The article dismisses natural explanations as "wanting", but then goes on to dedicate half the article to aliens?
It claims that another star having a close encounter with KIC 8462852 (the star discussed in the article) and stirring up its comet cloud "would be an extraordinary coincidence". There is, in fact, evidence that such an encounter happened in our own solar system, "only a few millennia before humans developed the tech to loft a telescope into space." Calculating the speed and trajectory of a particular star, astronomers found that it would have crossed within the radius of the Oort Cloud approximately 70,000 years ago, producing exactly the scenario that "would be an extraordinary coincidence."[1]
Additionally, astronomers have checked stars in the galaxy for the possibility of a close encounter with our solar system, and find dozens of such candidates to come close to our solar system, sometimes within the radius of the Oort cloud, within the next million years (some as close as 240,000-470,000 years from now).[2]
The idea that a passing star would stir up the comet cloud of KIC 8462852 should not be dismissed as a coincidence, especially not to give leeway to discuss the potential for intelligence to build megastructures, when we see that such a coincidence is not even that rare for our own solar system.
It sounds like you've concluded that because comet-cloud stirring happened in our solar system, it is "not even that rare" elsewhere. What's special about ours? Intelligent life also happened in our solar system, but you seem to consider it unlikely elsewhere.
It seems hasty to extrapolate either way without more data.
You don't need additional data when you can figure out the statistical likelihood of it happening by taking existing trajectories and number of stars in the galaxy. He is saying given what we know, it happens so frequently that it's not a surprise that it even happened to us.
> Intelligent life also happened in our solar system, but you seem to consider it unlikely elsewhere.
Occam's razor, plain and simple.
If the strange variations in that star's brightness turned out to be caused by an alien civilization, that would be way, way cool. But before we jump to conclusions, we should explore more mundane explanations; given the unusual observations, it should still be very interesting, whatever the cause.
Nobody, not the article or any of the comments, seem to have jumped to any conclusions.
The article suggested possibilities, including comets. And reasons why it might not be that. And it included aliens, and some things that would be expected if it was that. All depending on more data which the article explained, they are waiting to collect.
Intelligent life building something big "approx half the size of the star".. mh, either they gave up on nano technology or they have found out that macro technology is better:)
Because of math? This survey is for nearby stars. The star in question is, in fact, only 1500 light years away. The chances we'd observe a rare phenomenon in a small subset of stars (the article says the survey was for ~150K stars) is, according to the authors of the paper, exceedingly rare.
Given the author of the paper is doing a proposal to point a radio telescope at the star says to me that chances are decent enough to justify further investigation.
That's some rather motivated sounding reasoning. If it's so common, why is it only this one star where we see the pattern?
The point is, it's rare and the effect would be short lived.
Also, I don't think just any passing star would produce the effect they're talking about. They mentioned the star being significantly dimmed by matter that must be very close. A star passing through the Oort cloud wouldn't have done that, it would throw a few (maybe thousands?) comets closer in, but not into a tight orbit around the sun.
I don't think you're really giving enough credit to how rare this scenario is.
The star that supposedly disrupted the cloud would have to be in the neighborhood but it isn't according to current data. But it might be in which case it would be very dim. That's why more data is needed.
I'm not sure we should expect only cold, sterile data and the most banal hypothesis from a magazine targeting the general public.
Moreover, I think it's good to spark the public's imagination through informed speculation. Yes, maybe what lies over the horizon is not a mysterious land full of strange wonders but -- you know what? -- maybe it is. So to all those out there who feel it is their duty to defend the orthodoxy that we're alone in the universe from the human imagination I say just let others have their dreams. One day you may live in a very different, more wondrous world because they refused to accept the limits you seem so eager to impose on them.
The paper. Basically Kepler, or to be more precise the Planet Hunter crowdsourcing effort, found a star with a rather strange light curve and the Atlantic jumped the gun and babbels of aliens.
While they are prematurely speculating about intelligent life, it certainly warrants further investigation.
Given that the Atlantic's target audience is lay-people, of course they would play up the "extraterrestrial" hypothesis, because that's how they grab readers' attention.
Well, there are a lot of stars and some fraction has anomalous light curves in one respect or another. I am not against investigating, but I believe that overhyping science does more harm than good.
«But that would be an extraordinary coincidence, if that happened so recently, only a few millennia before humans developed the tech to loft a telescope into space. That’s a narrow band of time, cosmically speaking.
