That would be a fun crack-y alternate history story. Tibet will conquer all!Originally Posted by Extravoice
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That would be a fun crack-y alternate history story. Tibet will conquer all!
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I'm not sure since we aren't doing anything so detectable. They can't have picked up our radio waves yet, and if they were looking at us with telescopes then they'd be looking at us circa 500 AD. But they might have known earth has a viable biosphere?Yes, I realize those points. Just speculating that "if" they were already that very far advanced 1500 years ago that their version of a "Kepler" 100.0 would surely be capable of detecting our planet, it's location within a perfect goldie locks zone, it's atmospheric make-up, the liquid oceans, land masses, and perhaps even the Great Wall of China?The Earthlight reaching that system now is from the 5th century.
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Yes super telescopes of the future might have that sort of magnification. In that case they would be watching our dark ages, and probably think..."oh dear". Also IF its an alien civ it's much older than ours and we sort of have a head start in seeing their advanced civ before they see us reach the space age. So while they are thinking we are still primitive, we know they are very advanced. It's sort of ironic.
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Nooo, your just too nice Miss Kai. China would conquer Tibet. Then China would rule all.
Time wasted having fun is not time wasted - Lennon
(John, not the other one.)
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I apologize, the "movie" plays more completely in my head than I've been relating by typing.
The more complete picture of what I'm trying to tell you is this could be the initial debris field from a *really* recent planetary merger. (Relative to light travel time.) Both mantles of both planets are still a mass of rock and silica gravity bound around the cores. How would this NOT produce an imitation comet effect of a massive scale?
It's like everybody assumes all stellar phenomena happened at least 500,000 years ago.
I refuse to even consider ET. And I'm a hard-core fantasist. You all should feel silly, 'cause I feel silly for you.
Time wasted having fun is not time wasted - Lennon
(John, not the other one.)
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+1.
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Well, it's a possibility nevertheless :P
As has been stated earlier in the thread, an orbiting megastructure would give readings not unlike what is described in this report. That said, I'm certainly not jumping the gun.
Of all the sciences cultivated by mankind, Astronomy is acknowledged to be, and undoubtedly is, the most sublime, the most interesting, and the most useful. For, by knowledge derived from this science, not only the bulk of the Earth is discovered, but our very faculties are enlarged with the grandeur of the ideas it conveys, our minds exalted above their low contracted prejudices. - James Ferguson
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Well on the natural side of things, usually we don't bat an eye at binary stars, could binary/trinary planets orbiting a star be a possiblity, as opposed to our more differentially sized planet-moon arrangements?
On the less natural side of things, wouldn't reflectors in eccentric orbits create a Shkadov thruster? Is there any direction relative to its area in space that an intelligent civilization might want to go in to avoid approaching another star or to bring them closer to something useful? Does it seem to be heading that way?
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Even if they could see it now.
Mostly HarmlessI'd like a Dyson Sphere, but I have to admit, if someone said "it IS a Dyson's Sphere", my eyes would pop out of my head like Roger Rabbit and they would not go back in their sockets, short of surgery.
Solfe
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The speed of light is the universe's way of putting all the pretty, fragile stuff on a high shelf so we kids can't break it.Even if they could see it now.
I may have many faults, but being wrong ain't one of them. - Jimmy Hoffa
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Crack-y, not realistic. http://fanlore.org/wiki/Crack#Crackfic
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This was one of my first thoughts, but it doesn't make much sense. Remember, Kepler is orbiting around the Sun at 30km/s in a circle - not moving in a straight line. As such, it's impossible for some cluster of objects to be tracing a path that repeatedly blocks this star over the course of years unless those objects are near the Star.
Another thought I had was something in a solar orbit close to Kepler, but that doesn't make sense either. Does it make sense for the relative speed to be so small that the star is dimmed over the course of days? No. Does it make sense for a cluster of small objects near Kepler to have an orbital period that exactly matches Keplers?
No matter how I looked at it, anything closer to Earth would have some sort of yearly cyclic pattern (the orbital period of Kepler). The data doesn't have anything like that, so it's ruled out.
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This would also produce a huge ring of dust, if the debris field is big enough to cause a 22% dip. The IR spectrum data contradicts this theory.
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If you listen carefully, you can hear many PhD theses being born.
I may have many faults, but being wrong ain't one of them. - Jimmy Hoffa
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It could be a brown dwarf with lots of planet's or moons orbiting it, but also passing between us and the parent star. Of course
if the brown dwarf moves on in its orbit the "anomaly" should stop.
Last edited by Paul Wally; 2015-Oct-16 at 11:34 PM.
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Some really intriguing light curves here. Read the article for some explanation.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astr...._baffling.html
Look at the smooth curve lower left. That has got to be a single body transit. Multiple bodies couldn't make such a smooth curve. Yet that body results in a 15% drop in the light curve!
And it's cold, so not a companion star.
I don't see how exo-comet fragments can explain this.
Black dwarf? :smile:
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That curve has to be multiple bodies. A single body large enough to occlude that much of the star would be spherical, and a sphere would produce a completely different curve:Some really intriguing light curves here. Read the article for some explanation.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astr...._baffling.html
Look at the smooth curve lower left. That has got to be a single body transit. Multiple bodies couldn't make such a smooth curve. Yet that body results in a 15% drop in the light curve!
And it's cold, so not a companion star.
I don't see how exo-comet fragments can explain this.
Black dwarf? :smile:
http://kepler.nasa.gov/images/mws/lightcurve5b.gif
The apparent smoothness merely means there were enough bodies for the individual transitions to not be visible.
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Could KIC have picked up some cold nebular debris? Is there any dust or gas cloud in that region that might contribute to this system?
"I'm planning to live forever. So far, that's working perfectly." Steven Wright
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Yes except we havecome a long way technologically, though emotionally and intellectually we still suffer our flaws. As do they IF they exist.Even if they could see it now.
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Are there normal planets in that star system? If there are and we can detect those and their composition/atmosphere it might offer some more clues as to what causes the anomalous occlusion. Obviously if there is a rocky planet in the goldilocks zone then it adds to the ET possibility.
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Not currently known. Finding planets around F2 type stars is extremely difficult, (or practically impossible), right now.
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More data needed. The cometary breakup hypothesis is testable by looking specifically for gas and dust emissions, (via more detailed spectrographic measurements).
Correlation of the light curve with the motion of the nearby M-Dwarf (~1000AU) would be of interest to all intervening gas/dust hypotheses.
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darn :-)
Mostly HarmlessAre they accreting? Will they have jets?If you listen carefully, you can hear many PhD theses being born.
Solfe
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"Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth." -- A. Conan Doyle.
They don't seem to have finished with eliminating natural phenomena, and there may still be a chance of instrumentation errors. For the next few years, my vote is likely to remain "previously unknown natural phenomena," with ET remaining in the realm of fantasy.
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Just because humans suffer quite a bit from neurosis, doesn't mean that all intelligent species would.
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Maybe not neurosis, but they would presumably have some flaws. I canīt see them being perfect if DNA or similar systemic mutations have been a contributing factor to their evolution.
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One thing I wondered is if it could be a deliberate attempt to draw attention to the star. So maybe there could be an accompanying radio signal.
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An object obscuring 15 % of the light from this star and producing a neat light curve is apparently either a surprisingly dense, remarkably large cluster of objects, or a single large object. If it is the latter, it need only be round if it is a natural body. A large artificial structure of relatively low mass would not be subject to the hydrostatic forces affecting a natural object of the same apparent size.
Last edited by Ross 54; 2015-Oct-17 at 04:00 PM.
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