Nasa finally weighed in on the subject:
http://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/strange-star-likely-swarmed-by-comets
>A star called KIC 8462852 has been in the news recently for unexplained and bizarre behavior. NASA's Kepler mission had monitored the star for four years, observing two unusual incidents, in 2011 and 2013, when the star's light dimmed in dramatic, never-before-seen ways. Something had passed in front of the star and blocked its light, but what?
>Scientists first reported the findings in September, suggesting a family of comets as the most likely explanation. Other cited causes included fragments of planets and asteroids.
>A new study using data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope addresses the mystery, finding more evidence for the scenario involving a swarm of comets. The study, led by Massimo Marengo of Iowa State University, Ames, is accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
So since everyone calmed down with the 24/7 aliums shitposting, can we actually talk about how weird this star is? You guys think it's comets?
>>7680754
What else. Spaceships wouldn't block enough light for us to be able to discern the differences if they've achieved lightspeed travel.
Comets/Asteroids or orbiting planets is my guess.
>>7680788
I read an article about a megastructure being a potential cause. Can't remember the civilization tiers but isn't a tier 3 civilization capable of using the sun as direct energy? A massive structure near the sun would likely suffice. Or a massive habitable tech planet.
Alien technology could be anything. Assuming they're advanced they could have gathered enough resources to "build" their own planet.
>>7680788
Granted that may be true, they're all speculations. Anything and everything can be true outside of earth.
>>7680788
I thought they ruled out planets early because it was blocking like 20% of the light and there was no gravitational wobble.
Astronomy pleb here. At what distance from a star do comets melt? Like example, melting occurs at distance i for white dwarfs. Any guesses?
>>7680791
Tier 1 is planet, tier 2 is star, tier 3 is galaxy
It seems illogical for an intelligent alien species to do this, because it would be like a lighthouse spotlight screaming "HERE I AM" to the entire universe. If there is any super obvious and extremely reliable form of communication to other civilizations, it would be a Dyson sphere with holes for a Morse code effect.
>>7680807
A few thousand kilometers.
>>7680819
Thank you!
>>7680754
>it's just comets :^)
Thanks NASA!
>>7680835
It's NASA what do you expect?
>>7680754
>You guys think it's comets?
Nope. It's the first stage of ringworld scaffolding.
>>7680819
They actually have to touch the star beacause there's no air in space that can transmit heat.
Hell of a lot of comets with no visible tails.
>>7680851
Radiation.
>>7680851
>>7680929
Not strong enough to melt anything.
>>7680851
>>7680958
steel beams?
>>7680989
You still need an atmosphere for the thermite charges to work.
"We analyzed the warm Spitzer/IRAC data of KIC 8462852. We found no evidence of infrared excess at 3.6 μm and a small excess of 0.43 ± 0.18 mJy at 4.5 μm below the 3σ threshold necessary to claim a detection. The lack of strong infrared excess 2 years after the events responsible for the unusual light curve observed by Kepler further disfavors the scenarios involving a catastrophic collision in a KIC 8462852 asteroid belt, a giant impact disrupting a planet in the system or a population of dust-enshrouded planetesimals. The scenario invoking the fragmentation of a family of comets on a highly elliptical orbit is instead consistent with the lack of strong infrared excess found by our analysis."
http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2041-8205/814/1/L15;jsessionid=E749F8369A29C1837D98123509BABCD4.c4.iopscience.cld.iop.org
So they have expanded the originally narrow band of infrared that Tabby had time for on the (top) Keck and comets or aliens are the last two hypotheses not ruled out.
>>7681198
Barring SETI detection, how would one actually rule out aliens as opposed to comets?
Since we're looking for a silhouette against a star, I suppose you could actually do very-long-baseline intensity interferometry and try directly imaging the silhouette. If it stays the same shape over multiple transits, or has obvious straight-line artifacts, it's probably artificial.
>>7681220
The definitive answer requires another dimming event. That is what Wright is waiting for. A simple spectrum of the star during the dimming will either reveal spectral emission lines which can identify the kinds of materials creating them, or it will show nothing but baseline star light, just 20% less.
If there is a cloud of exocomets, we should expect something substantially similar to
A Swan band of carbon emissison,
Sodium D lines
Violet bands of cyanogen
C3 and CH lines near or at 4050 and 4310 angstroms
Any conjunctive permutation of those with other known celestial comet components.
If there are no spectral emission lines, then whatever is blocking 20% of the light is completely opaque, and radiates either nothing, or radiates in a part of the infrared or millimeter or centimeter range as yet unobserved, and would suggest something artificial, or something natural so freaky as to be roughly equal to a unicorn.
>>7680813
What is illogical to us could be perfectly logical thinking for a theoretical alien race. Some examples:
>They didn't have such fierce competition in their evolution (don't know how it would be possible, and not the point), so they don't have the same level of threat awareness that we do.
>They are so technologically advanced and/or so aggressive that they don't care who sees them
>Their society may beleive that no one else is out there to hide from
>>7680851
You done goofed.
>Wat is radiation?
>>7681340
Or it's bait to get the locations of naive civilisations.
>>7681340
Or maybe there are non-intelligent aliens out there. I like the idea of an enormous space fungus/plant that feeds of solar wind
>>7681246
What sort of natural freakiness are we talking about here?
