The merged and improved (?) KIC 8462852 thread

[Dryson]

Swarm of comets. Not one big comet.

I don't still don't think it was a swarm of comets. I was reading an article that discussed how smaller dims in KIC preceded the first 15% dim of KIC. The smaller dims in the light of KIC if a comet had caused the dim would have been part of the cometary tail. If the swarm of comets was being pulled in a backwards transit across KIC then the transit backwards for what ever reason would have caused the tail debris or the smaller dims in light to be viewed first.

A swarm able to cause a 15% and then a 22% dim in the light of KIC would had to have been enormous given the fact that Jupiter at 139,822 km in diameter only causes around a 1% dim our Sun when it transits across the Sun.

Comet LINEAR had a tail that was 100,000 km. If the objects that caused the dim of KIC had been a swarm of comets and given the amount of dim caused there would have been a rather large cometary tail maybe one million kilometers in length. If the object was a swarm of comets that might have impacted together causing the 22% dim in light then there would have been cometary debris left behind that would have caused dims after the impact took place.

https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/opo0027b/

Then again maybe the dims were caused by several large comet swarms transiting at the same time with the 22% dim in light being the result of the swarms passing in front of each other.

Comet McNaught is thought to be 25 km in length. Just for practical application lets see how many approximate Comet McNaughts would fill the diameter of Jupiter. This is a linear measure from point A to point B. If we divide the diameter of Jupiter, 139,822 km by McNaughts diameter of 25 km we have 5,593 McNaught sized comets that would equal the diameter of Jupiter. If we were to pack these comets together into a swarm the swarm might be around 17,478 km in diameter or 1/8th the diameter of Jupiter. There is still not enough cometary volume when using comet McNaught.

With a comet swarm this large there would have been charged gas that would have been present as well. With a comet swarm this large the solar winds would have been effected as well which I am not certain if Kepler was able to record.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/04/100413-biggest-comet-size-mcnaught/

 

[Crazy Eddie]

A swarm able to cause a 15% and then a 22% dim in the light of KIC would had to have been enormous given the fact that Jupiter at 139,822 km in diameter only causes around a 1% dim our Sun when it transits across the Sun.

No, because the tail and halo of a single comet can be as much as 400,000km wide. Ten of them traveling close to each other -- in a distribution about 20 million km across -- would be associated with a cloud of debris that would block some of the light from the star without completely occulting any part of it. Think of it like a puff of smoke passing in front of a light bulb.

If we were to pack these comets together into a swarm the swarm might be around 17,478 km in diameter or 1/8th the diameter of Jupiter. There is still not enough cometary volume when using comet McNaught.

And yet if you spread them out over a much wider area such that their tails do not directly overlap, they would block a considerable amount of the star's light. It isn't the comet nuclei that would cause the dimming, but the plumes of gas and dust they're spitting everywhere.

With a comet swarm this large the solar winds would have been effected as well which I am not certain if Kepler was able to record.

No, Kepler cannot detect solar wind activity in distant stars.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

The dimming effect of a comet swarm could be enhanced if the star is gravitationally darkened at its equator relative to its poles because its rapid rotation causes it to be significantly oblate. KIC 8462852 is believed to rotate once every 0.88 days with an angular velocity about 30 times that of the Sun. I don't know if this possibility has been confirmed or eliminated.

 

[Phily B]

https://www.newscientist.com/articl...campaign=hoot&cmpid=SOC|NSNS|2016-GLOBAL-hoot

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

The researcher quoted in that article didn't take the size of cometary tails into account. However, I do admit that these must be remarkably long-lived comets, in what seem to be short-period orbits, to explain observations that go back as far as 1890. The hypothesis does stretch credulity but not as much as invoking alien megastructures.

 

[PurpleBuddha]

The hypothesis does stretch credulity but not as much as invoking alien megastructures.

Agreed. But, since it really does appear that neither are true, is there any lead candidates for the next most likely explanation?

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Other than really oddly structured circumstellar rings, whose light-blocking effects might be made to fit the observations, not as far as I'm aware. (It might have to be nearly as weird as the armillary sphere doodad in the title sequence of Game of Thrones.) It's a rather baffling star. More data needed,,,

http://www.cnet.com/news/the-weird-...ve-been-checking-for-aliens-just-got-weirder/

 

[Dryson]

No, because the tail and halo of a single comet can be as much as 400,000km wide. Ten of them traveling close to each other -- in a distribution about 20 million km across -- would be associated with a cloud of debris that would block some of the light from the star without completely occulting any part of it. Think of it like a puff of smoke passing in front of a light bulb.


