermodynamics appears to say you can't just store it. A stellar mass black hole might be an interesting "cold end" in this regard… if you can find or make one, but to do that you'd need to start with a Dyson swarm.

> To use, not to collect. And thermodynamics says you can't just store it. I don't think these semantic games are productive. Thermodynamics says you can transform energy. "Collect" in this context means using energy in a way that allows you to retrieve it in the future. For example, charging a battery or condenser with light with a PV panel, powering a motor that accelerates a flywheel, coiling a spring, heating a m…

If you have a Dyson swarm, the best way to "store" the power output of a star for later use is to perform star lifting, making the star itself smaller and lighter so it doesn't burn as hot in the first place, with the extra mass being used to construct a collection of gas giants in the same system.

If this kind of thing appeals to a group with meaningful control over a Dyson swarm, given that Dyson swarms and the capacity to make them can also be used to build and power a rapid, direct, and near-simultaneous colonisation of all galaxies in our future particle horizon (with significant levels of redundancy, though obviously we can't determine if "significant" is "sufficient"), you should anticipate the first such group turning almost every star in the universe into a red dwarf (or brown dwarf, for those they don't care to colonise just yet) in very short order.

I don't know if anyone's been looking for signatures of this specific thing; though I am told that "1 AU sphere of room-temperature metal" would be quite easy to spot, if you downsize the stars first then the size of the corresponding room-temperature sphere gets smaller, and I don't have a quantifiable number for "quite easy" nor any sense of scale for how much effort is going into such searches.

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

#342

Post by barkingcat »

hermitcrab wrote: post #324
barkingcat wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Why would aliens expend the enormous energy required to engineer this" Is a very similar answer to why humans would make microprocessors out of logic gates. I'm in school for digital design at the moment, and stuff like oscillators and frequency dividers are at the very base/root of almost all electronic circuits. One guess could be that alignments of planets in specific ways could be used to generate specific impul…

I can understand that it could be done as some sort of cosmic scale performance art. But I find it hard to understand that it would have any practical use. But, there again, aliens are likely to have very different thought processes.

yes exactly, the entire goal of my post was to describe how aliens could have entirely different thinking processes and/or scales than humans.

If one alien entity/organism is actually the size of a galaxy, a single solar system would be on the scale of maybe a transistor at 20-30 nm to us.

At that scale it's no longer performance art, but maybe a small part of a engine of some sort.

What I'm saying is thought patterns like "what is it for" "this is inefficient" or "that would be way too big" ... etc is only defined from our point of view.

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

#343

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

denton-scratch wrote: post #334
Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, if we ever actually received an alien signal, it wouldn't change much, other than some people going wild about knowing that extraterrestrial life exists. We'd never be able to make meaningful contact. At best, we could send a high-powered signal aimed at where the aliens are, but by the time they received it, we'd likely already be extinct. Heck, they're probably extinct by the time we even receive their signal…

> Heck, they're probably extinct by the time we even receive their signal. Many earthbound lifeforms have lifetimes in the tens of decades, and might be expected to survive as a species for thousands of years. And there are many "interesting" star-systems within 100 LY, so in those cases perhaps extinction isn't an issue. But I think humans would have difficulty when an exchange like "Earth to Aliens: come in please"…

> And there are many "interesting" star-systems within 100 LY, so in those cases perhaps extinction isn't an issue.

No, in that case, timing is.

FWIW, I'm operating under a dystopian and pessimistic assumption that any civilization will destroy itself within a few thousand years of discovering radio. At some point, there will be massive wars over dwindling resources and eventually a weapon (or the combined power of multiple weapons) causes so much damage that it ends up wiping out all life on the planet.

This means that a civilization will only broadcast a signal for other planets to pick up for a few thousand years. In a galactic scale, that's incredibly short. It's basically the blink of an eye.

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

#344

Post by neilkk »

tromp wrote: post #231
neilkk wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last ratio should be 2/3 again.

Actually the ratios are correct [1], but the typo is in my inferred orbit count for planet 6 which should be 9, not 8. Well spotted! [1] https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/DEAyqYXn7pfD7ZboApakhe-120...

This makes sense, since if all the orbit numbers were even the ratio could be expressed in simpler terms.

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

#345

Post by redder23 »

Ensorceled wrote: post #194
redder23 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither humans nor aliens created it, obviously.

I mean, that's literally what they are investigating. It's an article about the search for intelligent life, if you think that's nonsense, that's fine but it doesn't make it "clickbait".

I will not even bother to read this shit. You sound naive. What is "Mathematically perfect"? EVERYTHING! Literally everything is perfect math in nature, you see things like honeycomb patters repeat themselves in so many different animal and insect species. There are so many things like that. I wish I remember what YouTube video or article it was that I read, it was fascinating how much repeating and "perfect math" happens in nature. I am sure the solar systems out there are not any different. Math is just what humans invented to measure what it already there, the outcome can only be "perfect".

In case you do not know, the speed of light is just a made up number, so how the fuck do they're even measuring some solar system? THEY DON'T!

It's all clickbait, end of story "aliens, perfect math ..." I know this without reading it.

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

#346

Post by denton-scratch »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #343
denton-scratch wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Heck, they're probably extinct by the time we even receive their signal. Many earthbound lifeforms have lifetimes in the tens of decades, and might be expected to survive as a species for thousands of years. And there are many "interesting" star-systems within 100 LY, so in those cases perhaps extinction isn't an issue. But I think humans would have difficulty when an exchange like "Earth to Aliens: come in please"…

> And there are many "interesting" star-systems within 100 LY, so in those cases perhaps extinction isn't an issue. No, in that case, timing is. FWIW, I'm operating under a dystopian and pessimistic assumption that any civilization will destroy itself within a few thousand years of discovering radio. At some point, there will be massive wars over dwindling resources and eventually a weapon (or the combined power of m…

I share your view that broadcasting radio waves is a time-limited phase in human development; the airwaves are limited. But I don't agree with you that it could last "a few thousand years"; radio broadcasting depends critically on an electronics industry that only works at scale. Those industries depend on a stable, modern civilization, and I see no reason to think that modern civilization should last longer than earlier civilizations.

I completely agree that the duration during which a civililization can be expected to broadcast radio is extremely short, in galactic terms. So I think the likelihood is that if you do detect a radio transmission from outside the Solar System, by the time you receive it, the sender is dead; all his descendants have died; his planet's climate has changed, so that his species has been compelled to evolve (or die out); and his electronics-supporting civilization is long gone.

So I don't carry much water for SETI.

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

#347

Post by matt-attack »

barkingcat wrote: post #342
hermitcrab wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can understand that it could be done as some sort of cosmic scale performance art. But I find it hard to understand that it would have any practical use. But, there again, aliens are likely to have very different thought processes.

yes exactly, the entire goal of my post was to describe how aliens could have entirely different thinking processes and/or scales than humans. If one alien entity/organism is actually the size of a galaxy, a single solar system would be on the scale of maybe a transistor at 20-30 nm to us. At that scale it's no longer performance art, but maybe a small part of a engine of some sort. What I'm saying is thought pattern…

For what it’s worth, all your comments on this perspective along with the silicon analogy are excellent and were eye opening for me. I too was dismissive and it took me a sec to really understand your analogy and point but I get it now. Nicely stated!
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