I like this reply. It seems very silly that a society powerful enough to harness solar energy in a dyson swarm would waste all that juicy heat energy.

They would re-convert it, then reconvert it...then reconvert it...

What we see would likely be many orders of magnitude colder then it should be.

Maybe even the star is actually larger or more active than it appears to us based on spectrum measurements ;)

Speculating is really fun, I can't wait to learn more.

Also this is my first post in 14 years, go figure. :P

Well, Welcome back to the forum, ForeverConnected.
We're already beginning to reclaim waste heat ourselves. If I recall correctly, they call it co-generation.

Dr. Schaefer, who found the old 1890-1989 Harvard Observatory images of Tabby's Star, doubted the Dyson swarm theory. One reason was the absence of conspicuous waste heat. Another was the seeming improbability of even a super-civilization being able to arrange to collect 16 percent of the star's energy in the course of a single century. Who knows, though; maybe they have automated, self-reproducing construction machines to help them.

There are more things in the sky than those predicted by your philosophy (with excuses to Shakespeare). Witness the new super supernova for which there is no explanation.
Tullio

that Hypernova is awesome...& destructive!

They still suspect it's a Magnetar going Nova?!
;)

No mid-infrared radiation, expected to be radiated by a Dyson Swarm as waste heat, has been detected. Some very energy efficient technology would need to be supposed.
Its been suggested that a Dyson swarm might have multiple layers of energy extraction, each leaving the energy level lower. This would render the outer layer with a temperature not far above that of open space. This would presumably not be readily detectable.

maybe we can't detected enough IR energy on our devices?!

though observations have ruled out any planet-wide collisions...those produce a lot of IR energy, that we'd definitely see over that distance!
;)

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non-profit org. Play4Life in Zagreb, Croatia, EU

So here's a thought.
Imagine if you pushed Pluto and Charon into an elliptical path that took them inside the orbit of Mercury. I can imagine the resulting plume would block a lot of light for someone looking at our sun from a distance.
I'm thinking that a swarm of comets isn't enough. It would start would those - a stream of comets pouring into a closer orbit, gradually dimming Tabby's star as they formed a cloud around it - but along with them is an ice planet like Pluto with one or more large moons.
There wouldn't have to be any major collisions. Depending on it's size and composition, what we're seeing could be the result of an evaporating planet.

So here's a thought.
Imagine if you pushed Pluto and Charon into an elliptical path that took them inside the orbit of Mercury. I can imagine the resulting plume would block a lot of light for someone looking at our sun from a distance.
I'm thinking that a swarm of comets isn't enough. It would start would those - a stream of comets pouring into a closer orbit, gradually dimming Tabby's star as they formed a cloud around it - but along with them is an ice planet like Pluto with one or more large moons.
There wouldn't have to be any major collisions. Depending on it's size and composition, what we're seeing could be the result of an evaporating planet.

you wouldn't get 20% less from a Sun if you put ALL our planets in Mercury orbit!

a small graphic:

;)

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non-profit org. Play4Life in Zagreb, Croatia, EU

Sigh... I'm saying the swarm of comets idea is closer to credible if there are outer rim planetoids in that cloud - ice worlds like Pluto, which are essentially enormous comets, or would be if they were pushed into tight elliptical orbits. I mean, how many average size comets would it take to produce the dips in light that we've seen? Wouldn't it make more sense if we were talking about larger Kuiper Belt-type objects being the comets in question?

Sigh... I'm saying the swarm of comets idea is closer to credible if there are outer rim planetoids in that cloud - ice worlds like Pluto, which are essentially enormous comets, or would be if they were pushed into tight elliptical orbits. I mean, how many average size comets would it take to produce the dips in light that we've seen? Wouldn't it make more sense if we were talking about larger Kuiper Belt-type objects being the comets in question?

what part of "scientist say Comets can’t explain weird star dimming after all"?!
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn28786-comets-cant-explain-weird-alien-megastructure-star-after-all/

& what part of increased dimming of the star about 20% in last 100y don't you get?!
http://arxiv.org/abs/1601.03256
;)

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non-profit org. Play4Life in Zagreb, Croatia, EU

No need to be snarky - the link to the first article would have been sufficient.

No need to be snarky - the link to the first article would have been sufficient.

