An Alien Structure could be forming in our own backyard

Here's the article:

There's a mysterious object doing a crazy loop around our solar system — and scientists have no idea what it is

Scientists have found a mysterious object orbiting just beyond Neptune, and it's breaking all the rules.

Astronomers have nicknamed it "Niku," which means rebellious in Chinese, because of the object’s reckless behavior.

The object is about 160,000 times fainter than Neptune, suggesting that it could be less than 120 miles in diameter. That makes the icy celestial body a minor planet, which means it’s smaller than a planet but not quite a comet.

Here’s where things get weird.

Niku orbits the solar system at a bizarre angle: a plane tilted 110 degrees to the flat plane of the solar system. This flat plane of the solar system — a disk in which planets move around the sun — is a defining quality of a planetary system.

But Niku, already moving above the plane, travels a little further upward every day.

And unlike the other law-abiding objects in the solar system, Niku travels against the flow of the bulk of the solar system, taking a wild backwards swing around the sun.

Objects that don’t move within the plane of the solar system or spin in the opposite direction must have been shoved off course by something else or tugged by the gravity of another object.

www.businessinsider.com...

Is this something artificial that moving against the grain of the bulk of the solar system. Is something powering it or is it a more mundane explanation. Personally, all of these things are interesting and I think it's obvious and there's overwhelming evidence that other civilizations exists. This universe is fined tuned to produce life just like it's fined tuned to produce stars, galaxies and moons. Life isn't some accidental arrangement, it's an arrangement that occurs because it has to based on the fined tuned constants that govern this universe. Here's more:

Scientists noticed that rebel Niku seems to be hanging around a gang of other strangely aligned objects. At first glance, the scientists thought this might suggest that Planet Nine, a hypothetical planet that would be about 10 times as massive as Earth, might be pulling on the objects.

But it turns out that the rebellious object would be out of Planet Nine’s reach, too free-living to succumb to the undiscovered planet’s gravitational attraction.

Niku is hanging out with other strange objects.

It's just a matter time.

There are plenty of relatively mundane explanations that could explain it. For instance, it could be a minor planet that had been travelling through space and was caught by our sun's gravity. There is nothing, at this point, to suggest it's artificial.

Your assertion that "the universe is fine tuned to produce life" is ridiculous, given the complete and total lack of evidence to support such a conclusion. Such an unfounded statement does, however, serve to illustrate your own personal bias quite nicely.

a reply to: neoholographic

Niku's angle relative to the ecliptic is not that unusual for that region of the solar system; however its orbiting direction is certainly of great interest. Maybe it's a planet captured from a neighbouring star and only roughly orbiting the Sun, more like simply stumbling.

Not every objects in the universe are on a perfect orbit; Niku could prove an example of this. No aliens needed.

originally posted by: AdmireTheDistance
There are plenty of relatively mundane explanations that could explain it. For instance, it could be a minor planet that had been travelling through space and was caught by our sun's gravity. There is nothing, at this point, to suggest it's artificial.

Your assertion that "the universe is fine tuned to produce life" is ridiculous, given the complete and total lack of evidence to support such a conclusion.

What?

First off, if there's all of these mundane explanations for this you need to call the Scientists who discovered this because they must be stupid and you're the only smart one with all of these mundane explanations (INSERT SARCASM HERE).

“It suggests that there’s more going on in the outer solar system than we’re fully aware of,” Matthew Holman at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, part of the team that discovered Niku, told New Scientist, where we first saw the story.

So again, you need to call up this team of international Scientists because apparently their all stupid.

Secondly, the universe is fined tuned for life. Whether that fine tuning comes from an Intelligence or it's the result of a multiverse. The whole idea of a multiverse is to try and explain the fine tuning of the universe. If you have multiple universes then our universe is just one roll of the dice out of many rolls. So in things like String Theory you have 10^500 false vacua. That's still not enough and this why I say an Intelligence fined tuned the universe for life to exist.

originally posted by: neoholographic
Secondly, the universe is fined tuned for life. Whether that fine tuning comes from an Intelligence or it's the result of a multiverse...

