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Chemical Addiction said:
you failed to mention your opinion/guess what do you think it might be?

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That's because I don't have one.

Whatever is orbiting the star is huge. If we were viewing the sun from the same distance (~1400 light years), and Jupiter passed in front of the sun, the amount of light observed would drop about 1%. This object is blocking 80-90% of the light observed when it passes between us and it's host star.

If the object was solid (like a planet, brown dwarf star, or just a hypothetical chunk of planet-density matter), then the immense gravity of the object would cause the star to wobble around the center of gravity formed by the host star and the object, and this would be easily observed. Since this has not been observed (and the fact that something that massive would be able to generate enough heat to glow, and thus show as a binary star system) suggests that the object has a large surface, but not much mass (relative to a typical celestial body of that size).

The star is classed as a main sequence star, with no infrared signature that typically comes with a proto planetary disc. The system is too old to have significant debris left over from star formation, as that would have been consolidated into planets withing the first billion years or so.

Similarly, a planetary collision also gives off a characteristic infrared signature, which is absent in the data taken before the first observation of light variation. Therefore, the chances of a planetary collision occuring between measurements, without any sort of signs before or after the collision (a cold debris field days after a collision between two planet-sized objects), is highly improbable.

The linked paper supports the theory that a cloud of comets was pulled out of the host star's oort cloud by a gravitational disturbance (a nearby star passing through the local neighborhood). These comets then pulverized each other as they flew into towards the star, and the debris field from this event continues to orbit the host star, periodically blocking the light. Even this theory is shaky at best, as the closet companion star could possibly interact with orbiting bodies, but can't physically interact with the host star, suggesting that the ability of the companion star to physically interact with the system as a whole is minimal.

Finally, at a radius of 1.58 solar radii, and a distance of 1400 light years, the angular diameter of the star is .03 milli arc seconds, which is roughly 1/1000th of the diffraction-limited resolution of any optical telescopes that I know of. This means that we won't be able to simply point the hubble space telescope at the system and find out.

I personally don't know what to make of this. I'll be very interested in what shows up when we image the system in more frequency bands (infrared, microwave, radio, xray, etc.) For now, I'd just like to hear other opinions, and discuss possibilities that I may have not considered.

Also this forum is slow as shit, I haven't posted a thread in a while, and was itching to discuss something relevant to my interests with somebody. You'd be surprised how many of my engineering friends and coworkers hate space topics, don't believe in evolution, and will preach to you about how one should not seek truth in the stars when it can be found in The Book....

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Chemical Addiction said:
I'd love to engage you in intelligent conversation but I lack the intelligent requirement. I remember in the article it saying aliens should be the very last theory, that being said if it were why would they build something that large? I thought it would be neat if it was some kind of solar screen use to collect energy and send it wirelessly to said civilization. But technology usually gets smaller as it advances, or so I thought.

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The Dyson sphere is a hollow sphere. This hypothetical megastructure completely surrounds the host star at the radius of the habitable zone (so for our solar system, the Dyson sphere would be 93 million miles in diameter).

The structure itself provides ample living space (a Dyson sphere 10 feet thick would provide enough room to cover the entire surface of the earth with a solid layer of buildings 32,700 miles thick).

The inside surface of the sphere would have access to the entirety of the host star's energy output (for the solar system, a Dyson sphere would have access to enough energy in one hour to meet 3.7 billion times the earth's annual energy consumption in 2012).

As an added bonus, encasing the star in a Dyson sphere would render it invisible in the optical and (more than likely) the xray, UV, microwave, and radio bands....leaving only infrared and gamma as the only bands in which significant evidence of the civilization's presence exists.

I think that's what most people are suggesting when they talk about the "alien megastructures" theory. Something like that would be necessary for a civilization to reach a Kardeshev Type II status, and would be a crucial foundation for the next step, which is to harness the power output of the civilization's host galaxy (a Type III civilization, which would be what you are talking about, collecting solar energy from individual stars, and transferring it to wherever the energy is needed in the galaxy). Either way, there are quite a few motivations for an intelligent civilization to attempt a star-orbiting megastructure like a Dyson sphere.

It's neat to think about, but the complications when considering it's construction are migraine-inducing. A spinning sphere does not have a possible configuration that allows all points on the surface to be in a stable orbit, so significant portions of the structure would be pulled toward the star at all times, and would need to be held in place during construction and then adequately supported once construction is complete.