I'm not trying to be snarky!

Just want to paint a "picture in your mind", about what's happening...20% dimming, over last century (that we know of)...raises some questions, doesn't it?!
;)

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non-profit org. Play4Life in Zagreb, Croatia, EU

Just want to paint a "picture in your mind", about what's happening...20% dimming, over last century (that we know of)...raises some questions, doesn't it?!
;)

I'm aware of the hundred year 20% dimming. The comet theory was never plausible for me unless there were some other element to it so no surprise that it's been discounted.
But at this point we don't know if there is a connection between the long-range dimming and the dramatic dips that have been observed. Stars can dim or brighten over time, but if nothing is occluding it then we're seeing something radically bizarre for a star of this type and age.
In my mind Tabby's Star is way too close to be a likely candidate for an alien civilization anyway - I suspect we're scattered far more thinly than that. I think that we will eventually hear someone, but unless they send us pictures we're never going to see them. The odds that we could be watching the construction of a Dyson sphere in our immediate neighborhood are about the same as an ET landing on my lawn.
And I don't have a lawn.

Just want to paint a "picture in your mind", about what's happening...20% dimming, over last century (that we know of)...raises some questions, doesn't it?!
;)

I'm aware of the hundred year 20% dimming. The comet theory was never plausible for me unless there were some other element to it so no surprise that it's been discounted.
But at this point we don't know if there is a connection between the long-range dimming and the dramatic dips that have been observed. Stars can dim or brighten over time, but if nothing is occluding it then we're seeing something radically bizarre for a star of this type and age.
In my mind Tabby's Star is way too close to be a likely candidate for an alien civilization anyway - I suspect we're scattered far more thinly than that. I think that we will eventually hear someone, but unless they send us pictures we're never going to see them. The odds that we could be watching the construction of a Dyson sphere in our immediate neighborhood are about the same as an ET landing on my lawn.
And I don't have a lawn.

I'll put some numbers on the paper over the weekend & respond to you all...
;)

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non-profit org. Play4Life in Zagreb, Croatia, EU

Many of these alleged "Costs" are already sunk costs and may reflect the rate at which dish time is charged to and recovered from various projects. A lot of the Hoopla (possibly unwarranted and not well verified) may be to attract funding from various agencies and funding sources. Public research entities (such as universities , government labs and their allied agencies) are funded by a Government budget (Federal, State) for salaries and operating expenses. If they attract additional Grant funding then the excess cash is recorded in the financial VP's little black book to disperse elsewhere.

If these Dish locations do not have signal Processing Gurus who can probe for intelligent or sentient being emissions then they have no business of being in the SETI game whatsoever.

Consider the possibility that a partial Dyson swarm is the cause of the short term dips in brightness of Tabby's Star. It is then reasonable to posit that the supposed megastructure is under construction, and predict that the basic brightness, exclusive of the dips, should decrease over time, as more and more of the star's light is collected, and so blocked from our view.
With Dr. Schaefer's discovery, it appears that long term dimming is precisely what has occurred. This fulfills a very important requirement of a scientific hypothesis: predictive power.
We know nothing, really, about the number or distribution of extraterrestrial civilizations in our galaxy. It's not clear how we could know that they are unlikely to be found within a certain distance, or how likely they are to exist, in comparison to an obscure natural phenomenon.

The trouble with a "Dyson swarm", or a "Dyson Sphere" is that it is a means of hypothetical collecting energy for an advanced civilisation to use. It totally ignore the laws of thermodynamics, in particular it ignores the first law. A Dyson Sphere, or Swarm would collect energy on its "stellar" side, the civilisation would use it, but that energy now has to be dissipated somewhere - and the only place it can be dissipated is the on its "galactic" side. The scans have been IR, and RF, which are the energy levels at which the Dyson sphere/Swarm would have to re-radiate energy or it would "cook in its own juices".

This star is a mystery as to why it has dimmed over the last one hundred years, and why it apparently has this weird pulsation, and I dare say some more telescope time will be expended to record and monitor its behaviour until a sensible theory can be established.

(A pure guess is that it is a failed (super) nova, one with insufficient fuel to go bang properly and we are seeing its dying embers - have you ever watched a log fire that is going out? If so you will see where my idea comes from.)