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.»
It would also be an extraordinary coincidence if we find another planet with life on it, so quickly after humans started to look for it. 150'000 stars is a narrow band of universe, cosmically speaking.
If this is life, in a life-as-we-know-it sense, then it tells us that there are two species within a couple of thousand light years in about the same stage of evolution; which suggests that life's going to be everywhere.
Assuming one civilisation within a sphere 1000ly in diameter, that makes 16000 in our galaxy alone!
It's much weirder than that; after all, there's been life on Earth for at least 3Bn years, but space-going life for only the past 57 of them! Stack it all up: if this is some sort of life-created megastructure then it's not just evidence of life, but of presumptively-multicellular tool-building life that can get off its planet and survive in an intensely hostile environment that it didn't coevolve with.
With an estimated 100Bn stars in our own galaxy alone, this would suggest we can expect to see on the order of a million interplanetary-capable life forms in the process of carrying out mega-engineering projects, and yet none of them have come calling on us? Fermi Paradox calls bullshit.
The Fermi Paradox is predicated on the principle that aliens would actually want to come here. I'm not sure this is a valid assumption.
For a hot and fast civilisation like us to exist for serious amounts of time in space, it's going to have to adapt to living in space --- because, as you say, it's intensely hostile. One of the key adaptations is to stop being hot and fast. If you can live on small energy budgets you're way more likely to survive. If you live slowly then travel becomes much easier, as well as costing less.
But if you become a cold and slow civilisation, inner solar systems aren't going to be very hospitable --- hot, radioactive, space is so bent that travel is enormously difficult, everything's at the bottom of cripplingly expensive gravity wells... why bother? The gas giants are rich, but are even more expensive (to get from low orbit around one of the moons of Jupiter to low orbit around another takes about 10 km/s. You can launch from the surface of Earth for that). But further out... the Kuiper and Oort clouds are peaceful, cheap, hospitable, and chock full of light elements with interesting (if slow) chemistry.
Estimates of the Oort cloud density predict that there'll be a 20km body every 30 light seconds or so, and that there's about five Earth masses in Sol's Oort cloud alone. And Oort clouds of neighbouring stars overlap...
So I'm expecting any successful civilisation to start colonising the spaces between the stars, rather than the star systems themselves.
In this model, our own solar system could already be colonised, and we'd never know. They'd probably have noticed our radio transmissions by now, but it may not have occurred to them to answer yet. They may not bother; if we survive long enough to adapt to space, we'll be out there soon. Or they may not be able, depending on their energy budget. Or maybe they are, and we just haven't noticed. (New Horizons has a 12W transmitter and we would have to be looking in exactly the right direction to spot it. And it's way closer than the Oort Cloud.)
Of course, this doesn't explain why our hypothetical civilisation has built a hypothetical megastructure around this star. I wouldn't know why they'd want to do that (except for noting in passing that interstellar travel for hot-and-fast creatures like us basically requires a Dyson sphere for the energy requirements).
So I'm expecting any successful civilisation to start colonising the spaces between the stars, rather than the star systems themselves.
Before you start writing your book, you might want to familiarize yourself with the prior art in the field: start with the short story "Swarm" by Bruce Sterling, then the novel "Permanence" by Karl Schroeder, "Blindsight" by Peter Watts, and maybe "Diaspora" by Greg Egan. That's assuming that by "planning a book" you're thinking in terms of fiction rather than SETI-oriented non-fic, but even if you're writing non-fic it's worth noting that we SF authors have been all over the topic for decades. (As for non-fic, the prior art goes all the way back to J. D. Bernal's "The World, The Flesh, and The Devil", if not further: I don't read Russian but I gather Nikolai Federov wrote on the subject, as did Konstantin Tsiolkovsky.)
I've read all of those! (I actually discovered Karl Schroeder from your blog; for which I thank you. I gather _Lockstep_ addresses the same subject, but haven't read it yet.) Although they're very much focused on going substellar objects, e.g. brown dwarves or dark giants, while I'm thinking of the vastly more common asteroidal bodies. It's not a subject I've seen addressed very often.
Here's the paper that crystallised the idea for me:
As you say we have only been lofting stuff into space for 57 years, and sending out radio waves etc. for a few decades longer than that/ There are still some uncontacted tribes on the earth despite our relatively rapid global population growth...I'm not sure why you think more advanced alien civilizations would be in a rush to get in contact the (cosmic) minute they noticed earth's lights coming on. After 500 or 1000 years, yeah.