>>7681198
That's pretty interesting. I figured that woman had made a mistake, but I guess not.
>swarm of comets
>>7682878
What?
>>7680754
>Nasa finally weighed in
So how much did NASA weigh, faggot?
>>7682926
This.
I need to know.
>>7681340
or
>They know they will be detected anyway so they don't give a fuck
>They already have contact to other advanced civs and they arent a threat.(or they are a threat and thats why they need to harvest the energy)
>>7680813
>It seems illogical for an intelligent alien species to do this, because it would be like a lighthouse spotlight screaming "HERE I AM" to the entire universe.
And what could the universe do against them?
Nothing. That's what. You use the megastructures as a combined solar collector, habitation, manufacturing and syntethic aperture for various telescopes, you're going to have an all seeing eye equipped with exawatt lasers that will smoke anything hostile coming within half a lightyear of you and you have the energy and materials gathered to create an interstellar invasion fleet in a week.
>>7682949
How would you defend against incoming attacks near c?
>>7682952
You'll still have leading doppler signal for a near-lightspeed bullet. And any such weapon is severely limited in mass and cannot do much damage.
And who the fuck is going to silently bombard you from several solar systems away with relativistic objects just because they know you exist?
>>7682956
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z834x4Qk_pM
>>7681400
This is horrifying.
>>7683309
Luckily, it's likely we're one of the first intelligent civilisations to arise. So there's a fair chance we can be the ones killing off any galactic competitors instead of just more chaff for the mill.
>>7680754
This is the coolest shit.
Perhaps not building a mega structure leaves you worse off than hiding.
I imagine they'd have quite the ability to spot other civilizations rising up and foresight to deal with them appropriately while the ones who don't, look like someone putting their hands over their eyes at the first hint of danger and waiting for it to go away.
Why do we always assume the worst of our interstellar neighbours?
>>7683982
Hope for the best, plan for the worst.
>>7681988
The most scientifically clickbaitish kind would be the extreme dense ends of hairy filaments of dark matter.
http://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/earth-might-have-hairy-dark-matter
Another possibility is extremely eccentric elliptical orbit of a huge Ooort-like cloud of atypically evolved exocometary objects which by some unknown mechanism have failed to form either a stable ring system or a proto-planetary system.
It is remotely possible that there could be a tightly packed absorption nebula shaped by the Lagrangian gravitational interaction between KIC 2852 and its red dwarf neighbor.
>>7680754
it's not a swarm of comets unless something had gone horribly wrong recently near that solar system.
I honestly can't see a possible way that a swarm of comets would orbit that sun and be a stable system that lasts billions of years.
It would have to be formed recently but that still leaves the question as to how it was made.
>>7683945
It is likely that we are one of the first?
Expand on this and your reasoning behind it if you would be so kind.
With the age of the universe being as it is; habitable zones could have formed as long as 12 billion years ago.
Imagine a civilization 12 billion years ahead of ours..
>>7684474
There was a popsci article about how we're the first so now everyone's parotting it.
>>7684606
what's the popsci idea behind being the firsts?
>>7684619
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/10/all-the-future-earths/413017/
=/ I was hoping it would be cooler than comments.
comets. not comments
>>7680813
>It seems illogical for an intelligent alien species to do this, because it would be like a lighthouse spotlight
hey maybe thats the entire point of it. obviously the first thing people think with megastructures is energy but it could be an interplanetary GPS or internet.
>>7681001
But that's wrong
>>7680813
>It seems illogical for an intelligent alien species to do this, because it would be like a lighthouse spotlight screaming "HERE I AM" to the entire universe.
So? Building a coal power plant near some spear throwing civilization draws a lot of attention from the spear throwing people, but they're still powerless to hurt the people that developed all of the technology that goes along with eventually figuring out electrical generation by coal.
What are we going to do, quietly make Uranus sized missile to fire at a Dyson sphere?
Just accept it lads, we are the only technologically advanced species in the entire universe and will be the ancient race that leaves behind relics for all those who come after us
>>7685300
What if the only thing that survives is some giant penis structures made just to confound them?
>>7685314
Then our legacy is complete
>>7685300
Why do you think that?
>>7685314
thanks for the kickstarter idea.
>>7685546
I want to work with you to design and build penis shaped buildings.
>>7685533
fermi paradox
>>7685592
So you've got nothing then.
>>7684017
Can we even do anything with dark matter? It's probably not even clickbait, just "hey there's this stuff we can't see, touch, or manipulate there".
>>7686427
By definition, we are speculating here, since we're talking about unknowns.
There are captures of gravitational lensing induced by inferred dark matter. Pic related. So, as far as speculative unicorns, there is a remote possibility that a freakishly dense "cloud" of dark matter, which remember does have gravitational interaction, could be refracting 20% of the star's light away from our view when it's perfectly aligned orientation passes through the exact right portion of the line of sight.
It's also possible that the fluxes were single events that may never repeat, and never be explained.
>>7680851
>Nigger is trolling
>Nigger really doesn't understand how heat radiates
>Thinks people can actually touch stars and shit
>Thinks people can breath fine in outer space
>Thinks the universe is just like a 1950's sci fi classic
>muh face when I have a copy of Plan 9 From Outer Space
>muh face when I plan on watching it tonight
thanks for teh gigglez negroid