Life as we know it (the only life we know) is fine-tuned to be able to survive in the universe in which it survives. But that's only because anything that isn't fined-tuned to the universe would not become life. So life is the thing that is fine-tuned; not necessarily the universe.

Saying the universe is necessarily fine-tuned for life would be like saying that he Sun is fine-tuned for plants, evidence being that plants thrive on sunlight. Or that oxygen is fine-tuned to humans, evidence being that we can breathe it so easily.

So all we know is that life is fine-tuned to the universe. We don't know is the universe is fine-tuned for life. If the universe is natural (not artificially made), then it isn't "fine tuned" for life, but rather any life that gets a foothold in that universe would be suited for that universe, making the universe only seem fine-tuned for that life.

a reply to: neoholographic

“It suggests that there’s more going on in the outer solar system than we’re fully aware of,” Matthew Holman at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, part of the team that discovered Niku, told New Scientist, where we first saw the story.

Nowhere does the scientists say that it's aliens. By "there’s more going on in the outer solar system than we’re fully aware of", they mean that there might be more planets and more complex gravitational interactions than initially expected. As far as we know, even Dark Matter could be a factor in interstellar gravitational capture.

You're jumping to conclusions here! (I mean this in a friendly way)

Your thread is good as it is, without the alien spaceships thing - the discovery of complex motion in the outer solar system is awesome in itself.

a reply to: neoholographic

why get so defensive when someone offers other plausible ideas...

he never called anyone stupid or insinuated anything on the credibility on the researchers whom made the discovery.. you did.

like those researchers are still doing right now as we speak, is further research before drawing to any conclusion.

the fact that you posted this in this forum and not the science forums means you already drawn your conclusion and simply looking for like-minded to agree with what you think it maybe...

you should simply google other strange bodies with stranger orbits around another body. i wont though, as i know its not an artificial body simply using basic critical faculties.

lastly, your universed is fine tuned for life couldnt be further from right. again, 0not going to google for you.

a reply to: neoholographic

Not me. I have protection sigils all around my property and angels watching over me.

I disbelieve this because I know for a fact that the earth is flat and domed. Space does not exists.

Why are posters being so negative about the op's speculations? I don't remember seeing the same derision when scientists were claiming discovery of a possible alien megastructure by a nearby star.

The tuning might be due to these:

The strong anthropic principle (SAP) as explained by John D. Barrow and Frank Tipler states that this is all the case because the universe is in some sense compelled to eventually have conscious and sapient life emerge within it.

Some critics of the SAP argue in favor of

a weak anthropic principle (WAP) similar to the one defined by Brandon Carter, which states that the universe's ostensible fine tuning is the result of selection bias: i.e., only in a universe capable of eventually supporting life will there be living beings capable of observing and reflecting upon fine tuning

a reply to: odzeandennz

Your post makes no sense. You said:

why get so defensive when someone offers other plausible ideas

First off, he didn't offer any plausible idea. Have you bothered to read the study? So, it wasn't plausible because the team of international Scientist don't even have a plausible idea because if they did, it wouldn't be a mystery.

Discovery of A New Retrograde Trans-Neptunian Object: Hint of A Common Orbital Plane for Low Semi-Major Axis, High Inclination TNOs and Centaurs

Ying-Tung Chen, Hsing Wen Lin, Matthew J. Holman, Matthew J. Payne, Wesley C. Fraser, Pedro Lacerda, Wing-Huen Ip, Wen-Ping Chen, Rolf-Peter Kudritzki, Robert Jedicke, Richard J. Wainscoat, John L. Tonry, Eugene A. Magnier, Christopher Waters, Nick Kaiser, Shiang-Yu Wang, Matthew Lehner

arxiv.org...

The problem here is, you people shouldn't get upset everytime somebody mentions the word Alien. I said it could be an artificial structure or there may be a mundane explanation for it.

To act like it's just some simple explanation though is asinine. At this point, they don't know and I never said it's definitely an Alien structure but you or anyone else can't offer any plausible explanation. You can offer a blind opinion but your opinion has no more weight than someone saying it could be an Alien structure at this point because you don't know.

