Kepler's strange readings from the Star KIC-8462852.

[sk8er913]

We have made a new discovery! But we don't know what it is yet. The leading natural hypothesis is a massive debris field of comets that collided in the outer part of that solar system. There is also a natural hypothesis that it is actually a binary system and that the sister star is a very dim red dwarf. Although none of these explanations are very good, leading to speculation that this could be a partial Dyson Sphere or something similar to it.


My hypothesis from seeing this data:
What I find weird about the data is the variation between it at the previous transition. I can think of 2 solutions(edited). The media is really pushing for aliens, and I do hope it's aliens, but it is an unlikely scenario.

1 - I had 2 ideas, but they both involved planetary bodies, the object is far to large to be a planet.



Things you should consider when thinking about this discovery:
- Object blocked 22% of the stars light
- A planet the size of Jupiter would only obscure the star by 1%
- Star is approximately 1.5x larger than ours.
- Distance 1480 light years
- the star's predicted 750-day dip around April 2015 was not recorded.
- Can someone help me find the approximate age of this star?
- Can someone help me find out if this star wobbles significantly?

"The fact that we don’t see a light curve like this among any of Kepler’s other 156,000 stars is telling. Whatever is going on here is rare enough to merit serious follow-up."



Here is Kepler's observations of the event:

Video from seemingly reliable source that explains different scenarios well:

Media sources:
news.discovery.com/space/alien-life-exoplanets/has-kepler-discovered-an-alien-megastructure-151014.htm
http://www.space.com/30849-bizarre-kepler-signal-alien-intelligence-speculation.html
http://www.space.com/30855-alien-life-search-kepler-megastructure.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KIC_8462852
http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=34260

Scientific paper:
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1509.03622v1.pdf


Note: Please don't merge this to the aliens thread, I made a specific thread because it is not about aliens. It's about the star KIC-8462852 and the planetary bodies surrounding it.

 

[Grayfox]

It could be anything.
We know very little about space.
Scientists say the star UY Scuti should not be that big, but it is(if placed in our solar system saturn would be the first planet, as the star extends past the orbit of jupiter)

 

[sk8er913]

It could be anything.
We know very little about space.
Scientists say the star UY Scuti should not be that big, but it is(if placed in our solar system saturn would be the first planet, as the star extends past the orbit of jupiter)

We know that it's massive though... to block 22% of an F-Type star you need an incredibly large object. Too big to be a planet, it would collapse into a star if it was a single planet.

 

[Grayfox]

We know that it's massive though... to block 22% of an F-Type star you need an incredibly large object. Too big to be a planet, it would collapse into a star if it was a single planet.

Could also be interference, an error.
Who knows, we only got data from kepler nothing else to verify the results

 

[sk8er913]

Could also be interference, an error.
Who knows, we only got data from kepler nothing else to verify the results

That's because Kepler is the only telescope capable of detecting planet sized objects, other scopes have taken measurements too, Wikipedia and the video posted both talked about the infrared telescope making a followup observation to see if it could find residual heat from an interplanetary collision. They concluded that there was interplanetary no collision. The best radio telescope in North America is pointed at it right now, checking to see if there's a civilization broadcasting radio signals.


I did some basic Geometry to get a grip on how big this object is. If all of the Earth's mass was converted into a giant cylinder, it would only be about 426 feet thick.

 

[Dennisch]

This could go in the Space thread, but if this turns out to be an alien structure, fingers crossed for a Dyson sphere type thingy, I'll be jumping a hole in my roof.

 

[sk8er913]

This could go in the Space thread, but if this turns out to be an alien structure, fingers crossed for a Dyson sphere type thingy, I'll be jumping a hole in my roof.

If it turns out the be an alien structure, then they must be millions of years more advanced than us. To them we are in the year 535, not much going on yet.

 

[Dennisch]

If it turns out the be an alien structure, then they must be millions of years more advanced than us. To them we are in the year 535, not much going on yet.

They'll have to wait another 100 years or so to see the first bursts of Greek Fire on planet Earth.

 

[sk8er913]

They'll have to wait another 100 years or so to see the first bursts of Greek Fire on planet Earth.

