Tag: Tabetha Boyajian

What Is a Dyson Sphere?

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Article by Adam Mann                       August 1, 2019                     (space.com)

• In 1960, British-American theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson theorized that as an intelligent alien species’ population increased by 1% per year, their energy needs would grow exponentially becoming a trillion times larger in just 3,000 years. After developing and saturating the local moons and planets in their solar system, they may embark on a longer-term solution: The Dyson sphere.

• A Dyson sphere is a structure with platforms orbiting in tight formation that surrounds and encloses a larger celestial body, such as a gas giant planet like Jupiter or the system’s star itself, like a shell. Such an artificial structure would offer plenty of living space and energy production, drawing from the gas planet or star’s radiation. But as the Dyson sphere absorbed radiation, thereby dimming the planet from an outside observer’s perspective, Dyson theorized that the structure would need to re-radiate this energy through infrared wavelengths to avoid melting the structure itself. Therefore, a Dyson sphere would emit a bright signature in the infrared spectrum while being invisible to the human eye.

• This infrared radiation is considered a type of ‘technosignature’ that astronomers can use to detect an advanced civilization. Since the 1960’s, researchers have scanned infrared maps of the night sky in hopes of spotting a Dyson sphere, without success. But in 2015, Yale University astronomer Tabetha Boyajian did find a distant star that dimmed and flickered. Astronomers speculated that “Tabby’s Star” could be a partially built Dyson sphere. Because other astronomical experiments could not find other technosignatures from the star, scientists now think the object’s light patterns have some kind of non-alien explanation.

• In 1937, Olaf Stapledon first described a “gauze of light traps” surrounding a star system to utilize its solar energy in his novel “Star Maker”. Freeman Dyson acknowledged that this sparked his concept of a Dyson sphere. In 1992, a Dyson sphere was depicted in an episode of “Star Trek: The Next Generation”.

 

A Dyson sphere is a theoretical mega-engineering project that encircles a star with platforms orbiting in tight formation. It is the ultimate solution for living space and energy production, providing its creators ample surface area for habitation and the ability to capture every bit of solar radiation emanating from their central star.

Why build a Dyson sphere?

          Freeman Dyson

Why would anyone construct such a bizarre monstrosity? According to British-American theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson, who first speculated about these putative structures in 1960, an intelligent alien species might consider the undertaking after settling on some moons and planets in their local stellar neighborhood. As their population increased, these extraterrestrials would start to consume ever-greater amounts of energy.

Assuming this alien society’s populace and industry grew at a modest 1% per year, Dyson’s calculations suggested that the aliens’ area and energy needs would grow exponentially, becoming a trillion times larger in just 3,000 years. Should their solar system contain a Jupiter-size body, the species’ engineers could try to figure out how to take the planet apart and spread its mass in a spherical shell.

              Tabetha Boyajian

By building structures at twice the Earth-sun distance, the material would be sufficient to construct a huge number of orbiting platforms 6 to 10 feet (2 to 3 meters) thick, allowing the aliens to live on their star-facing surface. “A shell of this thickness could be made comfortably habitable, and could contain all the machinery required for exploiting the solar radiation falling onto it from the inside,” Dyson wrote.

But after absorbing and exploiting the solar energy, the structure would eventually have to reradiate the energy or else it would build up, causing the sphere to eventually melt, according to Dyson. This means that, to a distant observer, the light of a star wrapped in a Dyson sphere might appear dimmed or even entirely darkened — depending on how dense the orbiting platforms were — while glowing curiously bright in infrared wavelengths that aren’t visible to the naked eye.

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Why Alien ‘Megastructures’ May Hold Key to Making Contact With Extraterrestrials

by Seth Shostak                   April 20, 2019                      (nbcnews.com)

• For nearly 70 years the scheme favored by most scientists in looking for extraterrestrial life on other planets, and that employed by SETI (the search for extraterrestrial intelligence), has been to beam radio transmissions toward celestial objects in space. Radio waves can easily traverse light-years. (The article’s writer is a former director and senior astronomer at SETI.)

• Successful results from our beaming a radio transmission into space is dependent upon the ET society beaming back a response, should they happen to receive it at all. They may not want to reveal themselves. Similarly, we may not want to reveal ourselves to an evil race of ETs.

