http://www.space.com/30855-alien-life-search-kepler-megastructure.html
QuoteThe search for signs of life in a mysterious star system hypothesized to potentially harbor an "alien megastructure" is now underway.
Astronomers have begun using the Allen Telescope Array (ATA), a system of radio dishes about 300 miles (483 kilometers) northeast of San Francisco, to hunt for signals coming from the vicinity of KIC 8462852, a star that lies 1,500 light-years from Earth.
NASA's Kepler space telescope found that KIC 8462852 dimmed oddly and dramatically several times over the past few years. The dimming events were far too substantial to be caused by a planet crossing the star's face, researchers say, and other possible explanations, such as an enormous dust cloud, don't add up, either.
Where’s the Flux? (https://sites.psu.edu/astrowright/2015/10/15/kic-8462852wheres-the-flux/KIC8462852:)
Only 1,500 lightyears away? That seems very close. If there are aliens that close, then our galaxy must be really teeming with alien civilizations! I'll be interested to see what, if any, natural explanation they come up with for this one. I like the attitude that compels them to use the E.T. idea as the very last resort, as it would be silly to do otherwise, IMO.
Read that a couple of days ago, but the jury is definitely still out. It would be cool, however.
It's interesting to think that perhaps it's the result of some kind of unimaginably destructive battle, like a Death Star equivalent mowing down planetary bodies.
Perhaps a catastrophic mining accident.
Or perhaps the assembly of something like a Dyson's Sphere (A hypothetical megastructure that completely encompasses a star and most or all of its power output)
(http://i.imgur.com/X9kSS9G.jpg)
But I get the feeling this is a perhaps a rare, but natural phenomenon.
I hope it is not the Covenant.
Quote from: pr126 on October 21, 2015, 01:25:18 AM
I hope it is not the Covenant.
It's worse.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyenRCJ_4Ww
We look into the sky and see something we can't explain it's aliens, we see something on Earth we can't explain it's God.
Assuming that an advanced culture is capable of building megastructures sufficient to block out the sun, it is a fair assumption they know about us, if we know about them. Either we don't rate much in their list of priorities or else they looked us over, said "meh" and went home. More likely there is another reason than aliens.
Quote from: Unbeliever on October 20, 2015, 05:45:51 PM
http://www.space.com/30855-alien-life-search-kepler-megastructure.html
Where’s the Flux? (https://sites.psu.edu/astrowright/2015/10/15/kic-8462852wheres-the-flux/KIC8462852:)
Only 1,500 lightyears away? That seems very close. If there are aliens that close, then our galaxy must be really teeming with alien civilizations! I'll be interested to see what, if any, natural explanation they come up with for this one. I like the attitude that compels them to use the E.T. idea as the very last resort, as it would be silly to do otherwise, IMO.
If 1500 light years is the average distance between intelligent species, that would imply around 200,000 intelligent species, using Carl Sagan's numbers (if I recall them right -- a million intelligent life forms in this galaxy would be on average about 300 light years apart from each other, I think he had in
Broca's Brain). And I appreciated Dr. Shostak's comments in the article about not reading too much into it.
I wouldn't expect to necessarily 'hear' anything from there anyway. They can't know we're here, although if they're sufficiently advanced to have been able to resolve Earth independently of the Sun and perform spectrographic analysis, they would at best only know that something's going on here worth checking out: the presence of so much O
2 in the atmosphere. Even if they were sufficiently advanced 3000+ years ago to send a probe, the most recent news they have about us is that we didn't have a technological civilization in 500CE.
But it's worth looking at with any equipment that seems a good idea. One can't predict where the explanatory observation will come from, and it's as likely to turn up when looking for something else entirely.
Maybe a rogue planet smashed into one of the star's planets, creating debris? There are plenty of explanations that don't invoke aliens.
I wonder how a confirmation of the existence of tech-life at this (or any other) star system would affect life here on Earth? Sci-fi writers would have a field day, as would perhaps philosophers. How many religions might be conceived on such a basis is anyone's guess.
Certainly we will not be able to communicate with them, or vice versa, since any message/reply would be 3000 years in the completion. And travel, at least by us, is completely out of the question for a very long time.
So all we would have is the answer to the age-old question: are we alone? A negative answer to this question may change us in ways impossible to predict, for better or worse.
Quote from: trdsf on October 21, 2015, 02:03:24 PM
If 1500 light years is the average distance between intelligent species, that would imply around 200,000 intelligent species, using Carl Sagan's numbers (if I recall them right -- a million intelligent life forms in this galaxy would be on average about 300 light years apart from each other, I think he had in Broca's Brain). And I appreciated Dr. Shostak's comments in the article about not reading too much into it.
