The merged and improved (?) KIC 8462852 thread

[Reverend]

Re: Has Kepler Discovered An Alien Megastructure?

Pretty sure the "recent planetary collision/break-up" idea has already been discounted since the IR reading don't support it (the rocks from such an impact would still be glowing with heat and apparently these are cold.)

The most likely scenario so far proposed is that a recent close approach from a neighbouring star has churned up it's outer cometary debris, sending a whole swarm of large objects in-system. However the problem with that is that it is (quite literally) and astronomical coincidence that we just happen to catch the event in the relatively tight time frame on which this would occur.

The really interesting possibility for me is that this is some new astrological phenomena that we've yet to even theorise. After all, nobody ever thought up highly magnetized, rapidly oscillating neutron stars until a radio telescope picked up one's radiowaves and named it a pulsar. Which incidentally, was also suggested to be of artificial origin due to the regular as clockwork radio pulses of immense power.

Sure, alien mega-structures would be more exciting, but it'd need some very substantial proof if such was the case. At the same time though, until they get more data on that system, it's going to be hard to categorically disprove too.

 

[Dac]

Re: Has Kepler Discovered An Alien Megastructure?

So having glanced at the paper and struggling to make heads or tails of it, I think I've come away with a few salient points:

The dip happened twice with a 2 and a bit year period between them.

The second dip was noticeably bigger than the first (Something like 15% vs 22% in the second).

The star is of similar type and age to our own and as such is mature enough to not have a protoplanetary disc.

The mass required to obscure that percentage of a star is something on the order of 50x the mass of Jupiter (Or there abouts).

And that the leading theory is the cometary family passing through the system - however, a cometary cloud 50x bigger than Jupiter? That's a hell of a lot of stuff. So while it is the most plausible theory, it's still an out there guess. The paper makes no mention of the alien dyson sphere idea.

 

[Reverend]

Re: Has Kepler Discovered An Alien Megastructure?

^I think the cometary idea is predicated on the data being misleading somehow. Hence the need for further observations.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Re: Has Kepler Discovered An Alien Megastructure?

The paper makes no mention of the alien dyson sphere idea.

That would be academic suicide.

 

[Amaris]

Re: Has Kepler Discovered An Alien Megastructure?

The paper makes no mention of the alien dyson sphere idea.

That would be academic suicide.

For good reason, too. If someone wrote about headaches and stated that we should remove the bad humours in order to balance out the blood, they'd be a laughing stock, and rightfully so. To make leaps without reason or rationale, especially this early in the discovery process is to invite that academic disaster.

 

[Dryson]

Re: Has Kepler Discovered An Alien Megastructure?

The beginnings of a D(r)yson sphere???

Possibly.

There are two natural phenoms and one alien based phenom.

Natural Phenoms

1. A swarm of comets orbiting the sun that are far enough away to make the sun flicker. Because if the comets were close to KIC's sun they would have already have vaporized. Lets say for Snertle sake that the objects being detected are a swarm of comets. The swarm would need to be orbiting KIC in an eccentric orbit a little further than the distance that Mars orbits our Sun in order to keep from vaporizing because of the heat of the sun. The eccentric orbit would allow the swarm to refreeze once it left the heat effective zone of KIC.

2. A Colossal sized asteroid similar to the one from the movie Armageddon with Bruce Willis.

3. An alien megastructure. If the objects orbiting KIC but do not move away from each other over time based on their orbit around the sun and then back into each other or away from the sun or into the sun but has an artificial orbit mimicking perfection yet is generating signals then I would have to say that the objects are an alien megastructure.

I for one would have to believe 1. would be 25% likely, 2. 75 to 90% likely and 3. 30 to 50% likely.

If 1 and 2 are dismissed then number 3 is 100% likely.

The objects around KIC is one of the above.

 

[Dukhat]

Re: Has Kepler Discovered An Alien Megastructure?

If 1 and 2 are dismissed then number 3 is 100% likely.

The objects around KIC is one of the above.

Yeah.

1. The Earth is populated only by white people.

2. The Earth is populated only by black people.

3. The Earth is populated only by Asian people.


If 1 and 2 are dismissed then number 3 is 100% likely.

I rest my case.

 

[sojourner]

Re: Has Kepler Discovered An Alien Megastructure?

Number 2 is ridiculous. An asteroid "the size of the one from Armageddon" wouldn't be anywhere near large enough to cause the the observed phenomena. Because that fictional asteroid was still only the size of Texas, not even "large" compared to the moon.

An "asteroid" large enough to cause the observed phenomena would not be classified as an asteroid.

 

[scotthm]

Re: Has Kepler Discovered An Alien Megastructure?

I for one would have to believe 1. would be 25% likely, 2. 75 to 90% likely and 3. 30 to 50% likely.

Option 3 (alien megastructure) has been ruled out by your first two options, which between them already have at least a 100% chance of being correct (according to what you have to believe.)

---------------

 

[Dryson]

Re: Has Kepler Discovered An Alien Megastructure?

Another explanation - http://www.techinsider.io/alien-meg...ments_page=1#comment-562d8006e15ce56a2211ed17

If the three signals discussed in the article are in fact planets then based on the article their orbits around KIC would be easily tracked and therefore able to be plotted by Kepler.

