The Alien Megastructure Around Mysterious 'Tabby's Star' Is Probably Just Dust, Analysis Shows (theguardian.com) 75
An analysis by more than 200 astronomers has been published that shows the mysterious dimming of star KIC 8462852 --
nicknamed Tabby's star -- is not being produced by an alien megastructure. "The evidence points most strongly to a giant cloud of dust occasionally obscuring the star," reports The Guardian. From the report: KIC 8462852 is approximately 1,500 light years away from the Earth and hit the headlines in October 2015 when data from Nasa's Kepler space telescope showed that it was dimming by unexplainably large amounts. The star's light dropped by 20% first and then 15% making it unique. Even a large planet passing in front of the star would have blocked only about 1% of the light. For an object to block 15-20%, it would have to be approaching half the diameter of the star itself. With this realization, a few astronomers began whispering that such a signal would be the kind expected from a gigantic extraterrestrial construction orbiting in front of the star -- and the idea of the alien megastructure was born.
In the case of Tabby's star, the new observations show that it dims more at blue wavelengths than red. Thus, its light is passing through a dust cloud, not being blocked by an alien megastructure in orbit around the star. The new analysis of KIC 8462852 showing these results is to be published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. It reinforces the conclusions reached by Huan Meng, University of Arizona, Tucson, and collaborators in October 2017. They monitored the star at multiple wavelengths using Nasa's Spitzer and Swift missions, and the Belgian AstroLAB IRIS observatory. These results were published in The Astrophysical Journal.
In the case of Tabby's star, the new observations show that it dims more at blue wavelengths than red. Thus, its light is passing through a dust cloud, not being blocked by an alien megastructure in orbit around the star. The new analysis of KIC 8462852 showing these results is to be published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. It reinforces the conclusions reached by Huan Meng, University of Arizona, Tucson, and collaborators in October 2017. They monitored the star at multiple wavelengths using Nasa's Spitzer and Swift missions, and the Belgian AstroLAB IRIS observatory. These results were published in The Astrophysical Journal.
Maybe... (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
We have enough firepower to do that to this planet all by ourselves.
I'm not sure that we do. Most of the calculations made in that direction relate to the destruction of humanity, or life; I don't think we have enough nukes to shatter the planet into dust. Whatever tech they were using, it was "something pretty damn devastating," as that guard robot in HHGG said.
Re:Maybe... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Maybe... (Score:5, Funny)
This is really interesting. Could someone in-the-know provide a rough calculation ... how many nukes do we need to blow up earth into tiny fragments? And how do they need to be positioned?
I'm asking for a friend.
that calculation is somewhere on the web (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
A million!? Wishful thinking. I bet you put like 50, tops, underground, inside fault lines and the planet cracks like an egg.
Re: (Score:1)
The blast needed to do that would need to overcome the Earth's binding energy, which is easy to find on the web: about 2x10^32 Joules. The same source says that's equal to around 12 days of the Sun's total energy output (of which Earth receives less than a billionth every day), so that gives you an idea of how difficult it really would be to explode a planet.
Re: (Score:3)
This is really interesting. Could someone in-the-know provide a rough calculation ... how many nukes do we need to blow up earth into tiny fragments? And how do they need to be positioned?
I'm asking for a friend.
Lucky you managed to cover yourself 100% legally with that last sentence.
Re: (Score:2)
Here is a list of a few ways to disperse the Earth
https://www.livescience.com/17... [livescience.com]
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not short, you inconsiderate clod!
Re: (Score:2)
This is really interesting. Could someone in-the-know provide a rough calculation ... how many nukes do we need to blow up earth into tiny fragments? And how do they need to be positioned?
I'm asking for a friend.
Would your friend happen to be a short, stocky, boastful guy with a few loose screws and a very bad haircut?
Don't talk about the Emperor like that or you will never get to be his Young Apprentice!
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Maybe... (Score:4, Interesting)
I had to find out what it means, because I didn't know the word:
A supercargo (from Spanish sobrecargo) is a person employed on board a vessel by the owner of cargo carried on the ship. The duties of a supercargo are defined by admiralty law and include managing the cargo owner's trade, selling the merchandise in ports to which the vessel is sailing, buying and receiving goods to be carried on the return voyage, and ending all or almost all life on the planet.
Re: (Score:2)
And it will leave the Earth intact as a round solid body, just jumbled a bit. Plenty good enough to wipe out humanity, but it wouldn't leave a dust cloud.
Re: (Score:1)
A planet's gravity will prevent it from blowing apart like, say, Krypton. Nuclear arms can only destroy the ecosphere. Even the very big planet that collided with Earth in the beginning wasn't enough to completely destroy the Earth. Some material was ejected then regrouped back to Earth or contributed to form the Moon.
Re: (Score:3)
We have enough firepower to do that to this planet all by ourselves.
