/sci/ - Science & Math

For comparison. An artists best-data interpretation of Kepler 11, and it's six planets, three of which occlude at one time during certain orbital harmonics, one of which was caught by Kepler.

KIC 8462852 is a F-type main series star, which means it is like our sun, stable, fusing hydrogen, and appears yellow-orange. It's estimated to be 1.5 solar masses. It live here
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Here is a scale of the KICster with Neptunes approximating the amount of flux Kepler recorded in its algorithmic simple aperture photometer .

>>7598894
>WTF-001
You got love the folks at SETI.

A wide field magnitudinal map for finding KIC 8462852.

One thing we haven't done yet is debate what she should be called. Because even WTF-001 is not nearly cool enough.

>>7598910
>vega
Didn't the WOW signal come from Vega?

>>7598734
Any civilization capable of building a dyson sphere would be a post-biological lifeform: it would be like skynet's great, great grandchild.

There's no need to fight silly internal wars, no need to waste years on education, no need for sleep or social interaction. A single consciousness would be nothing but pure productivity all the time.

As individual humans we can't even collect the willpower to send one or two of us to the moon again. How the hell do you propose a society of squabbling meatsacks would be able to agree on allocating the time and resources to encapsulate an entire star? Even if they could agree to do that sort of thing, the sheer scale of the dyson sphere would necessitate the presence extremely advanced forms of automation just to build the damn thing.

When can we expect the results from SETI?

Why isn't it just something closer that isn't luminous, like two wandering planets in a binary orbit around themselves?

So for center-of-the-universe East Coast USA anons, KIC will be rising directly in the NE in about, oh yeah right now. She'll be directly overhead (zenith) at straight up midnight, for cleanest air viewing.

>>7598928
KIC-fuckit has celestial coordinates:
>RA: 20h 06m 15.457s
>Dec: +44° 27′ 24.61″

The Wow! signal came from
>RA: 19h 25m 31s
>Dec: −26°57′ ± 20′

In other words, same approximate angle along the ecliptic, but more than 70 degrees apart in the sky.

>>7598894

I decided to never fall again for these things. Great hope, followed by great delusion. I managed to do well, until now.

HOLY SHIT THIS IS AMAZING

>>7598928
Yeah, And Jodie Foster's movie dad ay lmaos, I think because of that.

For the new and late:

It is not dust, nebular or otherwise, nor a collision bollide remnant, nor anything else that normally radiates in near infrared, because there is nothing there radiating in infrared. Also can't be a brown dwarf. Several papers have been published, so it's not instrumentation or sensor artifact. Kepler was healthy at the time.

pic related, what dust looks like in near infrared. KIC is clean.

>>7598894

Is the star massively bright? If not I dont see why aliums would choose it for a sphere

>>7598933
Jan-Feb. They love this because it has real science cred and they live on borrowed money. They won't make the community wait very long.

>>7598961

I suppose this only holds if superluminal speed is possible

>>7598894
>Didn't even post the actual papers

Seriously, OP?

http://arxiv.org/abs/1509.03622
http://arxiv.org/abs/1510.04606

Check these for anyone who actually wants to see the results and science, instead of hearing what's been telephone-gamed through clickbait websites and 4chan.

>>7598959

Don't we need infra red for a dyson sphere though?

"Thus, a Dyson sphere, constructed by life forms not dissimilar to humans, who dwelled in proximity to a Sun-like star, made with materials similar to those available to humans, would most likely cause an increase in the amount of infrared radiation in the star system's emitted spectrum. Hence, Dyson selected the title "Search for Artificial Stellar Sources of Infrared Radiation" for his published paper."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere

>>7598948
So in other words its in the same street. That's a big coincidence. I see why SETI is happy about this.

>>7598935
Planets big enough to produce that much flux would also induce a gravitational wobble on the star, which was not observed. Also, they would show up in the infrared scan, and nothing did.

Here is Neptune in broad infrared. Even way way out, planets are much warmer than zero.

>>7598961
It's about 20-50% brighter than the sun, if you were at the same distance as we are from the sun. It is an otherwise totally boring star. It just makes helium and sits there. It could be it was just the one they had available. Like ours is to us.

>>7598968
>http://arxiv.org/abs/1510.04606
The papers have been saiyng what /sci/ has been saying since the discovery. We don't know. That's why SETI is looking.

>>7598969
Yes. Dyson predicted a very narrow band.

"An ideal instrument for a Dyson sphere study is an all sky survey covering a wide wavelength band centered in the 10 micron regime equivalent to 300 degrees Kelvin."

The previous 17 Dyson search candidates were described here:

http://home.fnal.gov/~carrigan/infrared_astronomy/Fermilab_search.htm

Kepler was not tuned to catch this wavelength specifically enough to tell.

>>7598948
Explain this to me like I'm 10

Is it possible this is happening elsewhere in the universe?

>>7598926
I vouch for AYY-LMA0

>>7598971
Big picture composite of the previous 17 Dyson candidates and the Arecibo tracks.

>>7598989
so, if we don't find that wavelenght, can we be certain that there are no ayys? Like 99% certain?

>>7598999
Here is a picture.

They appear close together, so the idea that there is a toni cosmic zip code in that general direction is appealing, but Vega is only 25 light years. KIC is 1,480 something. So Vega is practically our celestial BBF but KIC is basically as far from Vega as it is from us.

>>7598951
How so? There is literally zero evidence that warrants excitement

>>7598964
Mind you, it's worth noting that SETI could very well not find anything even if there were aliens there, if they're not actively sending a tight-beam signal in our direction right now.

SETI could detect Earth's artificial signal "leakage" from only about 1 light-year away.

VERY roughly spitballing, since signals drop off with the inverse square of range, let's say that to detect a civilization 1,500 ly away from incidental leakage, we'd need to be using (1500)^2 as much power.

Assuming that radio signal leakage power scales directly with total civilizational energy consumption, KIC-fuckit would thus be detectable if it consumed [math]3.5 \times 10^8[/math] petawatts of energy.

Since this is very roughly 0.1% of the star's output, it ought to be within the amount of energy used by the super-hypothetical KIC civilization.

However, if they leak less narrowband radio energy into space as a function of power than we do - for instance, if they use mainly optical communications and LIDAR, use mainly broadband radio versus narrowband, steer their transmissions better to avoid wasting energy through space leakage and conserve spectrum, or just use more of that energy for things that don't leak radio - then they could still go unnoticed by SETI.

>>7599008
The KIC occluder is only partial, so detecting with that degree of precision will require a very expensive survey.

The calendar is shaping up as:
November-December, MEarth telescopes at Harvard have been asked, but not yet promised. I expect them to say yes.

November-December: Green Bank Radio Telescope proposal, which would be a "qualifier" for the--

January: Very Large Array radio telescope operated by SETI. They've expressed, uh, interest.

2017: WFIRST has been asked to look at KIC, as has

2018: TESS

SETI is soliciting smaller radio telescopes to tune in already. I expect lots of ground based amateurs are trying their best, but Dyson-quality infrared specifically is impossible to do from the ground.

I hope to hear that some big dollar pro glass will do an optical for the 2017 predicted occlusion.

in response to >>7598784
>competing for the same resources

I think if a race was capable of traveling to other solar systems quickly and easily enough that they would actually bother doing it, they wouldn't bother invading another race's world for natural resources. Earth might be in a great, unusual position and time for supporting life but it's not made of magical mystery stuff that can't be found on any other planet in the galaxy.

No sane species would risk their lives trying to harvest resources from a populated world when they could just fuck off to an uninhabited asteroid belt somewhere and get the same shit.

>>7599026
It's the fact that no other explanation sticks and ayys are still a possibility.

>>7599031
I've thought of that. When you add in the complications of digital the chance that SETI will find anything not actively trying to be found grows decimals rightwise to Powerball proportions.

It was in the previous thread, but nobody seemed to notice, the best thing that could happen after SETI strikes out is WFIRST does the 2017 event and finds something like pic related.