There will be a plausible explanation when there's one that's found by the team of international Scientist or others in the field.

There is no true up or down in space. Everything is relative to everything else. Rotation axis of the Sun, Plane of the Milky Way galaxy, orbital plane of the Earth, Orbital plane o the Moon around Earth. Tilt of rotation axis of planets.

It could be that there was a collision some time ago between planetoids, and the angle of collision sent them going in opposite directions, leading one to end up at a high angle around our Solar System.

a reply to: neoholographic

It'd be fantastic if it was something like Clarke's Rama. It was a huge object that entered our Solar System and proved to be a cylindrical and obviously artificial craft. A team gets sent out to investigate and they find a way inside...

They can only do so much before it sails away, out of our system, and off to an unknown destination.

Imagine an artificial object that orbits out in the far reaches of our system? Left there like a message in a bottle and in a place where it'd take a minimum level of technology to even see it?? That would be very cool indeed.

It's the stuff dreams are made of

a reply to: neoholographic

you make less sense as you go.
how can the team not have a plausible idea when you quoted their plausible idea

Discovery of A New Retrograde Trans-Neptunian Object: Hint of A Common Orbital Plane for Low Semi-Major Axis, High Inclination TNOs and Centaurs

and yes. it is some simple explanation, but requiring complex instrumentation and calculations to figure out because we can't just take a trip and see it for ourselves and make conclusions. so it takes a lot of effort to explain something which is probably not uncommon for other planetary bodies or smaller dwarf planets which get caught in tugs. this one is looks to be on a wild tangent and slight wobble.

but thanks for the heads up. keep us posted on the ' alien structure forming in our backyard'

In order for it to be orbiting backward, Niku must have been knocked off course by something unknown, New Scientist reports. And that's what gets astronomers up in the morning.

originally posted by: AdmireTheDistance
There are plenty of relatively mundane explanations that could explain it. For instance, it could be a minor planet that had been travelling through space and was caught by our sun's gravity. There is nothing, at this point, to suggest it's artificial.

Your assertion that "the universe is fine tuned to produce life" is ridiculous, given the complete and total lack of evidence to support such a conclusion. Such an unfounded statement does, however, serve to illustrate your own personal bias quite nicely.

Ridiculous? I would say you are the one who always shows an obvious bias.
It is more likely than not.

Is the Universe Fine-Tuned for Life?

Examples of such “fine-tuning” abound. Tweak the charge on an electron, for instance, or change the strength of the gravitational force or the strong nuclear force just a smidgen, and the universe would look very different, and likely be lifeless. The challenge for physicists is explaining why such physical parameters are what they are.

www.pbs.org...

The main drivers here are some truly perplexing developments in physics and cosmology. In recent years physicists and cosmologists have uncovered numerous eye-popping "cosmic coincidences," remarkable instances of apparent "fine-tuning" of the universe.

Read more at: phys.org...

The Universe Fine-Tuned for Life
quake.stanford.edu...

The most concerning constant for those people who would rather not consider design at all is the cosmological constant. This is an antigravity force in space which is fine tuned to 1X10^120 decimal places. This means that if the 119th decimal place were a different number, or the 120th decimal place were off by one digit, we could not have evolved.

www.quora.com... nge-of-time-and-space

A few examples of this fine-tuning are listed below:
www.discovery.org...

aeon.co...

originally posted by: neoholographic
To act like it's just some simple explanation though is asinine. At this point, they don't know and I never said it's definitely an Alien structure but you or anyone else can't offer any plausible explanation. You can offer a blind opinion but your opinion has no more weight than someone saying it could be an Alien structure at this point because you don't know.

First of all, Niku is not the only retrograde body out there; it's the latest one in a cluster of objects that have been found to have similar orbits.

And there are some plausible hypotheses that are being considered for how these objects ended up with these orbits. One plausible explanation is that this may be more evidence for a large planet-sized body that resides in the outer depths of the solar system (a potential "Planet Nine"). Some calculations show that a large planetary body could possibly perturb these minor planets in an extreme may that causes their orbits to change this wildly.

