Posted on 10/28/2015 12:56:27 PM PDT by ETL
The mystery behind a strangely dimming star could soon be solved.
Astronomers around the world are keeping a close eye on the star KIC 8462852, which has dimmed dramatically numerous times over the past few years, dropping in brightness by up to 22 percent. These big dips have spurred speculation that the star may be surrounded by some type of alien megastructure — a hypothesis that will be put to the test if and when KIC 8462852 dims again.
"As long as one of those events occurs again, we should be able to catch it in the act, and then we'll definitely be able to figure out what we're seeing," said Jason Wright, an astronomer at Pennsylvania State University.
"The simplest measurements we can take — just looking in different wavelengths [of light] — should rule out, or suggest, alien megastructures right away," Wright told Space.com.
KIC 8462852 is a large star that lies about 1,500 light-years from Earth. The dimming events, which were observed by NASA's Kepler space telescope between 2009 and 2013, seem too substantial to be caused by an orbiting planet, many astronomers say.
Another plausible explanation — a planet-forming disk — doesn't seem to make sense, either, because KIC 8462852 appears to be a mature star whose planets (if it has any) have already formed.
So scientists are entertaining a number of other ideas, hypothesizing that the dimming might be caused by a swarm of exocomets or perhaps even some type of orbiting alien megastructure. This latter possibility is unlikely, researchers stress, but it's still worth checking out. Indeed, astronomers have aimed radio telescopes at KIC 8462852 to search for signals that may have been generated by intelligent aliens.
And follow-up is proceeding on other fronts as well. A number of optical telescopes are watching the star, waiting for another multiday dimming event to take place. Once such an event begins, large scopes outfitted with spectrographs will swing into action, studying and monitoring the various wavelengths of light emanating from KIC 8462852, Wright said.
"That'll tell us what that material is that the starlight is being filtered through," he said. "It'll tell us if maybe we're looking at ordinary astrophysical dust; it'll tell us if we're looking at gas."
"If we see any color dependence in the dimming — if it gets dimmer in the ultraviolet than it does in the infrared, for instance — then that would rule out that whatever we're looking at is a solid object," Wright added.
Wright thinks the data will eventually show that KIC 8462852's dimming events are caused by dust. If that turns out to be the case, it would raise another mystery for astronomers to solve — namely, where all that dust is coming from. Is it being shed by exocomets, for example, or is the material trapped in a giant ring system around a Saturn-like alien planet?
"The amount of dimming we get tells us something about the size of the dust — is it as fine as smoke, or is it pebbles and things?" Wright said. "That'll help us figure out which of those scenarios we're looking at."
Still maybe the best science fiction film of all time. Besides the thirty years ahead of their time special effects it had Anne Francis in a miniskirt, and Leslie Nielsen as commander before his Airplane “and don’t call me Shirley” and Police Squad “I knew it!” comedic days.
And flying very erratically! Thanks, though.
A Dyson sphere? LOL
I am sure that we can tell from here....
A Dyson sphere? LOL
I am sure that we can tell from here....
A Dyson sphere? LOL
I am sure that we can tell from here....
It was a weather balloon.
Nope. I reject that suggestion out of hand. If that’s what it was, I most assuredly would have seen it many times before. Sorry! :^)
Inspiration for the great (never really used) machine of Epsilon 3 in Babylon 5? I see some myself.
It is a very good movie.
Why not - they constructed an entire family and tribal structure, clothing, facial features, customs, etc
from a single “missing link” tooth (that turned out to be from a pig).
No mystery whatsoever once you admit that stars are effected by galactic Birkland currents. 99.9% of all matter in the Universe is in the plasma state, yet astronomers refuse to acknowledge that plasma is electrical in nature (lightning is plasma) and continue to call the Solar Electric Current “solar wind”. An electrical interpretation in astrophysics would quickly evaporate “big bang”, “black hole”, “dark matter”, “dark energy” and other kludge theories based, not upon observation but upon mathematical modeling and computer simulation. I’m gonna tell you one thing, kid...GIGO.
Much more info here:
www.thunderbolts.info
Global warming...
“Ring World”
Damn near everything is basically electrical in nature, including us.
ping
“Plasma is one of the four fundamental states of matter, the others being solid, liquid, and gas. A plasma has properties unlike those of the other states.
A plasma can be created by heating a gas or subjecting it to a strong electromagnetic field applied with a laser or microwave generator. This decreases or increases the number of electrons, creating positive or negative charged particles called ions,[2] and is accompanied by the dissociation of molecular bonds, if present.[3]
The presence of a significant number of charge carriers makes plasma electrically conductive so that it responds strongly to electromagnetic fields. Like gas, plasma does not have a definite shape or a definite volume unless enclosed in a container. Unlike gas, under the influence of a magnetic field, it may form structures such as filaments, beams and double layers.
Plasma is the most abundant form of ordinary matter in the Universe (the only matter known to exist for sure, the more abundant dark matter is hypothetical and may or may not be explained by ordinary matter), most of which is in the rarefied intergalactic regions, particularly the intracluster medium, and in stars, including the Sun.[4][5] A common form of plasmas on Earth is seen in neon signs.
Much of the understanding of plasmas has come from the pursuit of controlled nuclear fusion and fusion power, for which plasma physics provides the scientific basis.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_%28physics%29
It could be satellites. The ones in equatorial orbits will travel on an east-west trajectory, generally around where the Milky Way is in the sky, if you can see that where you live. In North America, that’s going to be between 30-50 degrees north from the horizon.
Of course there are lots of other kinds of satellite orbits, but from the way you describe it, satellites in equatorial orbit seem the most likely suspect to me.
Watt are you saying?
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