CNN headline: Alien Mega Construction Schedule Advancing Apace

It's probably just ice

>>7599050
This. Any system is made of roughly the same matter anyway. Inventing novel ways of harvesting resources in different environments is much more profitable than waging intergalactic war. Chances are large their living conditions would be very different than our own anyway, so for them Earth might be as habitable as Jupiter is for us.

>>7598999
>>7598971

On Earth, we measure position and latitude and longitude. Right ascension and Declination form the equivalent of a celestial coordinate system, like we were mapping the sky by marking lines on the inside of a sphere. RA's longitude, Declination's latitude.

These two objects have the same longitude, but very different latitude. To give you some idea of how they're located relative to one another, if we mapped the sky onto the Earth:

>The Wow! signal would be somewhere around the border of Chile and Paraguay (South America)

>WTF would be in Nova Scotia, Canada.

>>7599026
it's exciting for me just because, if I understand correctly, there's no explanation for it that explains every part of the observations.

it's probably not aliens, but it is surely something new: if not a new object itself, then a new kind of solar system configuration we've not yet observed, or something like that. it's going to be a new discovery, whatever it is.

this is what the final frontier's all about, baby.

"Boyajian herself stressed "the necessity of future observations to help interpret the system," which is why she and her cohorts took the paper to Andrew Siemion, the head of the University of California-Berkeley's SETI Group. They wanted answers, and they said top-notch telescopes were needed to get them.

"At first I thought they were absolutely nuts; it wasn't until they told me their data had been vetted by the Kepler team at NASA," Siemion said.

The California-based astronomer, who's been working on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence for about 10 years, called the findings "very atypical."

"This is one of maybe only two or three times we've been contacted by an astronomer who says there's something we don't understand," he said. "It is a very strange object."

http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/15/world/extraterrestrial-intelligence-anomaly/

Whatever happened to that story about a possible Type 3 civilization harvesting galaxies? Maybe these are the same guys.

One other baseline property known about KIC is that she rotates once every 0.88 Earth days. Pretty fast, but that also means the flux dips are not intrinsic, not sunspots or flares. pic related. The rotation is the high-frequency/short wavelength variation. The alien overlords are the big dips.

>>7598948
The equivalent geographic coordinates, so you can see for yourself:

KIC, if the sky were inside-out:
>44.45 degrees N
>-58.5 degrees longitude


Wow! signal, likewise:
>-26.95 degrees S
>-68.75 degrees longitude

>>7599036
Where are you getting this info from? Are you from SETI? If you are, please use a trip, would be nice to have a good trustworthy source. Keep up the quality posts, my man!

>>7599088
>>7599064

Whoops, typo, I meant Chile and Argentina.

>>7599089
From a compilation of the internet coverage in the sky community. SETI is not normally very interesting to me. Sky people, though, you know. They read about SETI on the can where no one can see.

For example, here is Jason Wright describing the process that led to his Green Bank Radio request:

"Andrew was initially skeptical, but he quickly agreed that this is a great target. He, Tabby, some of the PlanetHunters, and I put in a Green Bank Telescope proposal to do a classical, radio-SETI search (à la Contact), and I went to work on my paper."

From his blog:

http://sites.psu.edu/astrowright/

>>7599078
Here's an annotated one.

>>7599002
The astronomers who made the discovery are calling it Tabby's star because the Planet Hunter lead from Yale who found it is:

http://www.astro.yale.edu/tabetha/Site/Welcome.html

pic related. Astronomer-fu Tabby.

>>7599001
Guaranteed

>>7598932
>As individual humans we can't even collect the willpower to send one or two of us to the moon again.
most ignorant post this month

>>7599176
So how's that lunar program going?

Oh what's that? Your space agency lost all its funding?

>>7599058
first time I've seen someone suggest that the difference between the two events is because it's an ongoing construction project

that makes me moist

>>7599227
What reasons do we have for going back to the moon? I'm not being condescending, it's a legitimate question.

Is there any way to tell how close this megastructure is to the star?

>>7599254
Yeah, I mean when I first saw the Atlantic piece then looked up the actual charts, my first thought was, if the flux is still there in 2017, at the same intervals, but slightly deeper and slightly longer, it would look like something in a stable orbit getting bigger. Intentionally.

>>7599255
Massive reserves of untapped natural resources, more living space, reduced gravity making it an ideal staging ground for missions throughout the solar system just to name a few reasons. The technology exists to colonize the moon, but we don't have the willpower.

Similarly, why would an alien culture/ mega-consciousness want to build a massive dyson sphere when it's so much work? After all, reactor-based fusion energy provides an ample amount of energy to subsist off of.

>>7599261
>this mega structure

>>7599277
>no water
>no atmosphere

The moon is not that great
We should go for Mars

Reminder that even if we could know with 100% certainty that it's some kind of alien structure there is nothing satisfying we can do about it except stare.

>>7599261
Only rough estimates. I recall ~3 AU (3 times our distance from the sun) as one consensus estimate. Just on the edge of Goldilocks for a star 1.5 times the sun's mass and output.

Superimposed on our solar system, KIC is half again bigger than the sun, and the occluder would be on the outside of the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Chilly, but much can be done with an atmosphere.

Refining and verifying that question one of the big targets for the next observation, too.

>>7599278
It is a megastructure. But the asteroid belt is a megastructure too. That term doesn't mean ay, just like UFO doesn't mean ay.

>>7599288
If we knew with 100% certainty, life on planet Earth would change in a big way.

>>7599293
you know what we all mean when we say megastructure though, there's an unspoken, "alien" before the word almost every time it's been used in these threads.

>>7599295
Explain specifically what things would change and in what way

>>7599304
Religion would be fucked for the most part for one.

>>7599305

doubtful.

>>7599308
It would prove humans aren't special and that the universe wasn't created specifically for us, that pretty much ruins Christianity.

>>7599305
>>7599311

>“Just like there is an abundance of creatures on earth, there could also be other beings, even intelligent ones, that were created by God. That doesn’t contradict our faith, because we cannot put boundaries to God’s creative freedom. As saint Francis would say, when we consider the earthly creatures to be our “brothers and sisters”, why couldn’t we also talk about a “extraterrestrial brother”? He would still be part of creation.”
-Father Gabriel Funes, chief astronomer of the Vatican

>>7599311

you never see that south park episode where starvin' marvin meets some lmaos, and some televangelist megachurch makes it their mission to convert the ayys doubt it's that far fetched.

>>7599280
Your post is exactly what I'm talking about. We have no consensus and even when we do for a little while, support for a particular program fades and it gets defunded, then we start back at the beginning with nothing accomplished and no agreement on what to do. The best our global civilization can do is go after the low-hanging fruit of LEO, and even that is starting to come into doubt.

>>7599325
In Elon Musk we trust
Governmental agencies are always gonna have a shit ton of problems and budget cuts. It's sad, because NASA is the fucking best.
So Elon is SpaceX is our only real chance of going to space, at least for now

>>7598894
clearly its some sort of dyson sphere, nothing else makes sense. the only question is if the life that created it still exist or if its gone

>your face when its a halo ring

>>7599348
halo rings are a shitty idea
very gravitationally unstable

>>7599341
Which is why I said in >>7598932 that these ayyliums would be more like the borg than the vulcans. A culture like ours would never be able to build a structure like that.

>>7599325

>I want everything and I want it all nooooow!!!

You attribute the absence of lunar colonies to infighting and indecision, but not pursuing colonization right now is a measured decision, made by those with the most information. A return to the moon will happen when the time is right.

If you think the time is now, and you can't standing waiting for others to agree with you, all you have to do is make a return to the moon too profitable to ignore. Find a way for somebody to make money off returning to the moon, and it will happen.

If you're more concerned with what's best for humanity, not profit, then understand that those in charge of deciding which missions are best for humanity have more information than you, and they have decided that effort is best spent in another direction.

tl:dr
You are equating a choice not to return to the moon with a failure to return to the moon. It's not a failure; we have better things to do right now.