Lol. And about 1400 for a radio signal. they might be able to see the faint lights of ancient rome and Egypt though. If they are aliens using powerful spectroscopy telescopes. Lol

 

[LMSCorvetteGT2]

This could go in the Space thread, but if this turns out to be an alien structure, fingers crossed for a Dyson sphere type thingy, I'll be jumping a hole in my roof.

This ^ why is this in the computer sub-forum? Also I too will probably drop bricks in my pants but in reality if it was something of that magnitude, I feel it wouldn't be told to us.

 

[Dennisch]

This ^ why is this in the computer sub-forum? Also I too will probably drop bricks in my pants but in reality if it was something of that magnitude, I feel it wouldn't be told to us.

Too many snitches with smartphones nowadays.
The nerdgasm that it will unleash can not be contained. But, it most likely nothing special, as NASA's scientists say: our most optimistic guess is a swarm of exocomets.

 

[sk8er913]

This ^ why is this in the computer sub-forum? Also I too will probably drop bricks in my pants but in reality if it was something of that magnitude, I feel it wouldn't be told to us.

This is the technology forum, thought it wae a better fit than the opinions forum.

 

[LMSCorvetteGT2]

This is the technology forum, thought it wae a better fit than the opinions forum.

Uh no, if that was the case then the Space thread would be here, since this is a direct relation to space it should be in that thread and current events sub-forum not it's own special snowflake.

 

[sk8er913]

SETIs survey ended a few hours ago, hopefully we will get their data next week... The more I think about this, the more I think it could be instrumental failure.

 

[Robin]

SETIs survey ended a few hours ago, hopefully we will get their data next week... The more I think about this, the more I think it could be instrumental failure.

I also think it's a glitch. Like when they thought they found objects which travelled faster than the speed of light and it turned out to be equipment issues.

 

[LMSCorvetteGT2]

SETIs survey ended a few hours ago, hopefully we will get their data next week... The more I think about this, the more I think it could be instrumental failure.

I doubt it, considering this was measured over a period of time a year ago and more importantly monitored for over four years. Also these people do make a massive effort to ensure that before (hence the year) this is broken to science news and then regular media that they actually have something, to not lose face. The spectroscopy measures made put little doubt that this is an instrumental issue and more likely there is something different going on at this location. It could of been moving bodies of rock in a large field and thus nothing else like some speculate.

http://sites.psu.edu/astrowright/2015/10/15/kic-8462852wheres-the-flux/
http://sites.psu.edu/astrowright/2013/03/09/artifact-seti/

 

[sk8er913]

I also think it's a glitch. Like when they thought they found objects which travelled faster than the speed of light and it turned out to be equipment issues.

The equipment was working perfectly... they just forgot about the curvature of the Earth in their math.

I doubt it, considering this was measured over a period of time a year ago and more importantly monitored for over four years. Also these people do make a massive effort to ensure that before (hence the year) this is broken to science news and then regular media that they actually have something, to not lose face. The spectroscopy measures made put little doubt that this is an instrumental issue and more likely there is something different going on at this location. It could of been moving bodies of rock in a large field and thus nothing else like some speculate.

http://sites.psu.edu/astrowright/2015/10/15/kic-8462852wheres-the-flux/
http://sites.psu.edu/astrowright/2013/03/09/artifact-seti/

Perhaps it was a very small object in our own solar system... Nothing can explain whats happening well.

 

[Robin]

The equipment was working perfectly... they just forgot about the curvature of the Earth in their math.

If we are talking about the same experiment it says it was an improperly attached fibre optic cable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster-than-light_neutrino_anomaly

 

[sk8er913]

If we are talking about the same experiment it says it was an improperly attached fibre optic cable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster-than-light_neutrino_anomaly

I thought they said the machine was 20 miles shorter than they thought...

 

[LMSCorvetteGT2]

Perhaps it was a very small object in our own solar system... Nothing can explain whats happening well.

...I highly doubt that, they're looking at a star that is several light years away and to monitor something that far off for as long as they did would mean something was happening relative to that frame.

Now if something much closer in our solar system happened to interfere the time in which it would do so shouldn't be relative to that of something many light years away being seen. See what I'm getting at. The chances of it happening are slim and the chances of it being monitored for four years and being obstructed by an object in our own solar system...I'd say it's impossible.

Also I wouldn't say nothing can explain this, science gives a good idea of what might be going on, you keep trying to trivialize it.

 

[Dennisch]

We should see some results soon.

👍