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Strange Stars Pulse To the Golden Mean
An anonymous reader sends this excerpt from an article at Quanta Magazine:
What struck John Learned about the blinking of KIC 5520878, a bluish-white star 16,000 light-years away, was how artificial it seemed. Learned, a neutrino physicist at the University of Hawaii, Mnoa, has a pet theory that super-advanced alien civilizations might send messages by tickling stars with neutrino beams, eliciting Morse code-like pulses. "It's the sort of thing tenured senior professors can get away with," he said. The pulsations of KIC 5520878, recorded recently by NASA's Kepler telescope, suggested that the star might be so employed.
A "variable" star, KIC 5520878 brightens and dims in a six-hour cycle, seesawing between cool-and-clear and hot-and-opaque. Overlaying this rhythm is a second, subtler variation of unknown origin; this frequency interplays with the first to make some of the star's pulses brighter than others. In the fluctuations, Learned had identified interesting and, he thought, possibly intelligent sequences, such as prime numbers (which have been floated as a conceivable basis of extraterrestrial communication). He then found hints that the star's pulses were chaotic. But when Learned mentioned his investigations to a colleague, William Ditto, last summer, Ditto was struck by the ratio of the two frequencies driving the star's pulsations. "I said, 'Wait a minute, that's the golden mean.'"
A "variable" star, KIC 5520878 brightens and dims in a six-hour cycle, seesawing between cool-and-clear and hot-and-opaque. Overlaying this rhythm is a second, subtler variation of unknown origin; this frequency interplays with the first to make some of the star's pulses brighter than others. In the fluctuations, Learned had identified interesting and, he thought, possibly intelligent sequences, such as prime numbers (which have been floated as a conceivable basis of extraterrestrial communication). He then found hints that the star's pulses were chaotic. But when Learned mentioned his investigations to a colleague, William Ditto, last summer, Ditto was struck by the ratio of the two frequencies driving the star's pulsations. "I said, 'Wait a minute, that's the golden mean.'"
Wikipedia says the golden ratio is related to 5 sided figures (pentagrams).
Clearly, we're seeing 5 stars in mutual orbit.
Yeah, wild guess.
But this is sort of thing that was the reason behind all the early mathematicians being batshit crazy. Math is man's model of the universe and it's always been a good enough model that you start discovering all sorts of stuff in math that exactly mirrors the world around us. You start to think maybe there's some hidden power there, that maybe math can predict everything. Then you form a cult and start attracting followers and have to be put down by the government of the time. Er, or something. And that's just some one-trick hack with a lever or a screw or something. Imagine what would have happened if one of those guys had stumbled across hyperbolic geometry. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure it was a very nice lever, but it didn't even go into the 4th dimension! I mean... er... what were we talking about again?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
"It's the sort of thing tenured professors can get away with." I'm thinking I need to rethink my career path right away and become a tenured professor.
Might as well face it I'm addicted to data.
Isn't the only noteworthy thing about the golden ration that it appears so often in our world? So what's surprising about it showing up in a different location of the same world?
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
Similar claims have been made about how human anatomy allegedly conforms to mathematical constants. But when we make actual measurements of individuals, nobody fits the constants perfectly. What is the allowed margin of error? One can make just about any number be close to some "elegant" mathematical constant -- pi/2, pi^2, e/phi, whatever.
Similarly, today I just judged a paper about childhood obesity submitted to a scientific journal. Childhood obesity is confounded with low socioeconomic status, so how do we separate the two? Of course, children of lower socioeconomic status have poorer outcomes in terms of health, occupation, and mortality. (Incidentally, the children with the worst outcomes in terms of future health, income, and mortality are the underweight kids who look like walking skeletons. Most scientific papers on obesity exclude that population.)
I mean, a radio signal that's readily detectable by primitive civilizations like ours, assumedely the only reason to blast out a fantastically strong signal at all in all directions instead of a tightbeam, would take more energy than all of human civilization produces slammed into one radio transmitter just to be "heard" as it were. A huge engineering product just to say "Hello World" or "Hello Galaxy" as it were.
On the other hand, we already look at stars as it is, and all they do is blast out radiation. If you could fluctuate it to a noticeable degree that would save a lot of energy versus actually producing all that energy yourself, and besides all the energy being flung out by the star is going to be lost as it is. Might as well use it for something.
A species that advertises its existence to the unknown is not an intelligent species.
That even with the ability to change a star's energy levels, that that civilization does not have FTL, yet.
The golden ratio is connected to the Fibonacci sequence
Thanks, I was about to say the same thing =p
So I'm kind of surprised that this is thought of as coming from extraterrestial intelligence at all.
That's what got me so excited, but then I realized it was just another manifestation of what already occurs in our universe all the time (golden mean, Fibonacci sequence). Doesn't rule out that ETs are using it for communication though - it's obviously caught OUR attention and interest, no? ;)
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
We are still trying to understand, model and measure the variables in Solar/Star processes. It is not surprising that variable star's energy producing systems have similar cycles to my way of thinking. You can imagine superimposing two sine waves of different frequencies that could yield a golden mean ratio.
At first I was completely astonished that yet another (seemingly) natural phenomenon is related to the Golden Mean. It was a major epiphany in my mid-20's how nature follows the rule of irrationality, which still follows a pattern, and not simply rational numbers. It's sacred geometry in action.
The more I read, the more I realised that this is 'just another' verification of what I realized about nature and our universe. It's everywhere.. the design of snail shells, seashells, seed patterns in Sunflowers and so many other plant formations, spiral galaxy formations (Fibonacci spiral!), and now star illumination patterns. It's everywhere. It's a key to helping understand the nature of reality. Thanks for posting this!
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Neutrino beams used on otherwise useless stars to serve as beacons doesn't, though.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Golden ratios emerge wherever you have a relationship of T(n)=T(n-1) + T(n-2). Where the first two terms are 0 and 1, you have fibonacci numbers: but no matter what your starting numbers are, the ratio between T(n) and T(n-1) will approach phi (as demonstrated with 'brady numbers').
So it is not at all surprising that phi might crop up in seemingly strange places.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
The two numbers Phi and Pi are actually related by trigonometry, so it is hardly surprising that they would show up in a ratio concerning the rotation of stars.
If you divide a circle into 5 sections of 2*Pi/5 each you will get the five points of a pentagon, whose dimensions are all based on phi relationships [i.e. the Golden Mean]. Thus one can state:
2 * cos (Pi / 5) = Phi or
2 * sin (Pi / 5) = sqrt ( 3 - Phi )
or even better:
Pi = 5 arccos (Phi / 2)
that is,
Phi = 1 - 2 * cos (3 * Pi / 5)
So it is not entirely strange that the simple harmonic motion of a star could be expressed as some ratio of Phi.
It's all numbers, numbers all the way down.
Even if it is possible, the energy still has hundreds or thousands of years to reach the surface. Killing all the "high" frequencies in the process.
An already seen movie
Besides that, I just noticed that it's a 6+ years old article.
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
He seems to be coming from a long line of Learned men.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Were they not also deemed as artificial at one point?
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
If you could fluctuate the luminosity of a star to announce your presence, then it would make more sense to make it flash prime numbers. Or encode such a message by varying the frequency, or by stopping and starting the device that produces the effect. Well, maybe they are doing just that, and I suppose that a pulsing star or the machine that makes it pulse doesn't exactly stop on a dime, so it may be worth keeping an eye on that thing for a couple of years, and watch for changes.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...