>>7599348
Plenty of other shit makes sense, if you bother reading the papers they outline very real possibilities that arent aliens

>>7599359
>we have better things to do right now
Like kill each other and waste resources on hoarding them in the name of personal status.

Got it.

>>7599364
not really based on the size alone

>>7599366
those people aren't responsible for shit, grow up

>>7599348
Could be a natural formation we have never seen before
A super rare comet structure or something like that might actually be more likely that a Type 2 civilization

>>7599366

Oh, you're an idiot. Never mind, then.

>>7599370
Yes really, taking into account the size. I know your baby brain desperately wants to be aliens, but there's a 99% chance it's just big broken up rock and ice

>>7599372
I'm talking about the nature of human individuality here. There's a gaping hole in your argument in the form wars and wasted resources. You say we have more important things to work on, and that the more important a task is, the more resources will be dedicated toward it. Therefore we can define everything more important to us than colonizing the solar system as the set of all economic expenditures greater than space exploration and colonization, which includes first and foremost destroying human civilization through war and hoarding of capital resources.

You have to stop treating humans as rational actors: we're not.

>>7599364
...And then rule out all of them except the cometary hypothesis, because the other ones all have serious mismatches with the data.

And that's not without issues - the light curve does not show evidence of cometary tails, and 20% occlusion is a lot.

This is much harder to explain naturally than you seem to think.

Still, I'd bet 200$ it's not aliens.

>>7599391
That's a good bet all-around. You either get $200, or you lose $200 but aliens are fucking real.

win/win

>>7599391
It really isn't hard to explain though, 2 planets become gravitationally bound and then end up colliding, boom, huge chunks of strangely shaped matter floating in an irregular orbit around the Sun. The universe is filled with fucking rocks, there's not a single reason on earth not to assume it's not some collection of rocks and ice

>>7599036
The VLA is not operated by SETI, it is hardly ever been used for that purpose.

WFIRST doesn't exist yet and won't until at least 2025.

>>7599396
Except that such a collision would also produce quite a bit of dust and medium-size rocks, and that dust would spread out and produce a noticeable infrared excess, which there isn't.

In order to produce the observed result, the catastrophic collision would have had to occur within a few-year window between when WISE first surveyed it and the end of the main Kepler mission. This is rather unlikely.

If you'd just read the paper, you would have a better idea of what you were talking about. It's not even paywalled. There's not really an excuse.

>>7599400
What I said is that the VLA would be operated by SETI for this purpose, during this narrow timeframe.

TESS has a nominal launch date of August 2017. My WFIRST information was faulty, based on a previous budget approval. Thanks Obama.

If you want peer review, you're in the wrong Micronesian scrimshaw board.

>>7599416
>Implying TESS will ever launch

>Implying SpaceX won't fuck up and blow it to smithereens if it does launch

>>7598894
so if this thing IS a Dyson object, how is the energy it is collecting distributed? I mean is there a space wire, or like Wi-fi or does it emit power?

or is it a huge rain bucket colllecting precious sun juice to be drank by machine overlords or photo-syn beings? Couldnt some device we have on earth detect an emission coming from it?

>>7599426
Most likely microwave beams and rectennas, possibly lasers and solar panels/optical rectennas.

>>7599426
We can't begin to comprehend it. We are thousands of years behind them technologically

>>7599430
could we detect something like that and attribute it to Dyson spheres? Or could something like that come from a natural source.

>>7598989
No. You've misread that, they quote a temperature, that's a blackbody. That is broadband, not narrowband.

We already have an all sky survey centered 10 um, called WISE.

>>7599388

Your expectations are unfathomably naive. The level of disappointment you show for humanity being concerned with things other than space (like national security or things that make money) makes me think you don't have much experience interacting with humanity.

The thrust of your angst seems to be that the people making decisions are not making the decisions you want them to make, and rather than consider that maybe they know things you don't, you seem to assume that you know something they don't. Care to share it with us? What is the rush? Why is humanity stupid not to drop everything and throw everything into off-world colonization?

>but, like, war is bad, n stuff

I'm not sure your understanding of human events is quite enough for this board.

>>7599377
I actually don't want it to be aliums but objects that big have substantial gravity influence and that has not been observed nor is the light bending so its not a black hole.

but please keep thinking its a planet half the size of our sun or a large series of planets in a perfect line orbit

>>7599388
You're correct 99% aren't but interstellar imperialism is an obscene conclusion in a rank of important goals.

>>7599416
VLA uses a queue. You get your proposal accepted, fill in phase 2 and data comes back at some point.

>My WFIRST information was faulty, based on a previous budget approval. Thanks Obama.

It has nothing to do with Obama. WFIRST cannot start implementation before JWST flies. It's best it flies post Euclid anyway.

I just realized I'm scared of finding others in the universe. Not knowing their intentions or how this will affect my life or everyone else's....
Fuck, like can you imagine Ayy lmao tourists and our tourists to their world and vice versa??? Can you imagine the culture of their people? The language? What they look like? What they eat? What they do for a living? If their society is even structured in such a way that they need "a living"? How advanced their tech is? It's so overwhelming I'd consider suicide. It's like a sudden understanding of the infinite and all it's possibilities. Omg.

>>7599449
Have you seen Independence Day? We'll win this fight. I'm not afraid

>>7599435
Holy shit, you're completely missing the point: this has nothing to do with calling someone angsty on a tibetan throat singing forum. All I am saying is that if human civilization is anything to go by, and that huge thing in front of the star is in fact a dyson sphere being constructed, then the thing building it is probably a post-biological organism.

We have the technological capability to colonize the moon and do all sorts of other impressive things, but we choose not to. We are limited by the will to carry out these projects instead of the technology required to perform them. Extending that to the whatever is 1400 light years away from us, there's no way a bunch of infighting animals are building a dyson sphere.

>>7599447
thanks normie. Here's a flux chart.

>>7599455
Metallic-exoskeleton, photosynthesizing metabolistic non-oxygenated carbon consuming extreme temperature tolerant dragonflies. Insectile tier devotion to misson.

>>7599312
Shout-out to the Vatican Observatory, which is a real, functioning scientific organization that real academic scientists who aren't Catholic priests work with productively.

I'm in grad school for cosmology and I'd love to do something where I get to work with someone from the Vatican Observatory someday, just for the cool-factor.

What are the most possible causes for the irregular changes in brightness from the star?

What are the most possible causes for the irregular changes in brightness from the star (in order)?

>>7599062

Unless they wanted amino acids.

And amino acids was a rare resource.

>>7599488
If you can build a dyson sphere, you can synthesize amino acids from other sources.

>>7599466
What field? Large Scale Structure and the IGM here.

I guy in my office did a summer project at the Vatican observatory.

>>7599432
Not to Dyson spheres per se - there's lots of reasons alien civilizations (even ones barely more advanced than our own) might want to use microwave or optical power beaming.

But it would be a good SETI target, yes. It would be harder to find than current SETI targets, because the signals would be transient and irregular rather than regularly repeating, but individual events should be far more detectable because of the high beam power and directivity.

It's worth noting, however, that "advanced alien technology" actually works against us here - every watt of microwaves leaked into space is a watt that didn't get turned back into useful power at your receiver, and so is something you want to avoid. The better they are at aiming, focusing, and receiving power beams, the less likely it is we'll get a detectable signal from them.

Have a paper on the subject:
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1508.03043v2.pdf

>>7599480
Just read the damn paper.
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1509.03622v1.pdf

List of possible causes of dimming is Section 4, which begins on Page 8.

>>7599493
>If you can build a dyson sphere, you can synthesize amino acids from other sources.
>implying you know jack-shit about either

>>7599527
It's a civilization with technology beyond our comprehension and unlimited energy. Who's to say they can't do some chemistry?