It's also possible that more advanced civilizations are paying attention but are waiting for us to get over our kill-it-with-fire stage in response to large-scale visitation :)
We know that stars follow statistical laws on a cosmic scale, because we can see them, and have mapped them. So it's a reasonable assumption that life which forms round stars, like us, will be distributed the same way as the stars themselves.
It's worth noting that KIC 8462852 is an F3 star very similar to our own, which is a G2.
Life might be common but intelligent life might be rare. Of all the countless species on this planet, only a handful (if even) have developed the ability to control fire and construct tools; considering how expensive it is on the organism, it might not be a generally successful evolutionary mutation. We might be an extraordinarily rare aberration.
And it's not just intelligent life, either, when you think about it; it requires intelligible life. It doesn't matter how clever the individual is; without a relatively efficient means of bundling up abstractions and hypotheticals and so on and transferring them from one individual to another, progress is slow, limited and contextually bound. There is something special about language - a serialization scheme for thought - that sets it apart from mere communication, and there is no reason to assume that it's an inevitable natural consequence of individual intelligence. Call it another term in the Drake equation.
It's a good point. Dinosaurs were on Earth for a very very long time. We really have no idea how rare it is for life to evolve in such a way as to become highly intelligent.
Makes you wonder if Dinosaurs would have evolved to the point of becoming some sort of highly intelligent reptilian species similar to us. That is, if they hadn't been destroyed. :D
There's also species' such as Parrots and Dolphins that are both considered to be quite intelligent. So maybe intelligence is a fore-gone conclusion and that final step that "snowballs" their intelligence is just another roll of the dice occurrence.
Makes you wonder if Dinosaurs would have evolved to the point of becoming some sort of highly intelligent reptilian species similar to us.
You're half right. Dinosaurs have evolved[1][2] to become highly intelligent[3], but not reptilian and only similar to us in the sense that they are the only other species that makes hooks to catch food[4].
Just supposing we really are seeing the space construction projects of a distant civilization, it seems not impossible that ironically we might be seeing them before they can see us.
That's a good point, I'd never really thought of that! Almost any life we could find in another system, we'd see before our first radio waves got to them.
On the other hand, if I was some ancient super advanced civilization, I'd have probes all over the galaxy, and they'd report as soon as anything interesting happened with evolution on a planet. So they could know what life was like on Earth about 1500 years ago, and extrapolate from that.
Not that I can guess what a super advanced civilization would think like :P
There is so much cool science out there, I wish we could accept it as cool without it being aliens. The phenomenon that lead to this odd flux observation is more interesting than hypothetical alien megastructures.
The phenomenon that lead to this odd flux observation is more interesting than hypothetical alien megastructures.
Discovering a previously unknown natural phenomenon would indeed by insanely cool, and I would want to know all about it in as many frequency bands as possible.
But alien megastructures are just about the most interesting thing I can think of short of proof that we live in a hologram, or a simulation, or some new and robust fundamental theory of matter.
> Jason Wright, an astronomer from Penn State University, is set to publish an
> alternative interpretation of the light pattern. SETI researchers have long
> suggested that we might be able to detect distant extraterrestrial
> civilizations, by looking for enormous technological artifacts orbiting
> other stars. 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 guess the theory is that an advanced civilization would be building particle accelerators on the scale of solar systems, or maybe constructing wormholes?
I'm just not entirely convinced of the premise that energy consumption on that scale would be necessary for an advanced civilization. Particle accelerators would be a reasonable possibility though.
I'm not sure I understand the relevance of what Summers is saying. He's talking about a current slowdown in growth, and arguing for expansionary monetary policy. This article is claiming that there's a limited amount of growth that we can expect in the longterm, because we'll run out of sources of energy. But Summers isn't talking about energy as a limit..indeed, he's saying commodity prices are depressed.
The other article isn't entirely arguing that energy is a fundamental limit, although the example it gives is pretty hilarious. It's ultimately arguing that there are fundamentally limited things for capital to invest in and grow.
The only argument I see is that energy places a limit on growth. Now, one might think that if energy is one limit, there must be others, but I can't find that argument actually presented.
> Economist: But I have to object to the statement that growth must stop once
> energy amount/price saturates. There will always be innovations that people
> are willing to purchase that do not require additional energy.
