Posted on 05/22/2016 6:39:00 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Every now and then, a distant star called KIC 8462852 dims by as much as 20 percent. That's huge. Even a passing planet as big as Jupiter would only block about 1 percent of the star's light.
Ruling out a planet, scientists have no idea what could be eclipsing the star (which is informally known as 'Tabby's Star'). The leading hypothesis is a family of really big comets, but that doesn't quite fit. Astronomer Jason Wright pointed out that the light patterns are consistent with what we'd expect if aliens had built a Dyson swarm of solar collectors around the star to harness its energy. This hypothesis isn't perfect either.
The mystery deepened when astronomer Bradley Schaefer found evidence suggesting the star had also been dimming by about 16 percent each century. Such a huge drop in light over time made the comet hypothesis seem less likely. Compared to the 36 giant comets you'd need to create the star's 20 percent dimming, you'd need 648,000 giant comets to explain the century-long dimming...
(Excerpt) Read more at popsci.com ...
A really, really large fluttering space moth that can’t resist circling bright objects.....
Source?
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I’ve read they’ve ruled out natural causes that could interfere with the star’s output, but how did they manage that? For instance, what if the star were 30% or 40% iron from the get go (don’t ask me how)? That would surely wreck havoc on the nuclear fires at the core, perhaps causing wild fluctuations in the output. And that’s only one possibility, I imagine. How could they rule out all such possibilities when we admittedly know so little about the wonders that are out there? To invoke aliens at this point is nutso, imo.
The Pak Protectors are building something good.
If you are the point you can build a dyson sphere, you are probably also at the point where you can disguise a dyson sphere. So I doubt is something like Pak Protectors, unless they know for sure nothing is out there that could ever be a threat. Which isn’t too comforting considering we can supposedly see this thing.
Freegards
“Once a planet gets past a certain mass, gravity will cause the matter to compress until nuclear reactions start and it becomes a star.”
Wouldn’t that depend on what elements are present on the planet?
Bkmk. Thank you!
.
That is like a litter of mice “capturing” the big black cat that is stalking them. They could capture his stomach.
My pleasure.
Thanks for the links. It seems to me the answer to this mystery is that there isn’t just one answer.
Quote from first article linked:
If you read up on the observances, they are not evenly timed and the dimming varies. I don't think there is a simple answer because the whole point of the articles on this star are that the dimming effect is irregular and complicated.
Like my wife!
“My bet that its a binary star system with one of the stars being a captured black hole.”
You beat me to it. That was also my conclusion. What else could reduce the visible light output from a star by 20%?
The only thing I’d add, is that it would have to be a very small black hole, or an extremely massive star.
I wonder if the observations show a significant wobble? That would be the smoking gun.
“what if the star were 30% or 40% iron from the get go”
Then it would be classified as a planet.
Iron does bad things to stars.
On second thought (it’s late), a brown dwarf makes more sense. Even a small black hole would probably be eating the star already, and the orbital wobble of the star would be unmistakable.
Yes, a very big one, thus the title of the article: "alien megastructure"
It's pretty cool that legit scientists are speculating along the same lines that you are!
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