SETI: On the Verge of a Breakthrough?

The SETI Institute monitored the star KIC 8462852 again yesterday for intelligent radio signals. No word so far on what they did or didn't find. They had presumably completed the installation of the new cryogenically cooled receivers, and so enjoy doubled, or better, sensitivity over the equipment they used last week.
The stated plan is to listen to this star through the end of the month. Any monitoring of 'Tabby's Star' beyond then would suggest that their results were, at least to some degree, encouraging.
They are listening for both narrow band signals, such as would come from a single transmitter, and across a wider bandwidth for what could be heard from a combination of multiple signals, all occurring at the same time.

originally posted by: AceWombat04
In my opinion that would be rational and suitably rigorous.

I think it would be more rational to say, "We don't know exactly what it could be, and ET intelligence remains a possibility, but until that can be specifically determined, 'unknown' is still higher on the list." If they say it's a possible ET signal, what they would essentially be doing is saying, "It's either unknown, or unknown."

a reply to: Ross 54

they found a black hole, who spewed out energy while gaming with idiots who cant teamplay..

originally posted by: Hyperia
a reply to: Ross 54

they found a black hole, who spewed out energy while gaming with idiots who cant teamplay..

Probably could be a black hole orbiting it?

a reply to: Xeven

no since s*** sticks to the star like glue

a reply to: Xeven




well they just posted this on SETI
geez fun guys

a reply to: Xeven

you are probably right, when you think about it, the anomaly is probably a blackhole

Is it very improbable, as claimed, that the Kepler Space Telescope would just happen to observe a very recent disruption of comets by another star passing through the the 'Tabby's Star' system? This remains the favored scientific explanation for the deep dimming of this star.
I tended to think that with 150,000 stars observed by the KST, it might not be so extraordinary after all, that with just one star, this would be the case.

Looking further through the Boyajian, et al. paper (Where's the Flux), I find that they have an interesting take on this problem. They calculated that each star must have 10,000 intruding stars passing through its planetary system in the course of its life, in order for it to be statistically reasonable for the KST to have found the recent aftermath of such disruption at KIC 846 2852.
10,000 seems a very large number, even considering the long lifetimes of stars. One might even say very improbably large.

There's a sense that the favored scientific explanation for the dimming of Tabby's star, debris from disrupted comets, must have had a recent cause. It's even been scientifically speculated that there may be no more irregular dimming of the star, the debris having quickly settled into a uniform ring.
The Wide field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) satellite looked at Tabby's Star just a few years ago. No excess infrared light was detected. If there is enough debris to dim the star by up to 22 percent, it seems that it should have been enough to absorb light and reradiate it as infrared.
The alternative is that the event causing the debris happened in the few years that passed between the WISE and the Kepler Space Telescope observations.

In comparison to the usual astrophysical time scale, in which things happen over millions or billions of years, the KST would have made its observations at almost exactly the right time. That seems to strain coincidence a bit too much.

I looked carefully at a graph of the light given off by the star KIC 8462852. It seem to show a regularity in the dips in brightness. Eight such dips, with an average spacing of a bit over nine days, seem to occur in the section of the graph for days 170 through 270 of the observations.
It's doubtful that these are caused by a planet with an orbital period of about nine days. The dips differ in shape and size, and are not seen at all before about day 197. Are comet fragments likely to arrange themselves in this way? It seems unlikely.
Huge solar panels, as in the postulated Dyson swarm, might be spaced in near-regularity like this, in order to avoid collisions in space.
Below is a link to an article by Dr. Jason Wright, which contains the graph section discussed. It is the third graph down, from the top of the article.
sites.psu.edu...

a reply to: Ross 54

Ross are you a planet hunter?

No, not a planet hunter. More of a SETI hunter, actually.

Evidently nothing yet, at least from the specific observations in question, but apparently there are still more to come.

"It's a bit disappointing that the ATA didn't see anything, but not entirely unexpected," Jason Wright told CBS News. "The ATA is a pretty small telescope array, so it would take an outrageously powerful transmitter -- pointed right at Earth and broadcasting in an obvious way -- for them to have detected anything."

www.cbsnews.com...

... however this does not rule out the possibility that there's something there...

It has been reported that the findings do not eliminate the possibility of alien communications coming from regions around the star, but they are comparatively weaker than what SETI searches are able to detect.

nycnews.net...

So, the unsatisfying conclusion - for the moment - may simply be that without more powerful or long term observations of the dimming, we won't ever know definitively what caused it or what might be there. As stated, the search goes on, though.

One great piece of news that has come out of all this at least however, is that the role of amateur astronomers and planet hunters should not be overlooked with the advent of more advanced computer search algorithms...

While the mystery remains, the strange findings highlight the role of so-called citizen scientists, whose eyes can often be better at finding astronomical objects than algorithms designed to do so.

www.wpr.org...

Finally, from the same article, some hope for the future of this mysterious star:

As for the KIC 8462852 star? Fischer said that astronomers will need to wait for the pattern to come around in orbit again, but that will take over a year to happen. In the meantime, there is a campaign among astronomers all around the world to continue observing the star and report if they see anything unusual.

So I guess, for those suitably equipped and informed: keep looking up?

Peace.

originally posted by: reldra
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

i'm with you on that.... I don't accept some Sphere being built around a star by a alien civilization


the hapless star may have found itself being Swarmed by rogue, wandering Mini-Black-Holes...
perhaps that Galaxy is in the early stages of forming a Galactic Core Black-Hole a little later in life than is usually the case with Galaxies


see the latest article on the strange star some 1,500 light years distant from our solar system
finance.yahoo.com...

"That bizarre-looking star just got a lot weirder — and yes, it could be aliens"
Business Insider
By Jessica Orwig
January 15, 2016 4:09 PM



today is Jan 17th of 2016

They keep saying that the dimming is not a one-off catastrophe thing, and a asteroid storm would be an impracticle cause

so i'm going with a known star dimmer & a irregular burst of luminosity generator a 'black hole'... I suggest the BH or array of BHs is orbiting the stationary Star... & the Star is not being pulled apart as it is not being consumed... I suggest that the causes for the dimming are some light years distant but directly in Our path to observing the 'weird star' which research has found has a 100 year dimming & fluxuations in brightness


it may be a unique situation... but natural forces can be misconstrued into fantastic imaginings ...if it is catchy

Probably the much hypothesized Dyson Sphere...

DYSON SPHERE

a reply to: Blue Shift

I hear what you're saying. However for me the two are equivalent apart from which bias is most weighted (both are biased imo.)

One is saying "We don't know, but X is a possibility... but we think that's improbable and that an as yet unknown explanation that we can't think of or speculate about is more likely because of reasons." The other is saying, "We don't know, and X is the only extant hypothesis we have yet to rule out... but that doesn't mean that's what it is, and there could still well be other explanations for which we have yet to account."

IMHO both are saying essentially the same thing, except that one is biased more towards giving the possibility actual scientific consideration, whereas the other is biased towards giving some as yet unconceived of hypothesis greater scientific consideration than that possibility.

To be clear and fair... both are biased imho. Eliminating bias entirely is impossible. To be equally clear about my own opinion: I don't have one other than, "We don't know."

Peace.