• An attractive alternative might be in searching for alien structures and large artifacts in the form of massive engineering works constructed by an advanced extraterrestrial society.

• University of Chicago physicist Daniel Hooper recently suggested looking for clusters of stars where an advanced civilization may have moved distant stars into their own orbit as back-up suns. Corralled stars would be easy to spot, reasons Hooper.

• In 2015, astronomer Tabetha Boyajian and her colleagues thought that they’d found a star around which a Dyson sphere had been constructed by an extraterrestrial civilization. It was noted that ‘Tabby’s Star’, 1400 light years away, would dim as the star rotated. Today, scientists believe that the dimming comes not from a mega-structure, but heavy dust surrounding the star.

 

If you’re trying to come up with the best game plan for proving the existence of extraterrestrials, you’ve got plenty of options. Naturally, you want a strategy with a high chance of success, simply in the interests of time, money and a shot at the Nobel Prize.

For nearly 70 years the scheme favored by most scientists has been to look for signals — radio transmissions. That’s the classic approach of SETI (the search for extraterrestrial intelligence), and frankly, it makes sense. Radio can easily traverse light-years, and the technology for detecting it is well known and highly sensitive.

But is looking for signals really the best plan? Is it possible that we’re making the wrong bet?

There’s an attractive alternative: searching for physical artifacts — alien structures. We’re not talking about crop circles or other odd phenomena here on Earth. We’re talking about massive engineering works that an advanced society has constructed somewhere in space.

Why search for artifacts? Because it eliminates the requirement that the aliens have chosen to get in touch — to transmit radio signals our way. Sure, maybe they’d want to do that, but then again maybe they’d rather lay low. If you’re not sure you’re the Milky Way’s top-dog society, you don’t want to bet the farm by assuming that the alpha aliens, wherever they might be, have good intentions. Silence could have survival value.

There’s another point: Picking up an alien civilization’s transmissions requires that the signal reach your telescope at the very moment that you’re pointing it in their direction. This is SETI’s well-known “synchronicity” problem, and it’s been likened to firing a bullet and expecting that it will intercept, head-on, another bullet shot by someone else. Improbable.

In nearly every radio SETI experiment, the amount of time spent listening at any given frequency is but a few minutes. The universe has been around for nearly ten thousand trillion minutes, so SETI efforts are a bit like stepping into the backyard hoping you’re just in time to catch a raccoon stealing the cat food.

Of course, you can believe the aliens have some good reason to spend lots of time transmitting to Earth, but if they’re even a short distance away (astronomically speaking), they won’t know we’re here — there hasn’t been enough time for our radar and television signals to reach them yet, even at the speed of light.

In contrast, artifacts may be lurking in space just waiting our discovery, all night, every night. China’s Great Wall and the Egyptian pyramids are earthly constructions that have existed for centuries. Finding them doesn’t demand much synchronicity.

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Alien Megastructure Star: Dimming Of Tabby’s Star Sets New Record

by Allan Adamson             March 27, 2018                (techtimes.com)

KIC 8462852, also known as Tabby’s Star, has dimmed again. Researchers say that it dipped in brightness more dramatically than ever.

• In 2011, the Kepler Space Telescope observed a star that dimmed as much as 22 percent. The star is KIC 8462852, also known as Tabby’s Star named for Tabetha Boyajian, the Louisiana State University astrophysicist who discovered the star. Since then it has been observed to sporadically dim in brightness, then return to normal.

• On March 16, 2018, Boyajian and colleagues recorded the “…deepest dip we have observed since the Kepler Mission in 2013! WOW!!” By March 22nd, the star’s brightness increased rapidly and was nearly back to normal when it started to dim again on March 26th, even moreso than the previous week and setting a new record.

• A planet passing between a star and Earth will typically cause the dimming of the host star by 1 percent or less and at regular intervals. What makes the Tabby’s Star different from many others is that it dims at unpredictable intervals and at varying degrees.

• A popular theory of the cause of Tabby’s Star’s erratic dimming is the orbit of an alien megastructure around the star, such as an array of solar panels created by an intelligent extraterrestrial civilization. Other theories involve the star devouring a nearby planet, or interference by a comet, or interstellar dust.

