Second Irregularly Dimming Star Found (phys.org)

Long-time Slashdot reader RockDoctor writes: Remember the screaming and welcoming of our Dyson-Sphere-Dwelling 1500 LY distant Overlords that accompanied the news that star KIC 8462852 was irregularly dimming on both short and longer timescales? A second star with a similar light curve has been discovered and reported on ARXIV.

With the euphonious names "EPIC 204278916" and "2MASS J16020757-2257467", the star is a young M1 (red) star, traveling as part of a group of stars which haven't had time to disperse from their place of formation. The age is estimated at 5 — 11 million years. Analysis of 70+ days of data from the K2 mission epoch shows a rotation of 3.6 days, but a period of 25 days near the start of the observation epoch showed dips in intensity of up to 60% lasting for up to about a day each. Details are in the Arxiv paper linked to above, particularly figures 1 and 4.

If confirmed, this discovery changes the situation with interpreting the so-called "Tabby's Star". Firstly with a second object in the class, the odds of it representing a class of naturally occurring objects compared to a unique, unusual object is greatly increased. Secondly, the different celestial mechanical situations around the different stars allows a better estimate of plausible formation mechanisms. One potentially important point is that clumps of debris that could produce these dimmings seem to be quite large. "It is also important to note that the resulting size for the transiting and occulting clump would be quite large at with the clump being in the order of 1.5 times the radius of the Sun. Sadly, this appears to be a new class of "dirty young planetary system." no alien Overlords, no screaming in the streets. Just business-like astronomy.

Comments

Re:Or...

[ShanghaiBill]

Or...now follow me on this...maybe there are *two* Kardashev-II civilizations out there?

Or it could be two settlements of the same civilization. They are only a few thousand LYs apart, which is a blink on cosmic timescales, so if they are both at about the same stage of development, it is unlikely to be coincidence. It is more likely that they have the same origin.

Re:Or...

[RockDoctor]

It isn't possible, because, you know, Physics.

Light manages it. We can't do it so fast, but that's an engineering issue, not a physics ban.

This is what is wrong with Space Nutters: instead of accepting the fact that these are naturally occurring systems, the rush is to assume it is fantastic alien civilizations.

You didn't actually read even the fucking summary, which I spent 3/4 of an hour writing. You fucking unspeakable cad. Piss off back down your troll hole.

Let me break to down for you: there is no intelligent life out there.

Certainly not in your momma's cellar, if you can't even read the fucking summary, let alone the paper linked to from it.

To be precise, we have no evidence for intelligent life outside the Solar system (leaving aside quibbles over whether Voyager 2 has left the heliosphere, it's not even a small fraction of the way to the limit of known gravitationally-bound objects in the Solar System). Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence - or evidence of anything else, either.

We are likely the only intelligent civilization that currently exists.

This is the position which we have evidence for. However, given that the universe is large, and our locale doesn't seem to be particularly uncommon, it strains credulity.

There likely have been many before us, and there will be many more after we are gone.

Almost certainly true. And completely unsupported by any evidence except the very speculation which you decry.