And yet if you spread them out over a much wider area such that their tails do not directly overlap, they would block a considerable amount of the star's light. It isn't the comet nuclei that would cause the dimming, but the plumes of gas and dust they're spitting everywhere.

No, Kepler cannot detect solar wind activity in distant stars.

With a cometary swarm large enough to cause a 15% dim in KIC the cometary dust and debris would have been rather noticeable by Kepler.

I was also thinking that if the object was in fact a large swarm of comets that the swarm might possible create its own gravity that would be strong enough to possibly keep most of the debris evaporating from the comets close to the comet swarm itself instead of creating a cometary tail.

Sunlight and the stream of charged particles flowing from the Sun – the solar wind – sweeps the evaporated material and dust back in a long tail.

In the outer Solar System, comets remain frozen and are extremely difficult or impossible to detect from Earth due to their small size. The same would hold true and detecting a comet in the solar system of KIC. Since the dim in KIC was extremely large but was preceded by much smaller dims before the first dim of 15% that if the object was a large comet swarm then perhaps the dim in light was caused by a swarm of comets that were rogue in nature of KIC itself. The smaller dims prior to the 15% could have been the swarm of comets heating up and evaporating with a sudden release of cometary debris once the swarm came close enough to KIC. The 22% dim could have been the final release of cometary debris as the swarm itself broke up into smaller sub-swarms resulting in the dims across a much larger transit.

I was also reading that these events were really a chance discovery and that Kepler would have had to have been lined up almost directly in line with KIC to record the events. With Kepler needing to be in line with KIC means that whatever objects actually caused the dim would have been on a direct course of impact with Earth that if KIC might not have been in the way of those objects might still have been heading towards Earth at this very moment.

 

[sojourner]

With Kepler needing to be in line with KIC means that whatever objects actually caused the dim would have been on a direct course of impact with Earth that if KIC might not have been in the way of those objects might still have been heading towards Earth at this very moment.

Nope.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

With a cometary swarm large enough to cause a 15% dim in KIC the cometary dust and debris would have been rather noticeable by Kepler.

No, because the tails of those comets don't REFLECT enough light from the star to be visible at this distance. And even if it did, the star's light is several orders of magnitude greater than what could be reflected from the comets and the glare from the starshine would suppress any telltales.

I was also thinking that if the object was in fact a large swarm of comets that the swarm might possible create its own gravity that would be strong enough to possibly keep most of the debris evaporating from the comets close to the comet swarm itself instead of creating a cometary tail.

Unlikely. A cluster of 20 objects the size of Haley's comet would have about the mass of a smallish main belt asteroid. Distributed wide enough to cause a 22% dimming in the star would probably put most of those objects outside of one another's roche limit and they would no longer be the dominant gravitating body of any of their neighbors. So BETWEEN the fragments, solar winds would actually be a stronger force than gravity.

The sort of elephant in the room seems to be that a "swarm of comets" is unlikely to even exist in this way. It's more likely to be a much larger icy body that was broken up in a collision, with most of the debris sharing a similar but widely distributed orbit.

In the outer Solar System, comets remain frozen and are extremely difficult or impossible to detect from Earth due to their small size. The same would hold true and detecting a comet in the solar system of KIC.

Which is why they didn't detect the comets at all, only the dimming of the star as they passed in front of it.

I was also reading that these events were really a chance discovery and that Kepler would have had to have been lined up almost directly in line with KIC to record the events. With Kepler needing to be in line with KIC means that whatever objects actually caused the dim would have been on a direct course of impact with Earth that if KIC might not have been in the way of those objects might still have been heading towards Earth at this very moment.

Actually, if they were heading directly for Earth we wouldn't have noticed ANY dimming in the star's brightness; Kepler isn't positioned directly between Earth and this star, so an object moving towards us from that star system wouldn't be visible to Kepler in any way shape or form.

 

[Dryson]

Dimming of KIC not likely caused by comets.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/16/us/sp...mains-mystery0217AMVODtopLink&linkId=20438793

But the probability of a comet family creating the erratic dip in brightness is highly unlikely, Schaefer said.
In the article it is mentioned that an estimated 648,000 giant comets are required to create the century long dimming.

So the dim of KIC is not related to a large giant comet swarm.

http://www.universetoday.com/122865...62852-shattered-comet-or-alien-megastructure/

Let's look at the logical explanations first and foremost before aliens are thought of..
This is not was is causing the dim of KIC 8462852.

