Extra-Terrestrial Megastructures detected around a star?

@engineer,

True, but the number of people who actually believe in a seven day creation are in the minority and I doubt this revelation would change their beliefs. The overwhelming evidence of evolution hasn't so why would this?

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Don't get me wrong I would love to learn that was indeed a manufactured structure, and I think millions of people would join me, but it won't really change my fundamental view of existence and humanity in large measure because I have for a very long time believed we are not alone. I may have been a early adopter of this belief but I think I'm now in the majority.

People will be very excited, but it won't, I think, have a profound effect on their beliefs.

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@Finn dAbuzz,

Finn dAbuzz wrote:

Aside from the possible benefits we might accrue, how would solid evidence that we are not alone affect mankind? I think I've seen at least a hundred scientists tell me it will have a profound effect, but I'm not so sure.

This is another interesting question.

I wonder if such knowledge (knowing of other technological civilizations besides us) would have a profound but subtle effect on the way humanity thinks about things and how it behaves.

After all, religion has had a profound affect on humanity and there's no evidence or physical effect from that at all. It merely changes the way people think about things. Knowing that there are other beings in the galaxy with technical skills which dwarf our own could have a similar affect on people's thinking, but in very different ways.

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They're on it...

http://www.sciencealert.com/the-search-begins-telescope-array-is-now-focussing-in-on-alien-megastructure-star

Quote:

The search begins: a telescope array is now focussing in on 'alien megastructure' star[/size]

Last week, astronomers made a fascinating discovery: a strange pattern of light surrounding a distant star called KIC 8462852 that cannot be explained. When a planet orbits a star, the star’s brightness will usually only dip by 1 percent, but whatever is passing erratically by KIC 8462852 is causing it to dim by up to 22 percent. Something very, very big is out there, and scientists have offered up everything from a huge mass of comets to yep, even aliens, as possible (but not equally likely) explanations.

Alien megastructure or not, we just want to know, and the good news is researchers are already on the case, with the announcement that the Allen Telescope Array (ATA) - an array of 42 radio telescopes in California - has already been focussing in on the curious star, located some 1,500 light-years from Earth.

"We are looking at it with the Allen Telescope Array," Seth Shostak, a senior astronomer at the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute in the US told Mike Wall at Space.com. "I think we ought to, for sure," he added, but said we should prepare ourselves to be disappointed, because newsflash: it’s probably not actually aliens. "[people] should perhaps moderate their enthusiasm with the lessons of history", he said.

But whatever is causing these seriously strange dips in brightness around KIC 8462852 will still make for some fascinating research, because it's defied any reasonable explanation so far. The most obvious explanation is a colossal dust cloud, but scientists have ruled this out as unlikely because space dust gives off infrared light, and no excess of infrared light has been detected around the star.
...

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@FBM,

I wonder how long it will take to analyze the results?

Seth Shostak is the lead presenter for Big Picture Science, a very informative podcast site which I listen to frequently.

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@rosborne979,

I dug around to try to find out how long they'd be using the ATA, but no luck. I'd be surprised if there weren't something more about it in the news by the new year.

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Another interesting article came out recently:

http://www.sciencealert.com/earth-was-one-of-the-first-habitable-planets-in-the-universe-and-most-are-yet-to-be-born-study-finds?perpetual=yes&limitstart=1

The Article wrote:

Earth is one of the Universe's first habitable planets, and most are yet to be born. We probably peaked too soon for aliens.

At roughly 13.8 billion years old, the Universe might seem like it's been around for a long time, but a new study suggests that Earth is one of the first habitable planets to form - and we're probably too early to the party to get a chance to meet future alien civilizations.

The research looked at data from the Hubble and Kepler space telescopes, and predicted that 92 percent of the Universe's habitable planets have yet to be born. And most won't form until after our Sun burns out in 6 million years' time.

It's kind of depressing to contemplate that, as a planet, we may have peaked way too soon. But another way to look at it is the fact that we're likely to be one of the only civilisations with the ability to look back at the birth of the Universe.