>>7599532
the reason to build a Dyson array is to capture energy. They don't have unlimited energy by definition if they are building a Dyson structure. They need energy. They have an energy deficit if they are building a Dyson structure.

>>7598894
I've never really taken the time to learn anything about space or astronomy, but aren't these "dips" considerably old given how far away they are? Doesn't it take a long time for the light (or lack thereof from other objects) to reach us?

Correct if wrong pls

>>7599559
Yes, but I'm not sure what that has to do with anything.

>>7598894
You say this as if you are absolutely certain that it is a dyson sphere.

At what distance are the jupiters from KIC 8462852?

>>7599537

There are a few other plausible statements that can be made about a species' technology if they can construct Dyson scale megastructures.

>Space access is trivial.
>Their material supply is immense.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say one of the prerequisite technologies for stellar scale constructs is commodity nuclear synthesis. It seems reasonable to assume that they would run out of key resources if they had to rely on Supernova byproducts to build their machines.

Oh shit, you guys know. Shut it down.

>>7599568

there is no implication in op's post that implies ayys. stop being a quick-to-the-gun contrarian faggot.

>>7599559
The dips happened a long time ago for us, but if they turn out to be a new type of dark matter observation, a freak type of gravitational capture of Oort cloud like swarms of cold objects of epic proportions, or an actual candidate for Dyson construction, any of those advance astronomy in exciting multi-decade ways.

>>7599579

Heyyyyy lmao

>>7599568
Your font is short of the Kepler data by a factor of at least 3. The best estimate, if you had read the thread, is 3 AU. Nowhere close to anything resembling a parallax error margin. No matter how you slice it, there is a quantity of matter roughly equal to 20 Jupiters up there, and it is colder than midrange infrared, and not conventional in any sense of 150,000 comparable Kepler observations, nor several million similar transit observations.

If we figure it out short of ay, it will still be a milestone of astronomy on RR Lyrae levels.

>>7598894
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1509.03622v1.pdf

>>7599650
Ya. I've read it three times.

>>7599455
>Extending that to the whatever is 1400 light years away from us, there's no way a bunch of infighting animals are building a dyson sphere.

>We fight. We don't have a dyson sphere RIGHT. NOW.
>This data does not really suggest a dyson sphere but hey, doesn't rule it out, either.
>Therefore, aliens are peaceful.

Primative humans fight tribal wars, and don't have heavier-than-air flight.

"When future man has heavier-than-air flight, all tribal war will be gone. No more infighting."

And yet here we are.

Infighting is not so terrible a thing. A lot of the greatest innovation goes hand in hand with infighting. And you know what? A dyson sphere would be great for powering anitmatter factories for use in relativistic weapons. Don't assume that more advanced=more peaceful. It certainly hasn't been true thus far for us.

>>7599677
Again, you're missing the point. If they were anything like us, i.e. social creatures that evolved naturally, they would have hit the horizontal asymptote of technological achievement, that we're starting to encounter, long before they ever built a dyson sphere. It's the issue of having the capability of doing a mega-project like this, versus actually allocating the time and resources to do it.

>>7599670
Wasn't directly meant for you, just wanted to link again so others can read it

>>7598932
i am a robot

>>7599685
Most animals aren't social creatures. A lot of have hierarchies.

>>7599685
>they would have hit the horizontal asymptote of technological achievement, that we're starting to encounter
kek grow up you pessimistic fuck

>>7599560
Then how do we even know if whatever "it" is, is still there?

>>7599706
But remember, they'd be intelligent beings capable of working together to create a dyson sphere, I think it'd be highly likely that they'd be social creatures like us

>>7599708
it's thought to be orbiting the star, that's how. we just need to wait for the next expected dip to occur

>>7599026
It's something that we can't explain, that alone is worth some excitement.

>>7599712
Hive creatures tend to build larger edifices in proportion to their physical size and intelligence than solitary creatures.

In other words, bees and ants have been known to build huge colonies, but squirrels don't build anything like that despite being much larger and having a much larger brains.

Xenobiology is still science fiction right now, but who knows if this observation could be meaningful.

>>7599717
could be comets

>>7599712
That I agree. There is so form of consciousness to work together. But they get be like ants. One of the species in the animal kingdom might be an intelligent life form elsewhere.

>>7599721
comets the size of Neptune?

>>7599719
I don't know, can we compare something as complex as a dyson sphere to something like a hive? It's not only enormous, it's got to be highly advanced tech.

>>7599706
capped for my future "stupidest posts on /sci/" collage

Going off of
>http://arxiv.org/pdf/1510.04606v1.pdf
>An artificial structure might have very low mass — solid structures or swarms of structures could have very large collecting or radiating areas that block significant fractions of starlight, but have no appreciable gravitational influence on their star or planets orbiting it

What do we know about mass in the WTF system?

>>7599730
Your post is the contender tho.

>>7599727
Comet fragments that cover areas the size of Neptune is what the paper says, I think

>>7599729
Like I said, this is just speculative fiction right now. But since it's purely for entertainment, let's consider the idea that if "primitive" hive animals with low overall intelligence (i.e., bugs) can build the hives and nests we observe, an "advanced" hive animal might be able to build "mega-structures" (in the same way that a hive is a mega-structure compared to an individual bug) that involve advanced technology. Just as humans tend to build hand-held tools, no matter what types of technological praxis we employ (anything from stone blades to smartphones), maybe hiveminds tend to build large "homes" for their worker nodes.

>>7599734
how could we tell the difference between unusually many comet fragments and dyson structures?

>>7598894
here's my bet.

ayy lmao fleet passing by in front of the sun.

if this never happens again then that's my bet.

>>7599738
We can't, that's why there's fuel for speculation. It's even harder because we've seen comet fragments before, but we've never seen a dyson structure before so we don't even know what one should look like.

>>7599740
it happened twice in 4 years tho

>>7599738
Comet fragments should have a noticeable spectroscopic signature corresponding to the stuff they're made of; it'd be a good idea for followup observations to look for that.

Also, the light curve of each dip ought to have a more gradual shape on the end of it, due to the tails also blocking some light. It's interesting that we don't see that in WTF, but it's not a dealbreaker.

Seriously, this is all in the paper.

>>7599742
maybe the fleet was going slow

>>7599742
alright, ayy lmao fleet stationed in orbit around the sun.

>>7599748
The paper is even written at an "enthusiast" reading level. There's very little technical stuff and no real math whatsoever, so everyone on /sci/ should be able to read it and understand its arguments. Yet no one seems to be doing that ITT except for one or two people.

>>7598932
I AM A ROBOT

>>7599742
another theory, that sun is stationed right next to an intergalactic highway and it's some ayy lmao's going to work.

once this shit happens 3 times we can get an idea of it's period.

>>7599742
the fleet was returning back to base after a 4 year mission

>>7599756

>Why is no one reading this?

Because they're not very excited about it.

>Why not?

Because "wolf" has been cried on aliens too many times.

>But not by these particular people!

Well I hope to be thrilled in ten years when there's no explanation left save aliens, but I fully expect that between now and then we'll instead discover something that allows this not to be aliens, and we'll run the numbers and discover that it's far more likely to be this other thing. And I'll still be excited about that, because hey, new science, that's what it's all about. But as for why I'm not losing sleep over it, well yeah, it's because I expect it won't be what everyone, including me, hopes it will be.

>>7599755
Its probably refueling.

>>7599685

>if it's a mega-structure it's definately robot aliens, guys
Could not organic aliens also build a mega structure?
>My baseless intuition says no, so clearly it's impossible.

But what if your opinion is totally worthless? What if, and just follow me here, what if you're talk a lot of shit you know nothing about?

>>7599776
The paper doesn't mention or even hint at extraterrestrials once. It settles on "comets" as an explanation. So I guess you _really_ didn't read it.

>>7599791
>The paper doesn't mention or even hint at extraterrestrials once. It settles on "comets" as an explanation. So I guess you _really_ didn't read it.

