SETI: On the Verge of a Breakthrough?

I am shocked no one has posted this story yet... the short of it is that Kepler detected quite a bit of matter circling the star designated KIC 8462852 that cannot be easily explained by any known celestial mechanism. Something that appears to be reducing the amount of light reaching the earth by (if I am reading the paper correctly) 80% and has a duration of 5 to 80 days.



Paper Located Here
Summary Story from the Atlantic

Jason Wright, an astronomer from Penn State University, will be publishing a paper shortly exploring alternative interpretations of the light dips. To quote the Atlantic article:

Wright and his co-authors say the unusual star’s light pattern is consistent with a “swarm of megastructures,” perhaps stellar-light collectors, technology designed to catch energy from the star.

I follow these sort of topics , papers, etc pretty closely-- so I am caught a little off guard that this has been discussed in SETI circles for a few months now. Didn't see this posted anywhere on ATS-- which as I previously said, I find shocking---

It's going to take me a little time for me to get my head around this. In the mean time, have at it folks......

a reply to: slip2break

Black holes will eat light. I am not aware of anything else that could...but that doesn't mean there isn;t something else there. Nice find. s&f

And yet, the explanation has to be rare or coincidental. After all, this light pattern doesn’t show up anywhere else, across 150,000 stars. We know that something strange is going on out there.

Really, really interesting. Thank you for this OP, I now have something new to obsess about until they release more info.

Assuming all goes well, the first observation would take place in January, with the follow-up coming next fall. If things go really well, the follow-up could happen sooner. “If we saw something exciting, we could ask the director for special allotted time on the VLA,” Wright told me. “And in that case, we’d be asking to go on right away.”

Have to wait until January for anything further, other then speculation based on what they currently have observed.

Great find! Just read the article and it is fascinating!

As well as kinda freaky.

a reply to: reldra

True... but I think that might have been dismissed because the black hole would need to be between Kepler and KIC 8462852 at very irregular periods... which would only make it more of a mystery... Occam's razor and all.

Must be really weird to discount multiple moons?

Brilliant, love it, fantastic, thank you op for sharing this, S+F!

If these are in fact a swarm of massive solar energy collectors orbiting the star, (dyson-sphere like), we could be on the verge of detecting intelligent life, more advanced than our own..

Then again, from the study:

By considering the observational constraints on dust clumps orbiting a normal main-sequence star, we conclude that the scenario most consistent with the data is the passage of a family of exocomet fragments, all of which are associated with a single previous breakup event.

i'm keeping an eye on this in any case.

This shouldn't come as a surprise, since UFO fanatics already are convinced that we are not alone in this multiverse.

You know, there has to be a tipping point, where this knowledge of life outside of this world will soon become a reality. We have been told Mars holds water, there are ice sheets on Pluto, and when we start adding 1 and 1 together, you can only get one answer, that there has to be life outside of this realm of existence.

You know when they say there is 1 in a billion chance of anything becoming truth, than I guess, the vastness of space has the odds to make that happen. And if the indicators are there to support life, than the chances are even greater, and if statements such as this are coming from SETI, than I guess we just need to prepare ourselves to meet a new race of humanoids.

And yet, the explanation has to be rare or coincidental. After all, this light pattern doesn’t show up anywhere else, across 150,000 stars. We know that something strange is going on out there.

originally posted by: amazing
Must be really weird to discount multiple moons?

In the paper, they arrive at a comet cloud as the best solution

because comets are known in the
Solar System to have highly eccentric orbits and disrupt for various
reasons near pericenter, and infalling comets are a likely explanation
for the falling evaporating body (FEB) phenomenon seen
around many nearby A-type stars

But how dense does a comet cloud have to be to occult 80% of a stars light from outside observation?

originally posted by: slip2break

But how dense does a comet cloud have to be to occult 80% of a stars light from outside observation?

It's actually normal to ascribe an unknown with a known, and this might be a very good guesstimate by SETI. As much they don't want to, nobody in SETI would wanna speculate that atleast something as solid as metal or glass can reflect that much of light.

This may mean, it to be of intelligent design, and this just may not seem right as it may suggest other things apart from that. Just giving an alternative perspective there. But who knows what it really is?

This is great! I really hope it turns out to be the vulcans or something. Not the comet cloud the paper hypothesizes it to be.

If everyone knew, without a shadow of doubt there is another intelligent species within our galaxy, just imagine the good it could possibly do. Maybe we'd take the trillions spent on fighting each other, and put it all towards more exploration of space. Heck, it's what we should already be doing...

Hey guys you wanna make a bet, the anomaly is gonna go blank for 365 days.

Ray Kurzweil suggests this sort of thing would be a natural for an advanced civilization that required vast amounts of energy. The Kardashev Scale would suggest these aliens were approaching a Type II civilization, one that used all the energy of its star. Type 1 would use all the energy and resources of a planet. Using this energy scale would place us at about a point 7. The Kardashev scale is discussed here.

a reply to: schuyler

So he implies the anomaly could be an advanced type 2 alien structure?

a reply to: slip2break

Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known

Carl Sagan summed it up beautifully, this is the stuff I have been waiting for - a head-scratching WTF discovery from our best and brightest.

"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth"

originally posted by: Hyperia
a reply to: schuyler

So he implies the anomaly could be an advanced type 2 alien structure?

Not Kurzweil himself on this particular issue (that I know of), but this is clearly the implication of the article and paper. The paper suggested structures to capture solar power, and that is in line with these other theories. The paper cited here is banking on a "cloud of comets" as the reason for these "energy dips." It's not surprising they would not suggest anything technological, which is nowhere near proven.

Edit to add: It's 1481 light years from us.

Fantastic find OP This could be an important discovery. The fact that this isn't sensationalized and that the scientists are so matter-of-fact is very encouraging.

One of my life wishes is that evidence of another intelligence or civilization is found before I die.

a reply to: amazing

I know right......super weird to discount multiple moons circling around a star.....as opposed to a planet, because these guys must have no idea of what they are doing.

Now that I'm done being snarky....this is super exciting.....I mean really bloody exciting. I hope they hear the particular frequencies they will be listening for in January.