CampinWithaMissingPerson 2,025 Posted October 15, 2015 They say we actually need to consider the possibility of aliens. It’s not every day that we have permission to throw "Aliens?" out there in relation to a confounding astronomical discovery - in fact, I don’t think we ever have. But the discovery of a strange pattern of light surrounding a distant star called KIC 8462852 has seen even the most sensible astronomers throw their arms up with a, "Sure, why not?" arguing that the possibility of advanced alien technology can’t reasonably be ignored. "Aliens should always be the very last hypothesis you consider, but this looked like something you would expect an alien civilisation to build," Jason Wright, an astronomer from Penn State University in the US, told The Atlantic. First up, though, a little about the star in question: KIC 8462852. Located about 1,500 light-years away between the Cygnus and Lyre constellations of our Milky Way galaxy, KIC 8462852 is brighter, hotter, and more massive than the Sun. It was first discovered by NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope in 2009, and scientists have been tracking the light it emits ever since, along with the light of another 150,000 or so newly discovered stars. They do this because it’s the best way to locate distant planets - slight, periodic dips in a star's brightness signal the fact that it might have one or more large objects orbiting it in a regular fashion. These brightness dips are usually very slight, with the stars dimming by less than 1 percent every few days, weeks, or months, depending on the size of the planet’s orbit, says astronomer Phil Plait at Slate. What makes KIC 8462852 such a strange star to study is that not only are there way more dips of brightness than expected, these dips are highly irregular. There’s no periodic orbiting going on here, just a bunch of strange, light-blocking shapes with no discernible pattern to them. And these dimming effects are significant. Scientists are reporting that at one point, the amount of starlight dropped by 15 percent, and then at another, 22 percent. And this tells us a whole lot, says Plait: "Straight away, we know we’re not dealing with a planet here. Even a Jupiter-sized planet only blocks roughly 1 percent of this kind of star’s light, and that’s about as big as a planet gets. It can’t be due to a star, either; we’d see it if it were. And the lack of a regular, repeating signal belies both of these as well. Whatever is blocking the star is big, though, up to half the width of the star itself!" The most obvious explanation for hundreds of irregular dimming events is that KIC 8462852 has a mass of space junk - all kinds of rocks and dust of varying shapes and sizes - circling it in tight formation, says Ross Andersen at The Atlantic. The only problem is that this only occurs when a star is young, and the evidence points to KIC 8462852 being mature. "If it were young, it would be surrounded by dust that would give off extra infrared light," says Andersen. "There doesn’t seem to be an excess of infrared light around this star." "We’d never seen anything like this star," one of the researchers, Tabetha Boyajian from Yale University in the US, told him. "It was really weird." So what’s going on here? There are a number of reasonable possibilities to consider, and yep, aliens is actually one of them. First off, the scientists have already ruled out the possibility that the information they’re working with is faulty. "We thought it might be bad data or movement on the spacecraft, but everything checked out," says Boyajian. The best explanation we have is that at one point, another star passed into KIC 8462852’s system and the disturbance of gravity caused a huge mess of comets to be pulled in towards it before being expelled again. And there just so happens to be another star close enough to KIC 8462852 to make this a possibility. "But that would be an extraordinary coincidence, if that happened so recently, only a few millennia before humans developed the tech to loft a telescope into space. That’s a narrow band of time, cosmically speaking," says Andersen. And then there’s the question of the 22 percent dimming. Could a mass of comets really block that much light? When astronomer Jason Wright from Penn State got a look at the data, he said we need to consider that perhaps we’ve caught an advanced alien civilisation in the process of building something massive near KIC 8462852. Plait points to the so-called Dyson Sphere from several science fiction stories: a gigantic sphere made of solar panels that completely encircles a star. And he’s not opposed to the idea: "I actually kinda like it. I’m not saying it’s right, mind you, just that it’s interesting. Wright isn’t some wild-eyed crackpot; he’s a professional astronomer with a solid background. As he told me when I talked to him over the phone, there’s 'a need to hypothesise, but we should also approach it skeptically' (paraphrasing a tweet by another astronomer, David Grinspoon), with which I wholeheartedly agree." What does that mean? It means we're allowed to get a little bit excited! Not because aliens are a likely possibility, but because we're in the middle of an awesome mystery the likes of which we haven't seen before in the history of space exploration. Word is that SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute scientists are considering devoting their time to it, and hopefully more research teams will get involved too. We seriously cannot wait to see what they come up with. source: http://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-can-t-explain-the-bizarre-mass-of-objects-orbiting-a-distant-star :ooo: :ooo: 5 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Vin+ 3,121 Posted October 15, 2015 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Nho44lGVV8 7 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
SteVo+ 3,702 Posted October 15, 2015 Holy shit. This could turn out to be nothing, but this is just evidence that we are going to see some incredible things over the course of our lifetime. Can't wait for the James Webb telescope to start up. Gonna be able to see to the edge of the universe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Webb_Space_Telescope Fucking cool. 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
BradyFan81 404 Posted October 16, 2015 (edited) I do not want alien contact. Fuck that. What good could possibly come from that? They're not gonna share their technology with us, they'll wipe us out and colonize our planet. There's probably wars being fought right now between aliens we don't even know about. Edited October 16, 2015 by BradyFan81 2 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
seanbrock 1,684 Posted October 16, 2015 I see where you're coming from. We could also be exposed to disease that would wipe us out even if they do come in peace. It's crazy to think how advanced they would be if they're even still around themselves. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