1. A super gas giant.
2. A super sized family of giant comets.
3. A dust cloud.
4. Equipment failure of Kepler.

Here are some possibilities that could cause the dim of KIC 8462852.
1. A possible black hole close to the region warping space-time.
2. CMB or the same type of anomaly present in the Hole of the Universe where not even Dark Matter is present.
3. Something taking place in the star itself where it loses some of its fuel causing the dim but then regains the fuel raising the luminosity of the star to a normal brightness.
4. Possible alien interaction where aliens have been able to siphon off some of the fuel itself where the aliens are able to replace the siphoned fuel with elements that re-ignite the star.
5. It's probably none of the above and something completely different than what has been discovered so far which breaks the chain of events of humanity knowing everything about space based on other similarities have been proven to be a constant.

The best way to determine if the event is localized to KIC is to check the luminosity of the stars surrounding KIC within a 100 LY perimeter of KIC itself. If the event is localized to KIC only and none of the other anomalies have been proven to have caused the dim then the last two events that cause the dim would have to be "Something taking place within the star itself where it loses fuel and then regains the lost fuel" or "It's Aliens."

The last possibility if none of the above would be proven true is that a micro black hole might have been responsible for the dims of KIC as a result of the residue left behind from the instantly evaporating micro black hole weakly causing interactions to take place.

From the paper written by Bradley E. Schaefer – all this is produced by one physical mechanism. This one mechanism does not appear as any isolated catastrophic event in the last century, but rather must be some ongoing process with continuous effects. The residue from a micro black hole could cause ongoing and continuous effects.

I'm not certain though if the residue from a micro black hole would orbit a star like KIC though.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_black_hole

From the paper written by Bradley E. Schaefer – all this is produced by one physical mechanism. This one mechanism does not appear as any isolated catastrophic event in the last century, but rather must be some ongoing process with continuous effects.

The only physical and non alien related continuous effect that would cause the dim of KIC 8462852 could possibly be the result of the residue left behind by a micro black hole that would interact with the star.

http://arxiv.org/abs/1601.03256

In the event that it was aliens I think the following ideas might suggest what they are doing.

1. Aliens might be conducting experiments on KIC. If they were able to cause the dim of KIC and then introduce fuel back into KIC that raised its level of luminosity then the aliens could be close to actually creating an artificial star by adding fuel to each layer of the star building a star that would be necessary to sustain their life on potentially habitable planets with region of temperature that the aliens would be comfortable living with based on the heat generated by the star.

2. The aliens could be siphoning off fuel from KIC to possibly fuel their own star with.

 

[Silvercrest]

Let's look at the logical explanations first and foremost before aliens are thought of.

I read that somewhere.

 

[Dryson]

Let's look at the logical explanations first and foremost before aliens are thought of.

I read that somewhere.

If the dim in KIC is not related to a naturally occurring interaction then the only other interaction that would cause the dim of KIC would be related to aliens.

 

[Silvercrest]

Not necessarily. A wizard might have done it. Or God.

Seriously, you don't seem to understand the break in logic required to jump straight to "Aliens did it!" while ignoring every single natural explanation. First you need to disprove all the natural explanations. You haven't remotely done that.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

...or the goddamn simulation is faulty again...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn's_hexagon

 

[Dryson]

Not necessarily. A wizard might have done it. Or God.

Seriously, you don't seem to understand the break in logic required to jump straight to "Aliens did it!" while ignoring every single natural explanation. First you need to disprove all the natural explanations. You haven't remotely done that.

All of the natural explanations have already been ruled out. Your the one jumping to straight to "Aliens did it" just to cause and issue. I have already outline in the post above your post " Let's look at the logical explanations first and foremost before aliens are thought of. I read that somewhere." the reasons that could not have caused the dim of KIC.

Comets have been ruled out. That also means large planets, dust rings and black holes as well.

The only three remaining possible causes would be the residue left behind by a micro black hole affecting KIC, a possibly larger sun coming close to KIC to cause the dim, or aliens.

I would have to think that if a larger sun was causing the dim of the KIC then Kepler would have been able to determine the interaction based on the numerous data that has been obtained from the region.

 

[{ Emilia }]

There is another possible reason for the dimming: A process we simply do not understand yet.

Claiming that all natural reasons have been ruled out is a pretty bold statement.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

So the dim of KIC is not related to a large giant comet swarm.

Or at least, the long-term dimming from 1890 to 1989, according to some guy from Louisiana State who got interviewed by CNN for some reason.

The two more recent dimming events is a separate issue from the century-long dip Schaffer claims he noticed in the data.