The co-authors have stated elsewhere that they don't think the Comet explanation holds water or that anyone really believes it. They only include it because of all of the bad explanations available, that one's the least terrible.

>>7599734
but were talking 80 neptunes, not 1

>>7599352
> A culture like ours would never be able to build a structure like that.

>>7599364
The pyramids were build by virtual cavemen.

Consider this:
1: Orbital tax havens where billionaire families and their servants live.
2: Space tourism for the very rich.
3: Mining of high value near earth objects.
4:1 thru 3 lead to greater research into related tech and this leads to more mining and space based industry (it's probably 2500 by now).
5: Extra terresterial economy grows quickly prompting immigration.

Withing 2,000 years there is a huge cloud of various station, habitats and other structures orbiting Sol so numerous it occludes 20% of the light.
We could be the same greed inspired squabbling monkeys that built the pyramids and still do that and so much more.

>>7599796
Yes, but nonetheless, the paper contains exactly zero words of "crying wolf" about aliens. So that's certainly not a reason to avoid the paper.

>>7599825
>Yes, but nonetheless, the paper contains exactly zero words of "crying wolf" about aliens. So that's certainly not a reason to avoid the paper.

Certainly not, no. The paper still outlines all the data and evidence that we have to work with, and will be an invaluable reference point, no matter what it turns out to be.

>>7599455
>a bunch of infighting animals
A bunch of infighting animals could not do many of the things we have done.
Take you for an example: You can't build your phone or your car. Fuck, you can't even weave fabric or bake bread. Yet you have all these things because hundreds of millions of human beings have built an infrastructure that provides all these things to everyone.

Your real problem is that you have your self concept tied up in intellectual superiority to the point that average people pointing out your rather foolish mistakes in prioritizing makes you angry.

But there's good news: no one cares and they will continue to ignore you so your childish fascination with far future possibilities won't do any real harm.

>>7599856
>I'm not capable of conceptualizing aliens that aren't exactly like us

Yes humans fight against each other. We taught you well.

>>7598932
I AM A ROBOT

>>7599677
>Don't assume that more advanced=more peaceful. It certainly hasn't been true thus far for us.

Except that's wrong. We currently wage less war and have much more limited conflicts now than in the past. Compare Syria now to the world wars.

More advanced may not necessitate more peaceful, but they are likely correlated. The more advanced you become the easier it is for you to wipe yourselves out. If you continue to be homicidal as you gain more powerful weapons, you likely end your progression. Just think of how much humanity has been holding itself back in terms of warfare since the inception of Nuclear tipped ICBMS. At no other point in history have we had such arsenals and not used them.

>>7599304
I would freak the fuck out.

>>7598932
>As individual humans we can't even collect the willpower to send one or two of us to the moon again. How the hell do you propose a society of squabbling meatsacks would be able to agree on allocating the time and resources to encapsulate an entire star? Even if they could agree to do that sort of thing, the sheer scale of the dyson sphere would necessitate the presence extremely advanced forms of automation just to build the damn thing.
You'd find that it would happen rather quickly if it was necessary. Don't underestimate what humans can achieve when our survival depends on it. It's our greatest ability and the reason we have got this far despite our still lingering primitive hostility and selfishness

>>7599072
Imagine a type 3 collecting every single photon from an entire galaxy, maybe multiple galaxies.
To us it would look like dark matter

>>7599289
So the mass swarm is on the outer edge of goldilocks.
We should keep in mind that our goldilocks zone is good for us because we evolved in it.

>>7599305
Religion is already well and truly fucked over but that does not stop people who are indoctrinated from childhood.
If we found aliens they'd be gods doing (you can bet on that) There'd be people at the ready with bibles in hand to convert them. Biblical scholars would be reinterpreting any abstract junk that the bible is laden with and using that as further proof that bible god is real

>>7600013
>So the mass swarm is on the outer edge of goldilocks.

The distance I saw for KIC 8462852's occluder was 1.83 AUs. Since it's 5x as luminous as Sol, its habitable zone is a bit further out than ours - and the occluding object(s) seem(s) to be smack dab in the middle of it.

>>7600021
The Bible already mentions "other beings" and even alien abductions.

Nothing changes besides the 6000 year old earth silliness strawman being pushed.

>>7600030
Fuck stop making me think there's aliums I'm about to go to bed!

>>7598894
so it's not due to comets why now?

>>7600030
Frankly, until we have more data, we can't have a clue how close the objects are. The light curve simply doesn't provide enough information to constrain it at all - hell, if it weren't for nearby stars not flickering, the objects could easily be closer to us than to the star.

Any estimates about distance depend on huge assumptions about the size and/or orbit.

>yfw dark matter is really just the huge number of stars encapsulated in dyson spheres
>yfw when dark energy is really just ayyliums using their dyson spheres to power warp drives, distorting space and accelerating the expansion of the universe

>>7600045
dammit, I really wish we could just hold these threads off until we have more data, I mean they are totally useless and not contributing to anything.


Although if we actually wanted to do something useful, we'd go and comb through the Kepler data ourselves through the same website that KIC 8462852 was discovered with:

http://www.planethunters.org/#/classify

there are probably more

>>7600051
>there is an alliance of ayy's who are currently trying to keep the universe alive by all means necessary

>>7600056
Again, if you'd actually read the fucking paper, they already did that.

So, if there is one megastructure on the edge of a tiny portion of the sky where we just happened to have a spacecraft pointed at, that also happened to be aligned with its star to occlude it. How many of those could be around us?

>>7600061
well if you consider that we can only see less than 1% of what is actually out there and that we have found over 4000 confirmed earth like planets. More that you actually care to know is the answer.

So much food for the speculative appetite with this event. Let me try and throw something out that I dodnt see. How about, we are observing previously unknown elemenrs that can only be created in a very specific set of circumstance. Something from the "island of stability" and it has absolutely bizarre characteristics.

>>7600060
From the fucking paper:

"Indeed, in some cases of highly non-standard transit signatures, it may be that only a model-free approach — such as a human-based, star-by-star light curve examination — would turn them. up. Indeed, KIC 8462852 was discovered in exactly this manner."


"Since the Kepler data archive presumably contains many poorly studied stars that may exhibit these signatures, the alien megastructure rate remains poorly constrained"

TL;DR we need people to look through the kepler light curve data for weird stuff

I am trying to wrap my head around how this phenomenon doesnt have a gravitational wobble affect on this star.

>>7600073
you can make large space objects that are very light weight.

So the absence of wobble would betray such objects

>>7600079
Yes but natural items of this size, 80 neptunes?! Would by the laws of everything we know about our universe, be massive. I guess this is what the hubbub is about. Are there any massive hollow bodies in nature?

>>7600102
exactly, you can't make natural items the size of 80 neptunes.

(except for maybe big dust clouds)

>survey millions of stars
>one of it has usual luminosity variations
>ALIUMS CONFIRMED111111!!!!!
this is why pop-sci is cancer

>>7600051
A star encapsulated by a Dyson shell/sphere would still emit infrared radiation, it would not be invisible

sorry if im late to the party guys, but i have a question. how many light years away is this KIC 8462852?

>pls respond

are there any astronomy "bibles" out there? Just a good book that talks about all the planets and anything space related in detail? A lot of the books I see are for children.

>>7600122
I'm not that guy or even arguing for him but at 100% efficiency there would be no wasted energy

>>7600131
1,480 ly

>>7600131
1480

>>7600131
1,480 light years

So even if it's ayy lmaos we're probably never going to contact, let alone meet them

>>7600131
1488

>>7600131
6 million light years

>>7600153
>>7600139
>>7600138
>>7600137
this is retarded. cant we just focus on going into space or extending our abilities for space travel in our solar system instead of looking at random shit 1500 light years away?

its like looking at a bird instead of setting up my camp

>pic related my camp from my last backpacking trip ._.

>>7600145
Back to /pol/.

>>7598932
I am a robot

>>7599135
Good for her

I bet it will pick up something a little flashier though

>>7600139
Don't be so sure.