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

One thing, at least, they're pretty clear about with this star: it's of the F type, and on still on the main sequence.
The absence of infrared-detected waste heat from the outside of a supposed Dyson swarm has been explained by astronomer Dr. Jason Wright. He reports that, in what would be a very incomplete stage of construction, too little heat would be radiated to make such a megastructure conspicuous.

Klik, snarky, or perhaps both, in fact I really do not know.

But the Los Angeles Times had a graphical presentation which when being run was showing the atmospheric turbulence across the whole of the Pacific Ocean, with Asia at the left edge and the United States at the right edge.

If you compare this presentation with the graphic of the solar system here, both of them tell about two different worlds and the possible difference between them when it comes to size.

But the fact is that neither a presentation showing the Pacific Ocean, or the planets of the solar system do not tell anything about the possible existence of intelligence, neither extraterrestrial or even Earth based such.

In the same way as we might assume that life is synonymous with possible intelligence, most people should agree that a crocodile, being a reptile, does not have much such intelligence.

Compare with a chimpanzee, a dolphin, or at least humans and we might be closer to the point of understanding what intelligence is supposed to be about.

When doing so, it should be remembered that a Dyson sphere for now is only a hypothetical structure, not something that has been observed in reality.

If such a structure could be detected close to a star in the Milky Way, this would be an indication that intelligent life is being present around this star and possibly on a planet as well.

This reminds me about a picture in a classical book which is not having that many pages, but still a marvelous book being forgotten and rather high standing in my living room and dating back to about 1974.

On the last page of this book is a painting of the surface of a hypothetical planet orbiting a star on the outskirts of the Milky Way. Being night, only the moon of the planet is being visible in the sky, but the whole Milky Way is glowing in the background.

If you happened to be an inhabitant of such a place, you most likely know where you are situated and therefore would wish to go somewhere else in order to be able to explore.

Definitely the heaven is full of stars, but for now planets are the places where intelligence most likely should be found and not necessarily the emptiness of space all the time.

In the scientific paper that started this whole business about Tabby's Star (Boyajian, et al) there was a brief mention of a the fact that the dips in light output from the star seemed to fall on multiples of about 48 & 1/2 days. They also noted that these were in two sets of five, each offset by half the base period, or about 24 days from the other. No particular significance was assigned to these fact at that time.

I happened to notice that if one started counting these multiples from the first observed dip, instead of plus or minus the day 800 dip, as they did in the paper, something interesting emerges.
For one set, starting at day 260, the multiples are: 2, 9, 15, and 16. For the other set starting on day 140, they are: 6, 15, 6, and 1.
I tried to see some sense or order in these numbers, but nothing obvious presented itself. Finally, I saw that most of these are figurate numbers, based on squares and hexagons.
From a square made of three rows of three dots, we get 9. From one with four rows of four dots, we get 16. From a hexagon made of 6 dots, one at each angle, we obviously get 6. Adding this to one with three dots per side, which shares two side in common with the first, we get a total of 15.
Between these two shapes we have all the numbers from the above Tabby's star data that are large enough to produce geometrical figures. This doesn't look exactly random, somehow. Either a notable coincidence, or...?

And now we have a new study which concludes that the 100 year dimming is actually a data artifact and not a real astrophysical event.
http://arxiv.org/abs/1601.07314

So we're back where we started.

(Adjusting the tin foil hat so it fits better)

This sounds awful convenient. The comparable dimmings is thus a data artefact. Note how the aliens misspelled artifact. With the return of Mulder & Scully I would hope this is looked into.

On the more serious side. This does sound a bit strange. More time studying the star should answer some of these questions I would hope.

Bob

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Sometimes I wonder, what happened to all the people I gave directions to?
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SETI@home classic workunits 4,321
SETI@home classic CPU time 22,169 hours

Dr. Schaefer ably defends his original analysis of the Harvard Observatory images, in the statement, linked below. As an experienced stellar photometrist , he took great care to eliminate sources of error from his data.
Hippke and Angerhausen apparently had different results from their analysis of the images, because they did not exclude unreliable data.
A spokesman for DASCH, Digital Access to a Sky Century@ Harvard, the source of the images, reportedly concurs in the validity of Dr. Schaefer's work.

http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=34933