All of the natural explanations have already been ruled out. Your the one jumping to straight to "Aliens did it" just to cause and issue. I have already outline in the post above your post " Let's look at the logical explanations first and foremost before aliens are thought of. I read that somewhere." the reasons that could not have caused the dim of KIC.

Comets have been ruled out.

No they have not. Not for the events we've been discussing.

Schaffer is actually bringing up a separate, totally unrelated mystery that probably has a completely different cause. Specifically, he is doing a back-of-the-napkin estimate without showing any of his work on data other people collected that isn't actually related to what Tabby's Star is actually known for. This produces yet another mystery.

Among the more likely possibilities for Schaeffer's mystery are:

1) Tabby's star may actually be a long-term variable star of a type we have not studied in depth
2) Schaeffer used an incomplete data set and his "averages" contain too many outliers to be reliable
3) Schaeffer is bullshitting

Considering he was part of the team that discovered "dark energy" I am leaning towards #3.

 

[Dryson]

There is another possible reason for the dimming: A process we simply do not understand yet.

Claiming that all natural reasons have been ruled out is a pretty bold statement.

That is true {Emilia} but from I have read from those having the ability to study the star that KIC 8462852 is a normal F Class Star nothing out of the ordinary except for the large dim in luminosity.

I was reading this article about the evolution of a Sun.

http://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/~infocom/The Website/evolution.html

From it I took these notes - Notes are in bold

The dependence on mass comes about because the sheer weight of the star's mass determines its central pressure, which in turn determines its rate of nuclear burning (higher pressure = more collisions = more energy)

There must be a process taking place within the star itself where an external force is causing the central pressure in the star to reduce thus causing less pressure=less collisions=less energy=dim in brightness. After the event passes the pressure on KIC's central mass returns to a normal state where normal luminosity is regained.

A force would have to be pulling on the exterior of KIC to reduce the central pressure that would cease then cause the star to return to a normal output.

It is also the case that the gas pressure at any depth in the star (which also depends on the temperature at that depth) must balance the weight of the gas above it.

And finally, of course, the total energy generated in the core must equal the total energy radiated at the surface.

If the energy being radiated equals the total output of the core of KIC which is equal at the surface and the dim of KIC has been recorded at 15% to 20% dims then something is taking place at the core of KIC 8462852 that equates to a 15% to 20% loss of output in the energy that the core is creating but then somehow someway is able regain the loss in at the core to return the energy output to normal

A star which meets all these constraints is said to be in hydrostatic equilibrium. Hydrostatic equilibrium has the fortunate effect that it tends to make stars stable. Should a star's core be compressed, the compression causes nuclear burning to increase, which generates more heat, which forces up the pressure and makes the star expand.

Likewise, if a star's core should be decompressed, then nuclear burning decreases, which cools the star and brings the pressure down, and thus the star contracts and again returns to equilibrium.

Bizarrely, this emptying of the central fuel tank makes the star brighter, not dimmer, because the intense pressure at the surface of the core causes the hydrogen there to burn even faster. This more than takes up the slack from the fuel-exhausted center. The star's brightening not only continues, it accelerates.

Based on these explanations it would appear that KIC's core is being decompressed that causes the star to cool and create a dim in brightness and is then being compressed to return the star to normal brightness. Yet the star is not expanding or contracting. But it doesn't appear to be naturally occurring but a more controlled event.

Unnaturally

If fuel is being taken from the core of KIC then based on the article the surface pressure would cause the hydrogen at the core to burn even faster causing the brightening of KIC to continue and accelerate back to a normal state.

It's almost as if a steady hand is taking fuel from the core itself and replacing the fuel with elements that would burn in the same manner thus reducing the increased pressure and returning the star to normal.

Naturally,naturally
If hydrogen was being used more rapidly at the core then KIC would increase in brightness equally which would have been observed by Kepler.

Where's the Flux?
http://astro.physics.uiowa.edu/~kaaret/s09/L10_stars.pdf
http://arxiv.org/abs/1509.03622

Based on the article from Northwestern the events of KIC do not align with anything naturally occurring based on how a star functions.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

If hydrogen was being used more rapidly at the core then KIC would increase in brightness equally which would have been observed by Kepler.

You were making sense right up to this point: Kepler hasn't been observing Tabby's Star long enough to measure a long-term dip in brightness (nobody has, really).

Based on the article from Northwestern the events of KIC do not align with anything naturally occurring based on how a star functions.

No, the events Kepler observed are consistent with occultation by a swarm of comets, among other explanations, and probably have little or nothing to do with the actual star.

The long-term dimming, IF Schaefer's numbers are correct, is an unrelated phenomenon.