And yes an asteroid the size of the one seen in the movie Armageddon is possible and it would be able to be seen moving in an orbit across the sun as its dimensions would be more than enough to obscure the location on the sun that it was passing in front of.

This would be option number 4.

I'm still hoping for option number 3.

Sorry religious belief is not excepted as a form of reality any longer.

 

[sojourner]

Re: Has Kepler Discovered An Alien Megastructure?

And yes an asteroid the size of the one seen in the movie Armageddon is possible and it would be able to be seen moving in an orbit across the sun as its dimensions would be more than enough to obscure the location on the sun that it was passing in front of.

Yes, one the size of the asteroid in Armageddon is possible, but the issue is that it's not nearly as big as you seem to think. As portrayed in the movie it was very much smaller than Earth's Moon. A size too small for current technology to resolve obscuring KIC.

 

[BillJ]

Re: Has Kepler Discovered An Alien Megastructure?

I love when the "experts" come out to tell us what it all means.

 

[Dryson]

Re: Has Kepler Discovered An Alien Megastructure?

Group of Oblate Planets

A group of planets that have an oblate orbit around KIC with one being theorized to be large, one medium and one small.

If the three Oblates can have their orbit velocity around KIC determined based on when each Oblate crosses the sun compared to the other Oblate then their orbit around the sun can determine how far the Oblates are from KIC. The faster the orbits around KIC means that the Oblates are closer to KIC. Slower means they are farther away.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Re: Has Kepler Discovered An Alien Megastructure?

Definition of oblate:

1. Having the shape of a spheroid generated by rotating an ellipse about its shorter axis.
2. Having an equatorial diameter greater than the distance between poles; compressed along or flattened at the poles.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/oblate

I think you mean elliptical orbit and are possibly talking about orbital resonance. If you can explain the observations using a plausible scenario and can make predictions of future observations, all well and good. Otherwise, it's so much hot air...

 

[Dryson]

Re: Has Kepler Discovered An Alien Megastructure?

NPR Article http://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/20...ybe-it-s-time-to-stop-snickering-about-aliens
Could the star be lop sided as a result of a black hole pulling on the star?

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Re: Has Kepler Discovered An Alien Megastructure?

It 's relatively simple to detect the gravitational effects of other massive bodies in the system by measuring any Doppler shift variation. I imagine that will be one among several possibilities investigated. However, a black hole close enough to seriously tidally disturb the shape of a star would likely pull material off it and we would see X-ray emission from the accretion disk. That's another region of the EM spectrum to investigate.

 

[Dryson]

Re: Has Kepler Discovered An Alien Megastructure?

And yes an asteroid the size of the one seen in the movie Armageddon is possible and it would be able to be seen moving in an orbit across the sun as its dimensions would be more than enough to obscure the location on the sun that it was passing in front of.

Yes, one the size of the asteroid in Armageddon is possible, but the issue is that it's not nearly as big as you seem to think. As portrayed in the movie it was very much smaller than Earth's Moon. A size too small for current technology to resolve obscuring KIC.

But if it was followed in its orbit by other debris trailing it would it be able to cause a dimmer light pattern to appear?

 

[Dryson]

Re: Has Kepler Discovered An Alien Megastructure?

It 's relatively simple to detect the gravitational effects of other massive bodies in the system by measuring any Doppler shift variation. I imagine that will be one among several possibilities investigated. However, a black hole close enough to seriously tidally disturb the shape of a star would likely pull material off it and we would see X-ray emission from the accretion disk. That's another region of the EM spectrum to investigate.

The reason I ask about Kepler is because it discovered the following taking place elsewhere as well.
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=915854085129743&id=118399218208571
Could both occurances taking place be on the fring of the closest black hole to us that might be moving closer to the Earth?

 

[HIjol]

Re: Has Kepler Discovered An Alien Megastructure?

1. I am not finding anyone named "Snertle" in the Literature...is she or he an Astrophysicist, or what? (see post 26, point 1, above)

2. My Ears and Eyes are bleeding.

3. My eyeballs are accreting and oblating and obscuring my vision

4. One of these things is not like the other...one of these things just doesn't belong...

...if Number 1 is the thing that does not belong, well then, 2-4 must be true.

and if that is true, either 2 or 3 are not true
and if that is true, than the other of 2 or 3 is not true
and if that is true, than Number 4 must be false,
as there are more than one things that do not belong...

so that means...Null Space

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Re: Has Kepler Discovered An Alien Megastructure?

It 's relatively simple to detect the gravitational effects of other massive bodies in the system by measuring any Doppler shift variation. I imagine that will be one among several possibilities investigated. However, a black hole close enough to seriously tidally disturb the shape of a star would likely pull material off it and we would see X-ray emission from the accretion disk. That's another region of the EM spectrum to investigate.

The reason I ask about Kepler is because it discovered the following taking place elsewhere as well.
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=915854085129743&id=118399218208571
Could both occurrences taking place be on the fringe of the closest black hole to us that might be moving closer to the Earth?

"Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space." - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams

And, to answer your question -- if a black hole were affecting both WD 1145+017 and KIC 8462852, 570 ly and 1480 ly distant respectively, it would have been discovered already by its gravitational effects on the other stars in the vicinity.