If they were building a Dyson swarm around their star 1500 years ago. Where do you think they are now?

>>7600160

you're an idiot.

It's like looking at a unicorn.

If anything we try to learn from it, which will lead to other discoveries.

fucking moron.

>>7600160
Are you implying we can only ever do one thing at a time and we either A. look at things 1500 light years away or B. focus on expanding our space travel?

Cause I'm pretty sure the people doing A have nothing to do with the people doing B

>>7600134
Thermodynamics says you can't get 100% efficiency

>>7600160
>No tarp

>>7600145
that was actually pretty good

>>7600102
They could be discs for all we know, if it is indeed a Dyson array. These discs would provide a lot of surface area while having relatively low mass.

>>7598894
I'm new to /sci/ (first time here actually) so anyway what does this mean, there's a sun with that many planets? AND the planets are all the size of jupiter but are healthy as earth?? Mankind should move here lol, anyway please explain if I understood it right

>>7600241
>what does this mean, there's a sun with that many planets?

Nothing of the sort. The chart is meant to illustrate their opinion that regular stellar bodies aren't able to adequately explain the Kepler Space Telescope's observations of KIC 8462852.

>>7600245
So you don't know what it is, that acchieves this critical mass of data. But it's supposedly planets, because anything else would be too weird to guess?

>>7600249
It could be a lot of stuff, we don't know yet.

Wait 6 months for more data.

>>7600249

More or less. No one knows what it actually is. Comets aren't actually a good fit, either, but it's the most reasonable explanation that doesn't require the existence of new physical phenomena or a world-changing discovery.

>>7600252
I like the planetary collision idea.

>>7600254

The planetary collision idea is a terrible fit for the known data. A debris field is not a subtle thing. They're enormous, glowing clouds of dust that are very obvious in the infrared spectrum. We have mid-infrared data of KIC 8462852, and there's nothing to see there in that spectrum.

>>7599568
Nah this is what a 20% occlusion looks like.

>>7600257
What about a debris field old enough to have gone cold but not so old to have coalesced?

thanks for the correction though

>>7600252
My guess is planets under construction, or two systems collapsing in on eachother. Or planets from a dead sun running into new planets. Or just a new type of system with planets the size of ma dick

>>7600262
>What about a debris field old enough to have gone cold but not so old to have coalesced?

The light of the star they orbit would make them shine. Things aren't cold enough to be invisible in space unless they're either actively cooled, or they don't receive any incident light and lie in total darkness.

Couldn't it just be that the system has alot of stars and alot of moons, that all are randomly aligned just in time for this data? I.e. nothing to see here.

>>7600260
I wasn't really trying to accurately capture the occulusion, thay was just from a shitpost.

I must admit that is superior, needs more comic sans though.

>>7600266

This is how large of an area you need to cover to block 22% of a star's light. Planets and moons covering up this much of the star would be extremely visible, either from direct observation or the gravitational effects on the sun making it wobble back and forth.

>>7600211
dude tell me about it, i wish i had taken my tarp.

Kappa 123 spam in the chat please

>>7598932
Tho it's not aliens and stop having fantasies... Fucking retarded people.

>>7600299
It sure is interesting though; something new to figure out.

>>7599304
People would get more hyped about space, cause now there are actual ayyliums out there, and not just boring rocks. We'd probably try to build better telescopes, so we can literally peek into our future. Also someone would likely build a probe that can last thousands of years, so it can travel there and take a photo. IDK if pics could be beamed back from that far, but if this thing could last, say, 9000 years, then it wouldn't be that hard to make something that lasts 18000 years, so it could turn around and come back to Earth. Or we could just write return it to Earth pls on it.
Imagine living 18000 years from now, seeing pics of a distant world for the first time. Fug.

>>7598894
Wait is this a dyson swarm general? Is there a sticky or pastebin to get me up to speed?

>>7598926
>One thing we haven't done yet is debate what she should be called
Ayy LaWow

>>7600269

Any body that large would also be a star.

>>7599001

In an infinite universe, it is not only possible but guaranteed 100% probable.

Assuming those are aliens, could it be possible that the dyson sphere is not used for harvesting energy but as a form of communication?
Like, ayy lmaos know that primitive species would be looking for dyson sphere structures and so they build something that would catch their attention

>>7600352
So why isnt your mom a star?

>>7600210
what about technology that allows 99.99... % so there is some waste IR radiation, but so low it blends in with background radiation or just is too weak to be detected

>>7600210

No it doesn't.

>>7599856
What kind of turbonigger can't bake bread?

>>7599433
So what should we specifically be looking for?

>>7600326
Travelling through space is not quite that simple. The delta v required to escape our sun would be massive. Then we'd be waiting hundreds of thousands of years for the probe to reach there and fall into orbit in one piece. At that point we'd have to wait 1482 years to get confirmation that the mission was a success

but what if...


what if life of on our earth actually CAME FROM THAT FUCKING PLACE?

what if those are actually communication signals from humans that stayed there while some "original" humans stayed there and are waiting for us to finally react to their communication attempts?

maybe that place got fucked in a major way to make it necessary to split and get some over to earth.

>>7600412
*takes a hit*
*passes the bong*
so deep bruh

>>7600412

You are mentally deficient

>>7600039

care to share some passages that aren't allegoric asspulls?

>>7600409
27341418 years traveling at the speed of new horizons. One way

I honestly believe that we're about to discover aliens some time in the future, maybe not too long from now.

It's literally retarded that we are the only creatures in the universe. What has history taught us? We aren't special. The sun doesn't orbit earth. Humans have an exaggerated sense of self.

"But I'm special and if I'm not then I'm gonna cut myself T_T"

>>7598926
The natural name would be AYY-001.

>something unusual spotted in space

>must be aliens

Every time.

>>7600384


DAAAAAYYYYUUUUUUUMMMM

>>7600419

But if you can get it up to nearly light speed, then.... fuck, 1480 light years away? Fuck that, lemme go along for the ride. Then when I get back I'll get to see what humanity is up to in the year 5000.

>>7600421
When the James Webb launches it will usher in a new age of exploration. I can't wait to see what it finds

>>7600421
We are surely going to. At the very worst, finding microbial life in the solar system and spotting TRULY earth like planets is something that we may be able to do in just 10 or 15 years from now.

>>7600422
Tfw the "ayy" meme was created as a series by the government to collectively prepare us and instill us on a subconscious level so that people don't freak out for the announcement of the discovery of aliens.

>Aliens are just this hip ayy lmao guy, don't worry guys

First part of the plan has succeeded.

>>7600430

I'd like to chuckle over stupid memes with alium bros too. ;w;

>>7600426
We'd need to build several Dyson spheres encapsulating a few thousand galaxies to get the energy first. Still wouldn't be close to c.
To accelerate a mass to c we'd literally break the universe

>>7600384

>>7600437

What if you could cancel out inertia, or even make it negative? Mastery of gravity would imply this. :3

>>7600408
The article claims their selection for ~100-600 K blackbodies. That's easy to do, just fit SEDs. The problem is that with WISE's sensitivity comes low mass stars. There are a couple classes of dwarf that fall into that temperature range, for example Y dwarfs. They use low resolution IRAS spectra, WISE is purely imaging. Their selection is too vague to actually be used on more powerful datasets.

If we wanted to purpose-build something with the primary objective of "figure out wtf is going on at WTF-001", what would that thing comprise of?

>>7600073
I think the lack of excess IR is more puzzling. Something that big ought to reflect a lot of photons, yet there's nothing.

That's more indicative of ayys than anything else.

I suppose it makes sense that we might detect a verified alien presence far away long before we actually personally encounter intelligent alien life, but I'd never really thought about it before.

We might even detect an alien civilization before we get a chance to look for life on Mars. How embarrassing is that?

We're about to be the rednecks of the universe.

