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NASA Concludes That Comets, Not Alien Megastructures Orbit KIC 8462852 (examiner.com)
MarkWhittington writes: Back in October, findings from the Kepler Space Telescope suggested that something strange was going on around a star called KIC 8462852. Kepler was built to detect exoplanets by measuring the cycles of dimming light from other stars, indicating that a large object was passing between them and Earth. But the dimming light cycle from KIC 8462852 seemed to suggest a lot of smaller objects swarming around it. Scientists narrowed down the explanations to either a swarm of comets or alien megastructures. NASA announced evidence garnered by two other telescopes that pointed to the comet explanation.
No comet
Table-ized A.I.
22%. Something obscures 22% of the whole side of a star larger than the sun just in our specific direction. Given that obscuration of the star in ALL directions, at 22%, is likely for long periods of time (unless some divine hand is just trying to wink this star just for us).
Anything that is in the same system of that star (and effectively angularly the same distance to us) would have to be 22% of the size of the star in almost all directions from any point of view. So unless the "cloud" or object is right "up against" the star (like a Dyson sphere, or the beginnings of one) how could a few comets create this sort of thing unless the "clouds" they create are sucked into the star almost immediately? (Otherwise an orbiting cloud would create a predictable if irregular pattern)
Sure comets are "more likely" if you just don't want to look into things with Occam's razor combined with Sherlock's favourite! The simplest explanations are the most likely ones unless they become so complex that what is left must be true.
So, you're a "glass half-full" type of person then?
I am a registered Planethunter - have been for three years. You just skimmed a recycled story from a couple days ago with the only "new" information is that no infrared increase had been detected - which is no news - zero. We have known this since Tabitha Boyjian's paper which suggested the comet swarm theory to begin with and predicted that IF it was cometary debris from a (unprecedented and never before observed or proven phenomenon) then it would show an increase in IR - it does not - so far. We will not know that until most likely February of 2017 which is the most likely estimated recurrence of the next transition.
If there are no further transitions then that in itself would be bizarre since the likelihood of catching such a brief phenomenon at exactly the right moment at that exact point in the sky would be literally astronomically small.
Which, by the way, Boyjian's paper points to as one of the weakest arguments for the comet swarm hypothesis.
So - once again - there is nothing we know now that we did not know two months ago other than a *second* confirmation that there has been no increase in the infrared. All we have is a tweak to the cometary swarm theory that could, possibly explain (by adding an even less likely scenario) how there could be no IR increase now but "may" show an increase during the next transition. Which will most likely be 2017, at which point if there's still no IR increase we'll be exactly where we we're two months ago and likely still are.
Next time take some time to check the story instead of just regurgitating 2-day old feeds.
I think it's amazing that there could be a system with enough comets to block out such a big portion of starlight. It gets my imagination going because when I picture the future of human expansion, I don't see us living on the natural surfaces of planets, putting up with all the ways in which they are ill-suited to our comfort (wrong gravity, wrong color starlight, wrong day/night cycle for our circadian rhythm, wrong atmosphere, wrong temperature range, too much radiation, etc.). I know that people want to address some of these problems with some sort of transforming, and that will make sense on some planets, but most stars will not have eligible ones.
However, most stars will have enough ordinary junk in their orbit that we will be able to manufacture (with self-replicating AI machines) a perfectly awesome and huge spinning habitat that could have a habitable surface area comparable to that of the Earth. The easiest source for the materials for such a habitat are smallish rocks, because it takes so little energy to eject habitat material from a quarry on a rock with such a small gravity well. A colony would simply dispatch an AI-controlled factory that would convert asteroid material into duplicate AI factories, plus fuel and thrusters that get these to other asteroids. Then the factories retool to convert the asteroids into parts for a giant spinning space station, in which the interior light, atmosphere, gravity and temperature are optimized for terrestrial life, while the star-facing exterior is covered with solar panels, and the shady side is a spiky forest of heatsinks. If the orbit is close enough to the star, the panels alone should generate enough energy to power all the systems and more.
It's very 1960's thinking to picture ourselves living on the surfaces of other planets, and yet, even many scientists have not gotten past that obsolete picture. AI technology plus robotics will allow us to thrive even in extrasolar systems that have nothing but perfectly ordinary crap floating in orbit, because perfectly ordinary crap is exactly what we and every important feature of our biosphere are made of.
What's exciting about a system like this is that if there are lots of comets, it means that there's a lot of great crap within arm's reach from which to build a gigantic new home.