I wouldn't expect to necessarily 'hear' anything from there anyway. They can't know we're here, although if they're sufficiently advanced to have been able to resolve Earth independently of the Sun and perform spectrographic analysis, they would at best only know that something's going on here worth checking out: the presence of so much O2 in the atmosphere. Even if they were sufficiently advanced 3000+ years ago to send a probe, the most recent news they have about us is that we didn't have a technological civilization in 500CE.
But it's worth looking at with any equipment that seems a good idea. One can't predict where the explanatory observation will come from, and it's as likely to turn up when looking for something else entirely.
My point would be if we have the capability of finding them- assuming we do- then if they are capable of building such megastructures, they certainly have the capability of finding us. But 1,500 light years is a long way. Even if they sent robot craft it would take millennia to get here; and it is quite possible, given the technology, that they have identified other inhabited planets. But until/unless the speed of light is somehow overcome and something like a warp engine developed, doubtful any species or culture has the desire to bridge that distance just to contact another life form.
The other thing is that there is no known effort made to contact us, at least that we are aware of, so like I said previously, they might have scoped us out by whatever means they possess and decided we aren't worth their time. Even if they are more advanced technologically, the light barrier would still make getting messages out an impossible time. If they messaged us some way 500 years ago, it would still take 1,000 years to get here, and we might be extinct by then.
It's those Christians who have been raptured, dumb atheists...
Quote from: Atheon on October 21, 2015, 02:07:03 PM
Maybe a rogue planet smashed into one of the star's planets, creating debris? There are plenty of explanations that don't invoke aliens.
I want to believe. *cue X-Files music*
Secretly a Warsie.
Quote from: stromboli on October 21, 2015, 07:12:34 PM
My point would be if we have the capability of finding them- assuming we do- then if they are capable of building such megastructures, they certainly have the capability of finding us. But 1,500 light years is a long way. Even if they sent robot craft it would take millennia to get here; and it is quite possible, given the technology, that they have identified other inhabited planets. But until/unless the speed of light is somehow overcome and something like a warp engine developed, doubtful any species or culture has the desire to bridge that distance just to contact another life form.
The other thing is that there is no known effort made to contact us, at least that we are aware of, so like I said previously, they might have scoped us out by whatever means they possess and decided we aren't worth their time. Even if they are more advanced technologically, the light barrier would still make getting messages out an impossible time. If they messaged us some way 500 years ago, it would still take 1,000 years to get here, and we might be extinct by then.
It also seems to me that they should know that they're making themselves visible to far-off observers, yet they don't seem to be worried about becoming vulnerable to other tech-life. This could be because they know just how hard it is to get through the void.
I've been considering, for some time, a possible megastructure that we might be able to build before too long. We might build (at the same place where
SOHO (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_and_Heliospheric_Observatory#Orbit) is at) a large panel that could simultaneously collect energy from the sun while blocking sunlight from the Earth, alleviating the global climet danger. I don't know how big it would have to be to block a few percent of the sun's light, but it would probably be considered a megastructure. It wouldn't even be observable by aliens, since it would always be between the Earth and the Sun. So we wouldn't have to worry about creating a threat even if aliens could get here.
(http://soho.nascom.nasa.gov/about/images/halo_orbit.gif)
(http://api.ning.com/files/PRo2xdRJ1wPoqSIK3Wf9aceQY7H1T1kNouSASL4bbliqlf2DW775SAcL*hbuGg0o7KPmEu5g1tCBEBhbUt3t07JGeoeXYZud/Fig14ref2.jpg)
Quote from: Unbeliever on October 20, 2015, 05:45:51 PM
http://www.space.com/30855-alien-life-search-kepler-megastructure.html
Where’s the Flux? (https://sites.psu.edu/astrowright/2015/10/15/kic-8462852wheres-the-flux/KIC8462852:)
Only 1,500 lightyears away? That seems very close. If there are aliens that close, then our galaxy must be really teeming with alien civilizations! I'll be interested to see what, if any, natural explanation they come up with for this one. I like the attitude that compels them to use the E.T. idea as the very last resort, as it would be silly to do otherwise, IMO.
If there are a lot of civilizations out there we'd have to ask why they would bother with us.
Quote from: Gawdzilla Sama on October 23, 2015, 07:47:52 AM
If there are a lot of civilizations out there we'd have to ask why they would bother with us.
Interstellar travelling might prove to be impossible.
Errr...highly unlikely.
However, even it turned out to be something real; proved, I pretty much doubt they would ever make an open declaration of the sort.