>they haven't even colonized their moon!
>look at the SLT chemical rocket they rode up in!
>laughingayygirls.jpg

>>7600437

We wouldn't need nearly so much energy to accelerate an object to "near" lightspeed, depending on one's definition of "near." I would consider anything above 0.9c to be near lightspeed, though to the particles in a particle accelerator, that's just crawling along.

Anyway, if we could store antimatter (HUGE if) we could make a matter-antimatter anhililation rocket like the Valkirie (go look that up. I almost certainly spelled it wrong). It could get a craft to a velocity above 0.9c and then back to stopped relative to its starting reference frame.

We're a looooooooong way from making one, but much closer than multiple dyson spheres.

>>7598894
THIS JUST IN: ROCKS HAVE BEEN FOUND ORBITING A STAR. SCIENTISTS ARE REFERRING TO THE NEW STRANGE PHENOMENON AS "PLANETS". MORE AT 11.

If the dinosaurs hadn't been wiped out, what would've happened?

Intelligent life never develops?

Dinosaurs rule until some later extinction event?

Mammals never produce apes?

Lizards become sentient?

I realize we don't know but shit. If we find humanoid aliens, we can reason probably all intelligent life is humanoid because of convergent evolution.

If we find something else, like lizardmen, or octopi, or the French, then it all goes out the window and intelligent life could be anything.

Fucking first contact when? Can I beam radio waves at KIC in hopes the ayyys pick it up?

>>7599280
It's ridiculous to imagine walking around on a colony like it's earth.

It doesn't need an atmosphere. Everyone can live indoors.

>>7600204
Dead, they signaled their location to a higher species that is invisible to all em radiation at all times.

>>7600505
>or the French
haha ha

>>7600501
See
>>7598968

It's not planets.

>>7600506
Not that anon, but the atmosphere is incredibly useful as a resource. Easier to land on the surface, abundant source of CO2 (fuel! Oxygen!) and Nitrogen (Nitrogen things! Filler! Maybe fertilizer!), helps to reduce the necessary strength of the habitat (pressure inside - pressure outside lower on Mars, hence less pressure on structure), shielding from radiation and meteorites, and so on.

Mars also has more resources (water! Maybe easily accessible rare earth metals!), more gravity (better for our bodies), and a staggeringly higher chance of possessing current or former life.

There's no reason to go the Moon currently, and won't be until Mars travel becomes so commonplace that a Moon fuel depot makes economic sense.

>>7600511
>muh Fermi superpredator

>>7600102
It's not necessarily big planet shaped objects, is it?
I mean, it could be a flat swarm of objects that block the same amount of light, but aren't necessarily the same size in every dimension.

>>7600515
Mars doesn't have any drinkable water.

Any water used would have to be produced.

>>7600518
> solidified liquid

>>7600489
>It could get a craft to a velocity above 0.9c
>hit a grain of dust
>congratulations, your ship is now many ships

>>7600524
Yes, but the same is true for the Moon, and nondrinkable water has many uses.

>>7600527
Yeah, but I'm more interested in asteroids than planets.

Why not have swarms of machines that mine materials and fabricate everything we would need while humans live in orbital habitats?

>>7600505
>If we find humanoid aliens, we can reason probably all intelligent life is humanoid because of convergent evolution.

Why stop there? How about, they'll probably be literal humans, because of convergant evolution? Or they'll probably all be copies of people living on Earth, because of convergant evolution?

If we ever encounter organic, macroscopic alien life, then convergant evolution suggests they will have some means of detecting some wavelengths of light. That's about it.

It does not suggest that they will have legs and arms attached to torsos, with heads on the top and a face on the head and two eyes on the front of the face, above the nose and mouth.

>>7600532
>Why stop there? How about, they'll probably be literal humans, because of convergant evolution? Or they'll probably all be copies of people living on Earth, because of convergant evolution?
>If we ever encounter organic, macroscopic alien life, then convergant evolution suggests they will have some means of detecting some wavelengths of light. That's about it.
>It does not suggest that they will have legs and arms attached to torsos, with heads on the top and a face on the head and two eyes on the front of the face, above the nose and mouth.

..... which is why I said "if we find humanoid aliens, then...", and then followed it by "if we find nonhumanoid aliens, then...".

Humans once is a fluke. Humans twice probably isn't. That's all I said.

>>7599305
With today's understanding religion should already be fucked, but people still believe it.

This won't change shit, at least not when it comes to religion. Plus they could just deny it, there are people in 2015 who believe the Earth is flat.

The only thing I could see this changing is that people might be more interested in space, maybe.

>life on mars
>retarded
>fucking neptune sized dyson spheres
>definitely aliens
I can't take /sci/ seriously anymore

>>7598932
I AM A ==YEY7829EYYE72978273737!!!!!!---------....

>>7600041
The argument for is that the local conditions make it possible and aliens are science fiction.

The argument against is that would be the greatest volume of cometary material ever seen, and also no infrared overage nearby. Pic is pop comet Hale..........................Bopp
in infrared.

Hey guys I can't find where in the paper it says the thingies aren't planets or whatever. You know, the part related to gravitational wobble or something.

>>7600556
2.1 "Note that we have thoroughly validated the data to ensure that any flux variations represent physical events in or near the star (and they do); these processes are described in detail within Section 4.1,"
>not something occluding from near us

" Virtually all of the fluctuations in intensity visible on these plots are real, i.e., not due to statistical or instrumental variations (Section 4.1)
>not instrumentation error

" This suggests that something more complicated than a single rotating surface inhomogeneity is producing the observed signal"
>not sunspots or flares

"We would like to note however, that we can-
not completely discount the possibility that these periods are due
to pulsations. The position of KIC 8462852 is within the Gamma
Doradus (
Dor) region of the instability strip, where pulsations
are observed at
<
5
cycles d
1
(e.g.,
Uytterhoeven et al.
2011
).
Our interpretation of starspots relies on comparing the STFT of KIC 8462852 to the STFT of known Dor pulsators: we find that
the dominant frequencies for Dor stars do not evolve with time in the STFT."
>if it's pulsating, it's nothing we've ever seen before

"The panel second from the bottom ‘(c)’) shows no low-frequency (10 – 20 day) variations, but the rest do. We have no current hypothesis to explain this signal."
>It's not a planet

"The PSF of KIC 8462852 is asymmetric by comparison, leading us to speculate that KIC 8462852 has a faint companion star about
1:5" - 2" away."
>the only detected object nearby is a red dwarf

" Assuming the fainter star is associated with the main F-star target, and the two stars that are separated by 1:9500, they are 885 AU apart. At this separation, the second star cannot currently be physically affecting the behavior of the Kepler target star, though could be affecting bodies in orbit around it via long term perturbations."
>the red dwarf is not the occluder but it could be influencing the occluder

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1509.03622v1.pdf

>read the paper
>it's fucking comets

Why are we all excited again?

>>7600577
We want to believe.

>>7600577
It might be comets. Maybe. Possibly. We need to find out.

>>7599277
Think about the implications of increasing or decreasing the mass of the moon on Earth. Shit's not a good idea.

>>7600574
" i.e. no excess emission can be detected at mid-infrared wavelengths"
>it's not a normal dust cloud

***"We use two FIES spectra (Section 2.2 ) to measure the presence of any Doppler shifts induced by a companion. Quantitatively, in terms of the mass of a possible companion, the absence of a RV shift implies any companion with mass > 8MJ on a 4 d orbital period would have been detected, "
>there is no wobble

" If ELVs were present,we would have seen a peak > 30 ppm for periods shorter than 4
days ( 0 : 25 cycles day 1 ) in the FT (Figure
2 ). Thus, this implies companion masses M
c. 50 M J for a 4 d orbital period and M c . 0
:25 M J for a 0 : 25 d orbital period, for inclination angles i & 30."
>if there were a freak planet-like object, it would be smaller than 50 Jupiters and the other one would be smaller than 1/4 Jupiter, But we didn't see one.