Of course, that other 8% is still out there somewhere and we are extremely young technologically. It's not at all unreasonable to think that some of the other 8% might be thousands or millions of years deep in their own technological development.

So even if we are one of the first, and we get to pioneer the transition from Class I to Class II, there still could be others out there which are vastly ahead of us. The speed of biological and technological change is so different from cosmological timeframes that even the 8% numbers shouldn't limit us.

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@rosborne979,

I'd be interested to know what methodology lead to such odd conclusions.

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If we boil these observations down to their most basic form it's a pretty compelling mystery: "What could cause a star to dim by 20% without showing up as a wobble in the star?"

The star itself might be dimming periodically, but we know a lot about stars and stars like this one don't usually do that. The other obvious answer is something blocking the light, like a large planet or debris field. But any single large object is going to cause a wobble in the star because of its mass, and debris fields need to be dispersed enough to avoid a wobble as well, and those tend to be unstable and don't last long (cosmic time).

Black holes also block/divert light, but if there was a black hole anywhere near that system it would be affecting the star gravitationally (huge wobble) as well, and it's not.

So then there's the idea of an artificial structure designed to block light which has an incredibly low density so as not to cause a wobble in the star (extra-terrestrial megastructure). But you might expect a megastructure like that to be built in such a way that it was symmetrical around the star to balance the forces of gravity, and a symmetrical structure probably wouldn't result in cycles of dimming, it would just be consistently dim.

So this is a pretty good mystery. No natural phenomena we know of fits the pattern, and even the logical expectations of an artificial structure don't fit well either.

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@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

I'd be interested to know what methodology lead to such odd conclusions.

You mean my conclusions, or the article's conclusions?

I've seen this article presented on a couple of different sources, but I haven't tried to find the source papers yet. I would guess they have a lot more data on their methodologies.

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@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

I'd be interested to know what methodology lead to such odd conclusions.

Actually, I think I can guess at some of this...

First of all, I think when they say "habitable" they are assuming "habitable by our form of life, biology, chemistry, water based, etc". This is a big assumption, but I think they are making it.

Beyond that I think they are building on a few known sequences, one of which is that our solar system (and sun) is at least a Gen 2 star, and probably a Gen 3, as determined by the relative distribution of atomic elements. As you are probably aware, certain elements can only be produced by Supernovae, and we've got bunches of these in our environment and as a requirement in our biological processes. Based on this alone, I'm sure they are calculating the lifetimes of the first two stars which must have contributed to ours, and they are probably relating this back to the timeline of star/solar system formation which results in our form of life.

The other main ingredient to their conclusion is also the extremely long timeline before the projected "end of the Universe", which is on the order of Trillions of years. Given a timeline of that length, our temporal position on that line is probably around 8% of the way along, so that alone might be the bulk of their argument.

Again, I'm reading/guessing into what I think their arguments are without having read any source material, so take my interpretation with a grain of salt.

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I'm a little bit disappointed that they are going to investigate this anomaly so quickly because I'm virtually certain they are going to come back with some natural and possibly mundane explanation for everything and the excitement of considering all of this as reality will return to embers once again.

I hope we can have fun with this while it lasts.

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@rosborne979,

Religion grew organically, it wasn't sprung on mankind in a NY Times headline.

Proof that there is life elsewhere than on earth might, of course, have a profound effect on mankind. I'm simply opining that I seriously doubt it will.

For instance I don't think any of the major religions are going to have to make serious alterations to their doctrine.

Governments are not likely to make serious alterations to their national or foreign policies because, as has been discussed, the aliens that would be responsible for this structure would hardly be on our doorstep. Of course, they could be if in addition to mastering this level of engineering, they found a way to travel faster than light, but to the extent that is even possible the engineering required is probably far beyond what is required to mine a star: Someone, whose name escapes me, has posited that a wormhole could be created by building two spheres (the nature which I can't explain) roughly the size of the sun; precisely one atom's distance apart from each other. And this might simply create a wormhole. Who knows what would happen to a being that enters one.

