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Mysteriously Variable Star Causes Speculation About Dyson Sphere (slate.com)

Posted by Soulskill on from the it's-fun-to-dream dept.

gurps_npc writes: Phil Plait just wrote an interesting article about a star that is extremely variable. We generally look for cyclical, minute (1%) variations in star light to detect planets. But we found one that has a variation in starlight of over 20%. We don't have a very good explanation for this, and some people are speculating that such variation could be caused by a civilization building a Dyson Sphere around the star. From the article: "Such a sphere would be dark in visible light, but emit a lot of infrared. People have looked for them, but we've never seen one (obviously). Which brings us back to KIC 8462852 (PDF). What if we caught an advanced alien civilization in the process of building such an artifact? Huge panels (or clusters of them) hundreds of thousands of kilometers across, and oddly-shaped, could produce the dips we see in that star's light." Plait says it's overwhelmingly unlikely, but interesting nonetheless.

6 of 339 comments (clear)

  1. "Overwhelmingly Unlikely" by RumGunner · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...but still fun to wildly speculate about.

  2. Oh dear god..... by Lumpy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    How about a more sane and more plausible... larger brown dwarf twin?

    Nahh, let's go with a civilization that has harvested all the planets from other solar systems near them for resources to start building a dyson sphere....

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    Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
  3. We are local creatures with local knowledge by fyngyrz · · Score: 3, Insightful

    We know almost nothing about nature anywhere outside the solar system. We have been making assumptions as best we can with the data we have, but the fact is all of our real experience is local and we just don't know what might be going on that far away.

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    I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
    1. Re:We are local creatures with local knowledge by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Finally! Someone says the truth. Cosmology is an interesting field. You can make up any damned theory you want about how the cosmos works without any real empirical evidence other than some indirect observation or observation from only one very miniscule vantage point.

    2. Re:We are local creatures with local knowledge by MouseR · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The amount of material required to build such a thing exceeds what's available in a solar system. That's beside any issue regarding building this structure which wouldn't collapse on itself.

  4. Re:Ancient Aliens? by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 4, Insightful

    we should consider simpler and more plausible explanations (occam's razor)

    Leave that to the scientists. This is the internet!

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    systemd is Roko's Basilisk.