"The lack of observed IR excess does not support the existence of an excretion disk."
>it's not the star's own material

"The lack of evidence for periodicity in the
dips in the observed light-curve excludes orbital periods shorter than 1500 days, which thus constrains the location to lie beyond
about 3 AU. "
>Whatever it is, it should be about 290 million miles from the star

"This may be reasonable if the planetesimals
are embedded in a belt of debris. However, that would incur the problem of the lack of infrared excess. The question also remains
why the D1500 events are so clustered, and why there several deep dimming events and no intermediate ones. A population of plan-
etesimals should have a variety of inclinations with respect to our line of sight, so they should pass in front of the star at a range of
impact parameters and cause a range of dip depths."
>it's not a bunch of planet fragments either

Imagine if it is a Dyson sphere, and over the next 200 years humanity gets to slowly watch it be built, unable to reach out and communicate or even verify that they're still alive.

Trippy.

>>7600599
"That figure assumed that the clumps were present at the given distance at all times, whereas the clumps in the comet scenario were at much larger separation from the star at the time of the WISE observations."
>if it's comets, they would have had to have moved between the WISE and Kepler observation periods.
>>7600577
" For example, a fairly generic prediction of transits of comet-like bodies may be that their light-curves show signs of their tails. The light-curve expected for a typical event then has a relatively fast ingress as the head of the comet passes in front of the star, but a slower egress as the tail passes (e.g. Lecavelier Des
Etangs et al. 1999:Rappaport et al.2012). However, the D800 eventshows the opposite (see panel ‘c’ in Figure1)."
>These have to be freaky no-tail comets, which no one has ever seen before.

"Possible resolutions of this issue are that the D800 comet fragment received a large kick
with an orientation that sheared it out in such a way to form a “forward tail”. Such forward comet tails produced by the fragments
being kicked toward the star have been studied in the literature, but require the tail to be large enough to overcome the effects of
radiation pressure (Sanchis-Ojeda et al.2015).
>Under a series of unlikely coincidences it could be a freaking huge uber-comet which no one has ever seen.

" Finally, comets would release gas (as well as dust), and sensitive observations to detect this gas would also test this hypothesis."
>If we rule out this already unlikely and data-contraindicated mutant comet thingy, prepare your anus.

>>7600599
>"The lack of observed IR excess does not support the existence of an excretion disk."
>it's not the star's own material

Isn't that a bit of a jump? Couldn't it be some sort of transitional point?

Obviously not my field, but could it be a dust cloud or asteroid belt that was only recently acquired, say from the Oort cloud being disturbed by the red dwarf, and therefore is still "cold"?

It's a fleet of nomadic world ships currently in orbit around the sun to refuel and gather materials.

Would explain the irregular orbit.

>>7600628
>Neptune sized spaceships
That's a big alien.

boys its ayy

and they are mad at us

>>7600641
YOU WOULDN'T LAST ONE DAY IN OARBIT

>>7600641
if you hit the roche limit, would you die

what if the ayy lmao's have this dyson spheres because they need the huge mass of energy to make wormholes?

>>7600657
What if the ayyys are already among us, having completed their project 500 years ago, and arrived here after traveling at 3x lightspeed just in time to subtly reveal their existence by posing as Kepler researchers?

I thought this board was about science, not science fiction

>>7600669
Science is nothing but applied science fiction, and science fiction is but theoretical science.

Should we make a mascot or something for KLC? I feel like we should, we need to summon our collective thought to make first contact possible by January, who knows by October next year we could all have alien waifus.

>>7600625
NO INFRARED

>>7600673
How do we make a mascot for a thing whose defining characteristic is that we don't know what it is?

Best choice then is
>>7600260

>>7600681

Can we call her Ai-chan or something?

>>7600691
Hi I am Mega. Hi am from KIC 8462852.

Your radio signal is cute. Many many cute data. I am look your signal for many many time, but I no understando all.

What you talk? What is the favorite discussion you say please?

Sorry for my question. Bye bye Sol III.

Mega

>>7600681
>>7600691
Ayychan is at least pronouncable. Does /sci/ do the winter ball? She could be a project for those guys.

>>7600657
They could just make a machine that seperates the particles and antiparticles in vacuum and use the negative ones to open worm holes and the negative ones for keeping the machine running. Literally a perpetuum mobile.

>>7600681
A chan figure in a slinky black floor-length negligée with a veil. Like a photonegative wedding gown.

if it's a dyson sphere, why do the movements of the structures look so random?

>aliums manage to build dyson swarms
>meanwhile on earth, niggers and mudslimes replace whiteys and chinks and we will never go to space again
Thanks Obama, thanks Merkel, thank you jews.

>>7600712
It can't be a sphere, since we still see the star.

At most it's an incomplete ring.

>>7600710
>>7600704
What's her personality? Shy? Tomboy? Tsuntsun?

>my name i-is KIC 8462852, b-but my friends c-call me Ai-chan...

>>7600720
>>meanwhile on earth, niggers and mudslimes replace whiteys and chinks and we will never go to space again

it's not niggers or mudslimes fault that white people don't fuck and thus have no babies

Quick and dirty since the thread is dying.
Ayychan.

If someone wants to make another thread, I leave it to you.

>>7600727
It's everyone's fault we're not going to space even though we've had the technology for decades.

>>7600729

Would Ayychan be ara,ara or another personality type? I'd like her to be ara, ara. I don't think we've got that one yet, Winter seems too kuudere, Ebola-tan looks genki. We need a cake mascot.

>>7600726
What the hell are you fags even talking about.
You should consider going back to /a/

>>7600726
Shy, demure, mysterious. Hypnotically cryptic.

>>7600741
Winter ball OC is a fair topic on all boards that participate. Does /sci/ do winter ball or not?

>>7600739
>>7600742
I can support this.

A cold, mysterious, ara-ara~ -ing wench

>>7600747

So kind of similar to Maetel from 999?

>>7600747
>>7600742
>>7600739
I'm on board. /sci/ does not appear to have a date for the ball, which is announced to be after Halloween this year, so there is still time.

>>7600761
>Maetel from 999
I can dig it. Her face should be veiled though, don't cha think? She can be unmasked when new data come in.

>>7600747
>>7600761

Current winter ball thread.
>>>/qa/293950

Somebody made a duplicate thread. Since it is still alive, we should probably just use that one
>>>7600089

>>7599732
your a fucking retard. Fuck you trip faggot. I hope you and your lineage become impotent.

>>7600051
>>7600058
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDu-2h8ZDhI

>>7598903
that makes no sense, that can't fucking occlude 22%

you need a planet 20 times the size of jupiter to occlude that, and by that point they're stars

>>7599300
only by retards such as yourself

>>7599759
>aliens work for 4 years
living the dream

>>7600106
dust emits tons of infrared faggot

>>7600160
>we look at it
>we find transmissions
>we decode them and find out new shit about the universe, including ship technology

fuck you for being an idiot, 90% of investors are like you

>>7600628
>Would explain the irregular orbit.
we've only seen it twice you dumbass

>>7600409
>1482 years
I specifically said 9000 years so the ship wouldn't have to go at ~1c. My point was that even if those strange space-time bending technologies like the alcubierre drive turn out to be unfeasible, we could still somehow manage to get some pics about them, either via the use of those plasma rockets that shoot the propellant out at ridiculously high speeds so we son't get fucked by the rocket equation, or that antimatter shit some other anon said.

>>7598932
I AM A ROBOT

>>7599559
it's about 1500 light years away

So have we met the AYYY LMAOS?

>>7598932
I AM A ROBOT

>>7598932
I AM A ROBOT

>>7601318
No

>>7598932
I AM A ROBOT

>>7601318
We don't know

>>7600132
www.apod.com

Mostly for pictures, which are amazing in their own right, but also has descriptions of what its showing and many many links to further information. Its not a book, but you can learn a lot there.

>>7602524
Shit I'm at idiot thats not the link.
It's

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/archivepix.html

>>7600132

Go to the library.