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P-O said:
prob just some weird ass "moons" that cover most the surface, we have trouble picturing


If the universe does have infinite possibilities, then it could be anything i guess

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entirely of cookie dough (existence confirmation pending).

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scotty beam me up!

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and would need to be held in place during construction and then adequately supported once construction is complete.

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Chemical Addiction said:
Also I was  thinking about space all day because of this thread and a question popped into my mind that never occurred to me before. Lets say there's a star 1000 light years away, as I understand it it will take 1000 of our years for the light of the star to be visible to the human eye; to travel to earth.

But what about telescopes? if you look at that planet with just your eyes 1000 years has passed but with the magnifying lens of the telescope I would think you'd be seeing the rays long before they made it to earth. Does that mean If you look at a star with your naked eye and see the plantet 1000 years in the past would the telescope being seeing the same star at a completely different point in time? And I don't mean just the time it takes to look through the telescope, I mean years.

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That's actually a really interesting question, and highlights how odd light and it's interactions are. Sorry for the slow response, I was either working my ass off or baked out of my mind all weekend

In order for a telescope to form an image (whether it uses film plates or a CCD-type detector), the photons from a distant object must travel to the telescope and physically interact with the detection equipment. Because of this, the telescope cannot image any photons that have not yet traveled the full distance from a distant object to the telescope.

The same restriction applies to your eye. The photons must physically interact with the rods and cones in your retina before an image signal can be generated. This is why we all see an image of a distant galaxy or star in roughly the same timeframe, even if we zoom in with a telescope.

Feel free to ask questions like this, I love discussing the universe and it's inner workings

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Thebooedocksaint said:
So for it to be an object blocking such a large amount of the stars light it would have to be of larger radius than the star correct?

This object would have to be opaque to the wavelengths of light blocked.

I feel if it was overly reflective it would intensify the light when it's on the far-side of the star, possibly not (I can't cosmology/astrophysics).




WHAT if the star passed behind "dark matter"?

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While the object is not estimated to be larger than the host star, it is close to the same size (lower bounds of 50% of the star's diameter). If it was larger than the star, then it would either block out all of the host star's visible light output, or it would have to be so far away from the star that it's apparent size would be smaller than the star.

Then again, it could be that the object (or object field) is partially translucent and larger than the host star, and the light that we are seeing is what is making it through the object as the object passes in front of the star. If this were the case, then further observation would reveal a "filtering effect" where only specific bands of visible light (and possibly other Electromagnetic radiation) would show up when the object passes in front of the host star. If that is the case, then it would be very easy for us to determine (at the very least) a partial list of chemical constituents of the mystery object. This technique can be used anyway, unless the object is 100% opaque with a discrete boundary (i.e. not a gradual transition, as would be the case in a dust/gas/debris field).

You are exactly right about the object's reflectivity. If the object is made up of mostly free, non-reactive metals like silver, platinum, rhodium, etc., then the object would reflect 75-90% of all visible light hitting it, and we would see a periodic spike in light output from the host star in between the periodic dips in light output. However, non-reactive metals are fairly rare in the universe (because they are typically of a higher atomic number than iron, and thus require supernova shock wave conditions in order to form). Comets and asteroids are typically made up of ices (water, CO2, methane, etc.), and as counter-intuitive as it sounds, ice is not very reflective.

As an example:

- Polished silver reflects 98% of all light that hits it
- Dry soil reflects 8%
- Asphalt reflects 12%
- Snow reflects 10 to 20%
- Solid water ice reflects 3%

So, the object is more than likely not overly reflective, and this seems to line up well with the data, as the light output of the star is fairly consistent at a maximum value until the periodic dip in light output.


As far as "dark matter" goes, I'm not sure if you're referring to the dark matter that the scientific community uses to account for the lack of mass in the observable universe....or matter that is dark, like it absorbs a lot of light rather than reflecting it.

If you are referring to the former, then I think the answer is nothing. The reason I say that is because all experimental evidence suggests that dark matter is non-clumping (locally speaking, it is a diffuse cloud that is relatively evenly dispersed throughout the galaxy), and does not appear to interact with the electromagnetic field. This would mean that dark matter would not actually block light, or interact with it at all.

Then again, dark matter is a hypothetical idea to explain a gaping hole in our understanding of the universe, and we may think we know a lot more about it than we actually know