Really, are you sure about that? If we detonated every nuke at the same time in the same place we'd probably all die but the planet itself would be pretty much fine.
Re:Maybe... (Score:5, Interesting)
Nope, not by many orders of magnitude. Estimates of current nuclear weapon stockpiles range from 1500 to 6600 megatons TNT equivalent. The Chicxulub impactor is estimated at 100000 megatons and all that did was drill a hole 180km across and 20km deep and possibly triggered vulcanism on the other side of the planet. It didn't shatter the planet.
The impactor in the event 3.26 billion years back was a rock between 37km and 58km and that didn't fracture the planet into pieces either.
If we put all the nukes in a hole 10km down and set them off at once, I doubt we'd even get surface displacement beyond seismic shaking for a couple of seconds.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Many orders of magnitude more.
Re: (Score:1)
People more educated than you said the same thing about Trump becoming president.
Re:Maybe... (Score:5, Insightful)
Or, the structure is designed to capture more energetic radiation at the expense of IR.
It's always amusing to read authoritative declarations from eminent scientists regarding how a Kardashev Type-II civilization might or might not take care of business.
Maybe not (Score:1)
We don't know that it's dust. We don't know that it's not an alien megastructure. All we know is that the absorption is not inconsistent with dust and that occam's razor suggests that the simplest explanation is generally the best. However, what we don't know about exosystems far exceeds what we do know. Which seems to mean that the simplest explanation (certainly the most prudent) is to say we don't yet know enough to make more than wild conjecture (and at this point even dust is wild conjecture).
Speculator Aliens!! (Score:1)
Those bastards found a cheaper way to mine bitcoins!!!
Non-explanation explanation... (Score:1)
where is this dust coming from? how does eating blue and shitting red prove that something is not a solar panel of some sort? who is stupid enough to believe that aliens would bother with a dyson sphere (impossible to stabilize, even if you have the unobtainium needed to build it), instead of a dyson swarm (cheap, cheerful, eminently scalable microsat swarm)?
Re: (Score:1)
The expectation with a solar panel would be that a portion of the collected energy is used to do work rather than juts frequency shifting it.
Presumably what they did here is check the amount of energy being emitted in IR and found that it accounted for the loss of energy in visible spectra. This indicates that none of the energy is being harnessed for work (or more likely there is a difference but its well below what would be expected with our solar panel tech and we're assuming no one who can build a mega
Re: (Score:2)
The cloud absorbs red, not pink. It's about as un-fabulous as it gets.
So what has changed? (Score:2)
Blue (Score:5, Funny)
Or maybe they really like the color blue? Perhaps we've found the home system of the Blue Man Group, where they have a blue house with a blue window. Blue is the color of all that they wear. Blue are the streets and all the trees are too. They have a girlfriend and she is so blue. Blue are the people there that walk around. Blue like their Corvette, it's in and outside. Blue are the words they say and what they think. Blue are the feelings that live inside them.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It's not the remains of a shattered Dyson Sphere, you idiot.
It's the remains of a shattered Xarklatagr-oneak* Sphere.
* Sorry, it doesn't translate very well into our alphabet.
Too bad (Score:2)
:(
Well I for one ... (Score:2)
Well I for one welcome our new alien dust cloud overlords!
Just as well (Score:2)
Occam's Butterknife (Score:2)
Sometimes, looking for the simplest answer forces you to make up some BS. Remember when UFOs were "swamp gas"?
So where does (Score:1)
Wrong (Score:3)
The alien megastructure is made of a nano-fabricated material that we would call "coloured glass" if we ever saw it.
That's why it dims more at blue wavelengths than red.
It's dust NOW... (Score:2)
All OUR structures were once dust, too, and will one day be dust again.
But most dust has never been part of a structure, and probably never will be.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Most dust is skin flakes and mite poop, and therefore has DEFINITELY been part of a structure at some point.
Interplanetary dust? Citation needed, I think.
Even if you're confining yourself to household dust (obviously not the topic of my comment), you're still way off base [npr.org]. For starters, two-thirds of it is typically stuff tracked in from outdoors.
But I suppose if you say that "supernova poop" "has been part of a structure at some point", then you're technically correct...
Re: (Score:2)
For starters, two-thirds of it is typically stuff tracked in from outdoors.
I live in Canada. Like all civilized cultures, we take our shoes off indoors.
Re: (Score:2)
Pretty sure you'd need to take them off outdoors to avoid getting the outdoor stuff into the house...
Disastertron Multi-Tool! HA HA (Score:2)
This more closely fits the profile of an alien megastructure engineered to resemble dust.
Only aliens with incredibly biggest technology manage to build megastructure.
Other aliens may even attain such skill as to to cloak one convincingly as dust.
What are the chances that two such civilizations would be in same place same time?
Why bother to make it resemble dust if those such as we saw megastructure first?
If we see through ruse so easily they cannot be smart enough to fool dumb people.
It's like the fox in th