I think you're getting this backwards--this is not an argument that there's more limits, it's an argument over whether limited energy actually implies limits to growth. What the economist says is "even if energy is limited, growth is not" and the physicist goes on to rebut that claim.
The rebuttal has to do with the definition of economic growth (assuming it isn't connected to energy consumption and gdp), which the economist argues has to do with quality of life. The rebuttal is that quality of life can only objectively improve to a certain point, and that the remaining measures aren't really quantifiable.
So the last, albeit minor, argument is that there would be a point where there isn't anything to invest in to grow, which essentially describes the ultimate form of secular stagnation. I think the economic counter-argument goes something like the money supply isn't inherently finite. I could see that being an interesting argument.
I know I shouldn't get excited about this, as a more prosaic explanation is far more likely, but my heart still skipped a beat when I read “stellar-light collectors”.
Following up with radio telescopes in hopes of finding evidence of technologically emitted radiation seems pretty hopeless. Encryption of signals, advanced tech, too many things get in the way of getting a conclusive signal. Just point the James Webb at it once it's up and running to get a better picture of what's observable.
just hypothetically speaking: wouldn't a dyson array need to beam energy to the planet where those aliens live?
we should be able to pick up that high energy stream with current technology, but we'd need first to guess at which frequency it transmits to (if it's there)
edit: ok scratch that I stand corrected I was still thinking in earthling terms
They wouldn't necessarily live on a planet --- planets are a really inefficient may to make real estate. Much easier to live on the collectors themselves.
Assuming that 'live' is a useful term; thing about aliens is that they're going to be alien. Star Trek has conditioned us to think of aliens as humans in rubber suits, but real aliens are going to be anything but. We don't even know if it's a 'they'; it could be an 'it'.
If this is an artifact, then all it tells us is that they (or it) builds tools and likes energy. This suggests an inner-solar-system species like us, as living where things are fast and hot. But that's not necessarily a given. It could be a cold and slow outer-solar-system species doing something uncharacteristic. Or a plasma-based solar species. Or maybe it's something that's actually weird.
I know this is going to turn out to be rocks moving oddly, just like everything else, but I'm still really interested to see what the results of the radio telescope survey's going to be...
I don't think a planet would be an inefficient way to make real estate. Look at the benefits we get from living on a planet: free gravity, free protection from UV radiation, free life support, huge storage of water. I would assume that a civilization capable of constructing huge light collectors would also have no problem escaping the gravity field of a planet.
A planet is (one of?) the worst celestial objects in terms of usable area to mass. The benefits you listed may not be valid for planets other than Earth. In fact, most of Earth's surface isn't easily usable by us, due to large oceans and ice caps.
The benefits you cite for planetary living could also be enjoyed living inside an O'Neill space colony, including controlled gravity (from centrifugal force generated by spin).
That assumes that these hypothetical beings are made of matter and not pure energy. It could be that these beings are energy "parasites" that consume energy directly from stars.
They may even be an artificial intelligence that seeks to saturate the known universe, in which case a planet is unnecessary and even inefficient for their real estate. Maybe they just want to construct more interstellar data centers to propagate ;)
Others have pointed out they probably wouldn't live on a planet, but if they did, don't you think they could (and would have to, to be useful) focus the beams tightly enough to actually hit the planet / receivers? And even if not, they'd have to be pointed at us for us to see them.
It claims that another star having a close encounter with KIC 8462852 (the star discussed in the article) and stirring up its comet cloud "would be an extraordinary coincidence". There is, in fact, evidence that such an encounter happened in our own solar system, "only a few millennia before humans developed the tech to loft a telescope into space." Calculating the speed and trajectory of a particular star, astronomers found that it would have crossed within the radius of the Oort Cloud approximately 70,000 years ago, producing exactly the scenario that "would be an extraordinary coincidence."[1]
Additionally, astronomers have checked stars in the galaxy for the possibility of a close encounter with our solar system, and find dozens of such candidates to come close to our solar system, sometimes within the radius of the Oort cloud, within the next million years (some as close as 240,000-470,000 years from now).[2]
The idea that a passing star would stir up the comet cloud of KIC 8462852 should not be dismissed as a coincidence, especially not to give leeway to discuss the potential for intelligence to build megastructures, when we see that such a coincidence is not even that rare for our own solar system.
[1] http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2041-8205/800/1/L1...
[2] http://www.mpia.de/~calj/stellar_encounters/stellar_encounte...