CampinWithaMissingPerson 2,025 Posted October 16, 2015 (edited) I do not want alien contact. Fuck that. What good could possibly come from that? They're not gonna share their technology with us, they'll wipe us out and colonize our planet. There's probably wars being fought right now between aliens we don't even know about. If they're already building structures the size of our star or even bigger? Yeah, we'd be fucked. But I mean, by now they've had to of seen us too if they're there given they can build some shit like that right? EDIT: Or maybe not because we're too stupid to extend upon our own planet in terms of building shit (that we know of atleast ) so there's nothing for them to pick up from long distance in terms of our star's light changing like theirs is for us to spot them. Edited October 16, 2015 by CampinWithCripplingFailure 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
RazorStar 4,025 Posted October 16, 2015 If they're already building structures the size of our star or even bigger? Yeah, we'd be fucked. But I mean, by now they've had to of seen us too if they're there given they can build some shit like that right? EDIT: Or maybe not because we're too stupid to extend upon our own planet in terms of building shit (that we know of atleast ) so there's nothing for them to pick up from long distance in terms of our star's light changing like theirs is for us to spot them. Remember they're 1500 light years away, so unless they can see at faster than the speed of light, right now they'd be seeing right around the time of the middle ages. 3 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
BradyFan81 404 Posted October 16, 2015 Remember they're 1500 light years away, so unless they can see at faster than the speed of light, right now they'd be seeing right around the time of the middle ages. what. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Socal 524 Posted October 16, 2015 I see where you're coming from. We could also be exposed to disease that would wipe us out even if they do come in peace. It's crazy to think how advanced they would be if they're even still around themselves. Come on, Sean. We all know you'd be the first one to catch an ASTD (Alien Sexually Transmitted Disease). "Yo girl, haven't seen you in light years, you got real fine" 4 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
RazorStar 4,025 Posted October 16, 2015 Light years is actually a measure of distance of... ok I'm laughing and i can't stop. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
OSUViking 505 Posted October 16, 2015 I do not want alien contact. Fuck that. What good could possibly come from that? They're not gonna share their technology with us, they'll wipe us out and colonize our planet. There's probably wars being fought right now between aliens we don't even know about. This. We're not even civil enough to not fight among our own race. What do you think aliens with superior technology would be doing? Literally when I read this article, I was imagining the Covenant fighting the Flood or like Star Wars actually happening or something. It'd be fucking terrifying if all the sudden we just detected a massive armada of space ships heading for us. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
OSUViking 505 Posted October 16, 2015 Remember they're 1500 light years away, so unless they can see at faster than the speed of light, right now they'd be seeing right around the time of the middle ages. Plus, it'd take them thousands of years to get year assuming they can even move over 15% the speed of light, which IIRC isn't something we're even close to? I'd imagine it would take these ships thousands if not hundreds of thousands of years to realistically traverse the distance. Plus, like what Razor said, us seeing that blip of the star's brightness happened thousands of years ago. It's entirely possible that even if there is a civilization out there, it's completely gone at this point. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Vin+ 3,121 Posted October 16, 2015 I'm not worried about aliens. I've seen Independence Day and the War of the Worlds remake. Humanity always wins. 3 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Favre4Ever+ 4,476 Posted October 16, 2015 (edited) If aliens come to Earth, I'm calling Gandalf. They will never pass through our atmosphere. I imagine it would go something like this: Edited October 16, 2015 by Favre4Ever Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Thanatos 2,847 Posted October 16, 2015 Some guy has already come up with comics about it, lol: http://dord.horse/ 2 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Zack_of_Steel+ 3,014 Posted October 16, 2015 Plus, it'd take them thousands of years to get year assuming they can even move over 15% the speed of light, which IIRC isn't something we're even close to? I'd imagine it would take these ships thousands if not hundreds of thousands of years to realistically traverse the distance. Plus, like what Razor said, us seeing that blip of the star's brightness happened thousands of years ago. It's entirely possible that even if there is a civilization out there, it's completely gone at this point. Worm holes. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
OSUViking 505 Posted October 17, 2015 Worm holes. As much as I wish those were a thing (and I tend to think they are), the likelihood that they find a wormhole large enough to travel something this big through + stable enough to travel through for more than seconds at a time is unlikely. I've read a bunch of stuff on wormholes, and the biggest problem is simply making and sustaining them. Unless they have some type of matter (it's hypothesized that lots of negative matter could do), I don't think they'd be arriving any time soon. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
blotsfan 2,112 Posted October 17, 2015 Yeah, well can scientists explain why tides go in and out? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
theMileHighGuy 656 Posted October 17, 2015 If I can believe in aliens, I have no problem believing they can see whatever they want, or travel faster than the speeds we can comprehend. 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
OSUViking 505 Posted October 18, 2015 If I can believe in aliens, I have no problem believing they can see whatever they want, or travel faster than the speeds we can comprehend. They could be at a stage where they can travel close to the speed of light. I can't comprehend how, but physics has proved itself wrong before. I don't think you can see anything faster than light permits. It moves at a constant velocity in a vacuum, so it still takes those particles 1,500 years from our frame of reference for that light to travel. Could take longer or shorter based on their own position and trajectory. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
seanbrock 1,684 Posted October 18, 2015 As much as I wish those were a thing (and I tend to think they are), the likelihood that they find a wormhole large enough to travel something this big through + stable enough to travel through for more than seconds at a time is unlikely. I've read a bunch of stuff on wormholes, and the biggest problem is simply making and sustaining them. Unless they have some type of matter (it's hypothesized that lots of negative matter could do), I don't think they'd be arriving any time soon. Just looking at Moore's Law and how fast technology has progressed in the last 100 years I have no fucking clue what could be 25,50, 100 years from now. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
CampinWithaMissingPerson 2,025 Posted October 23, 2015 If at the core of everything (quantum level) things are literately just "magic" then who knows man Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