For a time America was protected by oceans, but that protection has disappeared. It may be that the protection we think the vastness of space provides us is as illusory, but for now I think world leaders, advised by scientists, will buy into it.

There is a general consensus among scientists about the ill effects of Climate Change and while the most dire effects are, at worse, 85 years and more likely centuries away, world leaders aren't flocking to a global solution. If they can't all get on board to reach a global plan to address a environmental disaster that most of them will probably tell you they buy into, what chance is there that there will be any meaningful cooperation to do really anything about a possible threat 1,500 light years away?

I do think people around the world will be very excited about the news and join clubs and buy t-shirts. Sure, some of them will have a life changing reaction, but no where near enough that we will see it globally.

If this thing turns out to be the real deal, I hope I'm wrong, but I see no reason to believe I will be.

Of course that shouldn't detract from our excitement about it.

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@rosborne979,

And if we continue to progress technologically and without destroying ourselves we may eventually become the Big Bad Wolf or Big Benefactor of the Universe.

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@Finn dAbuzz,

Finn dAbuzz wrote:

Proof that there is life elsewhere than on earth might, of course, have a profound effect on mankind. I'm simply opining that I seriously doubt it will.

Understood. I actually believe it would have a more profound affect than you think, but admittedly I have no evidence, or even strong logic to support that. It's just an opinion. The only way we'll ever know for sure is to see it happen, and I hope I live long enough to see that day... but I have my doubts it'll happen any time soon.

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@Finn dAbuzz,

Finn dAbuzz wrote:

And if we continue to progress technologically and without destroying ourselves we may eventually become the Big Bad Wolf or Big Benefactor of the Universe.

Any wouldn't that be something. Smile

It's a line of thought most people never take, but it's certainly not impossible.

We might be the first to step onto the galactic stage, and in 10 million years end up being the elder statesmen of the supercluster, who knows. Although I doubt there would be much left which is human about us after even a hundred thousand years, much less millions.

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@rosborne979,

Yes, their definition of habitable was one of the things which i considered suspect. Also, it is highly likely that there are many, many third generation stars in the cosmos--millions and millions at least, if not billions. So, it may be as Brian Cox suggests, that we are the only technological civilization in this galaxy, or, as i had surmised before he made that statement, only a few. I find it stretches my credulity to consider us the only one in all of the cosmos--although certainly, someone has to be the first.

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@rosborne979,

Really strange. Thanks for notifying me of this article, it's really intriguing.

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@Setanta,

The more I look at this article the more it seems like a pedantic no-brainer (based on the projected duration of the Universe).

The Article wrote:

The research looked at data from the Hubble and Kepler space telescopes, and predicted that 92 percent of the Universe's habitable planets have yet to be born. And most won't form until after our Sun burns out in 6 billion years' time.

Putting aside for a second the fact that their definition of "habitable" may be over restrictive, the bottom line from a purely mathematical level is that we're only about 8% along into the lifespan of the Universe, so of course we're in the first 8%.

The Article wrote:

"Our main motivation was understanding the Earth's place in the context of the rest of the universe," said lead researcher Peter Behroozi. "Compared to all the planets that will ever form in the Universe, the Earth is actually quite early."

This may be a case of the Media looking to create a headline when there's really not much to say. So maybe the headline should have simply said, "Universe projected to last 100Trillion years, which means we're only about 8% of the way there". fizzle.

But there was something interesting I got out of this, which is the realization that future inhabitants won't be able to see back to the beginning like we can. So not only are we fortunate in that sense, but we may be obliged to learn everything we can (which we'll probably do anyway) and then pass that information down the line (in some, as yet, unfathomable way).

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@rosborne979,

Curioser and curioser . . .

http://www.cleavebooks.co.uk/grol/alice/won02a.gif

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Extra-Terrestrial Megastructures detected around a star?

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