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Mysteriously Variable Star Causes Speculation About Dyson Sphere (slate.com)
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.
It's important to note that the actual scientists studying the star aren't the ones screaming "ALIENS!" - that's the journalists who misreport and distort things to make them "sell better".
...but still fun to wildly speculate about.
That would only apply if it was finished being built. The rabid distortions and exaggerations are claiming it's "under construction", which means it would be all patchy and full of mostly open areas still.
But if their Congressional funding got cut mid-sphere... Dyson's Bowl.
Pretending this is my office full of bitter coworkers..
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....
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
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.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Except that it's lots of lightyears away which means it would have been lots of years ago which means....OMG THEY'RE ON THEIR WAY HERE, RUN!
While we "watch" them build their sphere, they would have already completed it, detected us using their advanced long range sensors, and used their FTL armada of battleships to come destroy us. Since we are still here, that is a NOT a Dyson sphere.
Except if this were the case we would see diffraction spectra from the edge of the occluding object. We would also be able to find the object and measure it directly: in the attached paper they do a detailed follow up where no such occluding objects are discovered.
We always imagine great things at the slightest anomaly, only to find the boring truth later.
Maybe it is just Jesus playing with a dimmer switch. Kids like to play with dad's things you know.
we should consider simpler and more plausible explanations (occam's razor)
Leave that to the scientists. This is the internet!
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
It could also be God, slowly orbiting around the star while chatting with Jesus.
I mean, while we're here positing off-the-wall concepts like Dyson Spheres on the basis of nothing more than "a star regularly dims 20% in a cycle"...
The War of 1812... the good 'ol days when the federal government actually tried to save New Orleans.
A pocket sized collection of things going very quickly around the solar system to account for the periodic occlusions?
But what if it was an object orbiting another dark object, in a plane perpendicular to our line of sight (around axis parallel to our line of sight)? It would periodically occlude that much more distant and much bigger bright object.
Giant solar sails would dim the light from the star (small object occluding at a distance and all that), and the brightness could actually be a giant laser array constructed to propel the ship faster towards us.
You know, right there in the abstract (don't even have to dig) is "... we conclude that the scenario most consistent with the data in hand is the passage of a family of exocomet fragments, all of which are associated with a single previous breakup event." They already have a hypothesis.
The War of 1812... the good 'ol days when the federal government actually tried to save New Orleans.
It could be anything; a faulty stench coil...some cheese on the lens.... Who knows?
All it would need to be is an irregular object with a spin. Think about it. If I put you in one spot, and an irregular, spinning object more-or-less between you and what you want to look at, what happens to your view of the object?
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
FTFA, "we conclude that the scenario most consistent with the data in hand is the passage of a family of exocomet fragments, all of which are associated with a single previous breakup event." So yes, there are natural explanations.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
Incoming Pak Protectors? Maybe an invasion of Moties?
That's one of the most confusing parts though; the dips in light are not regular. From the article:
"It turns out there are lots of these dips in the star’s light. Hundreds. And they don’t seem to be periodic at all. They have odd shapes to them, too. A planet blocking a star’s light will have a generally symmetric dip; the light fades a little, remains steady at that level, then goes back up later. The dip at 800 days in the KIC 8462852 data doesn’t do that; it drops slowly, then rises more rapidly. Another one at 1,500 days has a series of blips up and down inside the main dips. There’s also an apparent change in brightness that seems to go up and down roughly every 20 days for weeks, then disappears completely. It’s likely just random transits, but still. It’s bizarre."
If you've ever watched Star Trek, you know that every strange phenomenon is an indication that the nebula, or asteroid belt, or whatever...is actually a living, sentient being. Maybe THAT'S what's going on here!
How is it that Plait says no excess infrared means it isn't dust clouds and unlikely comets, but then he turns around and suggests Dyson sphere? One of the defining characteristics of Dyson spheres is excess infrared.
Here is a hypothesis that fits the data gathered so far: interstellar debris. It can be oddly shaped. It can block the star's light without generating excess infrared. A cloud of it passing between Earth and KIC 8462852 would produce non-periodic luminosity variations. If the debris was a light year away from Earth, the largest chunk would have a diameter of around 500 km. There would be no constraints due to orbital velocity, and no aliens.
If you're anywhere inside a symmetrical spherical shell, there's no gravitational pull from the shell. It all balances out. So, unless the sphere was spinning fast, you'd just fall into the sun - and you could only tune the spinning for one narrow band, you'd still get too much or too little everywhere else.
This problem is what inspired Larry Niven to publish his idea for a "ring world" - a more practical, lower tech approach. First as a non-fiction article in a SF mag, then as a series of SF novels. Now most people only know the idea Halo, sadly.
Plus a sphere isn't gravitationally stable - you'd have to constantly work to keep the star centered. Without some sort of gravity control, the whole idea is impractical, which is why finding one would be a big deal to physicists - we have no reason to think any such thing is possible today (but then, we don't have a good quantum gravity theory either).
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
You mean, like something broken up passing in front of the star? Which is the leading hypothesis presented in the paper?
The War of 1812... the good 'ol days when the federal government actually tried to save New Orleans.