Can you imagine the consequences? The impact of that sort of information, -esp. officially confirmed- on various human cultures and societies in the world would be a disaster. I mean we are talking about a culture with the general tendency of making fatal bullshit out of its ass with so little to go, fantasising its own doom pretty much it learned to scrible down, with something this... OWWW. Can't watch.
Start from mass suicides, 'Jesus landed there', 'his summer house is there', 'we told you he was coming', 'it's the fucking apocalypse number 157678o798, 'those were the lands of the gods who created us!', 'no, that's where angels live', 'see, we were created by aliens!', 'it's an illuminati headquarters!', new crazy cults that would make Scientology look like a fun club, people starting to form communes...etc. *Cries.
The whole thing makes me want to watch the 94 Stargate with a bowl of popcorn.
Quote from: stromboli on October 21, 2015, 07:12:34 PM
My point would be if we have the capability of finding them- assuming we do- then if they are capable of building such megastructures, they certainly have the capability of finding us. But 1,500 light years is a long way. Even if they sent robot craft it would take millennia to get here; and it is quite possible, given the technology, that they have identified other inhabited planets. But until/unless the speed of light is somehow overcome and something like a warp engine developed, doubtful any species or culture has the desire to bridge that distance just to contact another life form.
The other thing is that there is no known effort made to contact us, at least that we are aware of, so like I said previously, they might have scoped us out by whatever means they possess and decided we aren't worth their time. Even if they are more advanced technologically, the light barrier would still make getting messages out an impossible time. If they messaged us some way 500 years ago, it would still take 1,000 years to get here, and we might be extinct by then.
The most they could tell by direct observation is that we have an unstable atmosphere; the amount of O
2 in our atmosphere is a strong indicator of life, although not of intelligent life. Some sort of ongoing process would need to produce free oxygen; it's highly reactive and cheerily hooks up with almost anything it encounters: hydrogen (water), carbon (carbon dioxide), silicon (sand and rocks), iron (rust), etc. So while it's not demonstrative of life, it's highly suggestive of it. I think the estimate is that if all photosynthetic production of oxygen shut down today, in a couple hundred years there would be no free oxygen in the atmosphere.
However, even if they spotted that thousands, even tens of thousands of years ago and immediately dispatched a probe to check things out, the most they can possibly know is that the dominant intelligent species is a) not highly technological and b) in decline -- I'm of course assuming there's no end run around Einstein, and I'm also assuming orbital probes capable of decimeter resolution. That's not a big ask; so far as we know, Einstein is solid, and the most detailed Google Maps are already in the 5-6 decimeter range; DigitalGlobe operates at 3 decimeter, so we'll probably have decimeter resolution ourselves in the next five to ten years.
Without landing anything, and without resolution better than that, they can't learn our languages. Generally speaking, we don't write with meter-scale lettering, even on monuments -- and 1500 years ago, that was meant to be read from the ground, not from the air. The most advanced buildings they would see are the Great Wall(s) of China and the Pyramids, and the only building even close to that scale that went up in the 6th Century CW was the Hagia Sophia -- that era is the most recent they could see, still assuming Einstein hasn't a loophole.
It would be an act of supreme optimism to look at this world 1500 years ago and decide to send a radio message anyway. Had they been watching for some time, they might have sent a message at the peak of Egyptian, or Greek, or early Chinese, or Roman civilizations, thinking that by the time it reached here, we should have at least an early technological society. By the time 500CE rolled around, it would have been perfectly reasonable for them to turn the signal off on the grounds that we were a civilization in terminal decline.
right, all the above. To me the big picture is simply it wouldn't make sense to make the effort to do anything exploratory, because there is nothing to be gained by it. Any resource available on earth is far more available and abundant everywhere else, and we simply aren't worth the effort as a culture. To an advanced culture we are probably no more than a warren of rats, if even that.
It would take a culture so far advanced technologically that getting here would be no more difficult than for me to drive to California to see Yosemite. And at that stage, they could and would have learned anything they wanted far in advance of that ability, so it simply isn't a likelihood, period.
Once they got the upload of Entertainment Tonight and got a head full of Snooki, the Kardashians, Miley Cyrus and an assortment of all our higher educated stars they pretty much drew a big, NO GO X on our planet.
Quote from: aitm on October 23, 2015, 02:46:34 PM
Once they got the upload of Entertainment Tonight and got a head full of Snooki, the Kardashians, Miley Cyrus and an assortment of all our higher educated stars they pretty much drew a big, NO GO X on our planet.
If we could only get an alien abduction of the Kardashians, that alone would raise the average IQ level a few points.
Actually, it wouldn't. The average IQ is defined to be 100. Even if everyone under that IQ were to go away, the average would still be 100.
Sorry to nitpick!
:d030:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6XdvlQ8glk