Astronomers Release Enormous Database of Variable-Luminosity Celestial Objects

wisebabo writes "According to a Caltech news release, 'Astronomers from the California Institute of Technology and the University of Arizona have released the largest data set ever collected that documents the brightening and dimming of stars and other celestial objects—two hundred million in total. The night sky is filled with objects like asteroids that dash across the sky and others—like exploding stars and variable stars-that flash, dim, and brighten. ... Using the Catalina Real-Time Transient Survey, a project led by Caltech, the astronomers systematically scanned the heavens for these dynamic objects, producing an unprecedented data set that will allow scientists worldwide to pursue new research.' So, anybody going to write a program looking for artificial sequences? (primes, Fibonacci, integers.) Wouldn't a good way to attract interstellar attention 'cheaply' would be to put up some (very) big solar sails in orbit around a star to modulate (and maybe collect!) its output? With 'micro-transits' being a preferred way to find exoplanets, somebody looking could stumble across this."

aliens

[Janek Kozicki]

"...With 'micro-transits' being a preferred way to find exoplanets, somebody looking could stumble across this..."

sorry, but we want to hide from aliens as long as we don't have technology strong enough to win an eventual war with them. Evolution as a universal rule prefers stronger species. Of course we want to discover them first, that's why we are looking. But they are hiding, just like we should. Also you can go and read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiasco_(novel) [wikipedia.org]

Re:aliens

[Samantha Wright]

Carl Sagan agreed with this; in Cosmos he pointed out that interstellar wars would be rare because the technology differences would generally amount to a matter of no contest. How do we know when we have technology strong enough, though, without a point of reference?

Data Needs Access API

[blueZhift]

As near as I can tell, there's no way to access the data programmatically. So there's no way to apply any data mining techniques to the publicly available data set. Hopefully this will change going forward as groups of scientists higher on the food chain request access to do more comprehensive studies.

Back at ya

[Caerdwyn]

So, if transits are a viable way of detecting habitable planets at very long distances... do we have a list of stars that we would be transit-visible to? (say, within an degree of the ecliptic) A good survey would be to examine those stars which might well be examining us back.