 

Louisiana State University astrophysicist Tabetha Boyajian, who discovered the star, and colleagues, revealed that the star has dimmed by at least 5 percent and possibly 10 percent.

The scientists said that Tabby’s star, also called “alien megastructure star” due to its bizarre behaviors suspected to be associated with an intelligent alien civilization, started to dim on March 16 and then returned to normal.

Boyajian and colleagues said that the dip in brightness was the largest observed dip in the star since 2013.

                 Tabetha Boyajian

 

“On Friday (2018 March 16) we noted the last data taken were significantly down compared to normal,” the researchers wrote in their Tabby Star observation blog. “This is the deepest dip we have observed since the Kepler Mission in 2013! WOW!!”

By March 22, the star’s brightness increased rapidly and was nearly back to normal but it started to dim again on March 26.

“Today we have some very big news – data taken at TFN last night show the flux is down 5 percent,” Boyajian and colleagues reported on March 26. “Looks like we beat the record set just last week on the deepest dip observed since Kepler!”

In 2011, the Kepler Space Telescope observed that the star dimmed as much as 22 percent. Other dimming events also occurred throughout 2017.

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Scientists Wrong In Ruling Out ‘Alien Megastructure’ Around Dimming Star

by Norman Byrd          January 21, 2018          (inquisitr.com)

• “Tabby’s Star”, or KIC 8462852, is over 1000 light years from Earth and displays four separate dips in the star’s brightness. It made news in 2017 that its dimming might be due to an alien megastructure or some type of artificial construct of alien design such as a ‘Dyson Sphere’ partially covering the star.

• Now, in an article posted to Phys.org, one of the lead co-authors of the study, the star’s namesake Tabetha Boyajian, notes that the dimming and brightening of Tabby’s Star is due to a massive cloud of dust and is “not opaque, as would be expected from a planet or alien megastructure.” She and her co-authors say that an artificial alien structure can be ruled out because if it were a solid megastructure, the wavelength depth of the dimming would more consistent.

• But couldn’t an alien structure surrounding the system’s star not necessarily be of a solid material, but rather made of a type of material that would allow some filtering of the light? Or what if it is only partially completed and therefore not consistent in its dimming? It is, therefore, wrong to strictly rule out the possibility that the star’s dimming might be due to an alien construct around the star. On the other hand, it could be simply due causes that are natural in the cosmos, as the astrophysicists now say.

 

One of the continuing story subtexts in all the recent deep space and exoplanet discovery articles, not to mention those covering the accumulating data from planets and moons within our own Solar System, is that the existence of alien life cannot be ruled out. As an exception to this, in further study of Tabby’s Star, the mysterious dimming star KIC 8462852, it was revealed that the cause of the dimming effect was most likely due to a natural phenomenon, and it could be ruled out that the strange effect was caused by an alien megastructure or some artificial construct of alien design.

But is that correct?

To be precise, according to an article posted to Phys.org, one of the lead co-authors of the study, star namesake Louisiana State University’s Tabetha Boyajian, noted that the dimming and brightening of KIC 8462852 was due to a massive cloud of dust and was “not opaque, as would be expected from a planet or alien megastructure.” The conclusion was derived from perusing months of observation data of the so-called “dimming star” — which is over a thousand light years from Earth — that captured four separate dips in the object’s brightness. By studying the various wavelengths, it was determined that the effect, if it were a more solid or opaque obstruction, would present itself in the dimming data as a similarity in wavelength depth.

Penn State’s Jason Wright, also a co-author of the study, supports Boyajian’s conclusion. He writes in his blog, AstroWright, that the new study suggests “we now have no reason to think alien megastructures have anything to do with the dips of Tabby’s Star.”

Although they may be correct, Boyajian and Wright’s conclusion could well be flawed in the thinking that an extraterrestrial civilization so advanced to be able to build an alien megastructure that could surround (or even partially surround) something as large as a star would be constrained to using materials that might not allow some filtering. That is, not getting similar wavelengths or some wavelength uniformity from the dimming star data might not actually rule out an alien megastructure if such a massive construct was built using materials that allowed at least some of the star’s light to pass through.

And then there is the possibility that the dimming is caused by a structure that is itself only partially complete.

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