Strange orbit of new planet Niku hints at mysterious object in the outer solar system

Could it be an artificial alien craft? Sure; I'm all for the cool extreme "what if" scenarios. However, the mundane explanations are usually the more likely explanations -- that's what makes them mundane, and that's because they are common. I mean, if I saw a web-footed yellow-billed, waddling, quacking, duck-like bird floating on a lake, I suppose it was possible that it was an alien being disguised as a duck so it could observe humans...but a more likely explanation is that it was just a duck.

originally posted by: SeaWorthy
[A few examples of this fine-tuning are listed below:
www.discovery.org...

Again, as someone noted above, the universe SEEMS fine tuned for life as we know it. Even Freeman Dyson mentions that in a quote from your link above:

As the eminent Princeton physicist Freeman Dyson notes, "There are many . . . lucky accidents in physics. Without such accidents, water could not exist as liquid, chains of carbon atoms could not form complex organic molecules, and hydrogen atoms could not form breakable bridges between molecules" (p. 251)--in short, life as we know it would be impossible.

Let's say the universe had different starting parameters. Those different starting parameters lead to a universe with vastly different fundamental laws of physics, so different that that the elements as we know them do not exist. Matter is different. Energy is different. There are no complex chains of carbon molecules because carbon doesn't exist. Instead of our familiar universe existing, something else totally foreign to us and our laws of physics exists in its place.

...However, the "something else" that would exist in the place of our universe may still be able to harbor something that could be analogous to "life". Sure -- we may not have been ever able to evolve in that totally foreign universe, because the laws of physics are so different that "life as we know it" is impossible in that universe. But that totally foreign universe may still give birth to self-aware creatures who could ask the same question that is being asked in this thread -- that question being "is the universe (their universe) fine tuned for life?"

The answer to those beings in that totally foreign universe would seem to them to be "yes -- it is fine tuned". However, the real answer would be that the life that evolved in that universe would be so perfect for THAT universe only because it was what the laws of physics in THAT universe allowed to evolve.

The type of life in our universe would not be able to have ever started in their universe, and conversely the type of life in their universe would not have ever been able to have started in our universe, making each of our universes SEEM to be fine tuned for the life inhabiting each universe. But it would only seem that way.

Instead it's much more likely that we (and those ether beings in that other universe) are fine tuned for the laws of physics in the universe in which we each evolved.

a reply to: neoholographic

Why on earth are we assuming this is alien in origin?

Others have already very clearly explained in this post much more probable scenarios. And no where do the scientists in this article even begin to suggest it is alien in nature.

Why we feel the need to jump to the least likely scenario is beyond me.

And of course the universe appears fine tuned. As someone earlier put it very eloquently put it, if it wasn't, we wouldn't exist. Quite the stretch though to use this as a reason to insist this is an alien object. The universe is so vast, it could be absolutely teeming with life, yet not one other planet in our entire galaxy would have to be inhabited. With only one intelligent species in each galaxy, there would still be billions of intelligent species.

No reason at all to assume the are in our very own system. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Very very interesting

Maybe that has something to do with this

www.abovetopsecret.com...

originally posted by: AdmireTheDistance
There are plenty of relatively mundane explanations that could explain it. For instance, it could be a minor planet that had been travelling through space and was caught by our sun's gravity. There is nothing, at this point, to suggest it's artificial.

I don't think the OP is being definitive, he is just asking. In any case, going from the link, there is as yet no third object, and not planet nine as a possible definer of the strange orbit or the other objects around it, which is the given pull for captured objects which would otherwise be in escape velocity. It doesn't even seem to say as yet, that it is something that has been captured, probably for those reasons.

"I hope everyone has buckled their seatbelts because the outer solar system just got a lot weirder,” said Michele Bannister, an astronomer at Queens University, Belfast via twitter. That's interesting because it says there is a need to knuckle down and come up with an explanation.
I suppose in many ways then, that this is an alien object, at least to the current thinking.