DShomshak Posted October 26, 2015 Report Share Posted October 26, 2015 Or conversely, construction debris. What would be worth building that close to a white dwarf star? If the star has a strong magnetic field, maybe... a power station. Back in my misspent youth, I wondered how much current you could generate by running a loop of wire around low Earth orbit, as the coil of a generator with the Earth as the magnet. Weak magnetic field, but very big coil, moving very fast. The results were, um, impressive. Dunno how intense a magnetic field white dwarf stars have. (You'd prefer a pulsar for this, but maybe they're all taken.) But if it's still at Sun-comparable intensity, only squeezed in because the star is so small, it still might make the core for a pretty good generator. So, what's known about the magnetic fields of white dwarf stars? Dean Shomshak Christopher 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted October 27, 2015 Report Share Posted October 27, 2015 My memory is that strong fields have been found, but not in all of them. The idea of trying a Zeeman splitting analysis for the star is interesting. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tkdguy Posted October 27, 2015 Author Report Share Posted October 27, 2015 Happy Hour Comet Unknown man-made object headed our way Christopher 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tkdguy Posted October 31, 2015 Author Report Share Posted October 31, 2015 A visitor at Halloween: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/nasa-just-discovered-massive-asteroid-222320164.html And it looks like a skull! pinecone 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tkdguy Posted November 1, 2015 Author Report Share Posted November 1, 2015 Study answers lingering questions about Voyager 1 in interstellar space Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted November 1, 2015 Report Share Posted November 1, 2015 It has to be recognized that the interstellar field being different from what we expected really should not be a surprise. We had no direct small-scale measurements before, so the models we had were almost completely untested. What surprises me most is how seriously people took them, actually. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Christopher Posted November 1, 2015 Report Share Posted November 1, 2015 This sounds more like science fiction, but what the hey... Alien Megastructures Found? Whatever it is, it blocks up to 15-20% of the light of the star for days to weeks at a stretch, from our point of view. And it doesn't radiate in the infrared. Just an idea regarding the missing infrared emission: Could it just be hidden? Like emitting it in a odd angle to the light from the star? Megastructures need a lot of time and resources to build. You would not want another civilisation to just look at a telescope and IR image and find that damn thing within Years or mere centuries of building it. They might come to get it from you. Civilisations as primitive as ours could find a unhidden Dyson type object from our home system. We actually looked for them all over the skies. Anything that might be able to challenge the builders themself would have the same ability. So would it not be in the best interest of any builders of Dyson type objects to make the appear as something natural for anything but a close (same solar system) inspection? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tkdguy Posted November 1, 2015 Author Report Share Posted November 1, 2015 Closeup of Enceladus Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted November 2, 2015 Report Share Posted November 2, 2015 Just an idea regarding the missing infrared emission: Could it just be hidden? Like emitting it in a odd angle to the light from the star? I *think* you might be able to prevent IR emission in some range of directions, but nowhere close to all of them. But that leads to the question ... how do they know what direction to choose for that no-IR-emission preference? At 450 parsecs away, nothing like technological signals from us have reached them yet. Our Sun would be just another undistinguished 13th magnitude G star to them, and they can't have detected us the way we detected them, because they are nowhere near our ecliptic (i.e., we cannot possibly be making transits they would see). Megastructures need a lot of time and resources to build. You would not want another civilisation to just look at a telescope and IR image and find that damn thing within Years or mere centuries of building it. They might come to get it from you. Civilisations as primitive as ours could find a unhidden Dyson type object from our home system. We actually looked for them all over the skies. Anything that might be able to challenge the builders themself would have the same ability. So would it not be in the best interest of any builders of Dyson type objects to make the appear as something natural for anything but a close (same solar system) inspection? Well, lots of stars have infrared excesses; the one in question doesn't. An infrared excess isn't really that unnatural. Frankly, I wouldn't call an IR excess by itself a giveaway of a Dyson structure being built. What is bizarre beyond words for this system is the transit light curves that the system showed during the Kepler run ... and the light curve diminutions are *easily* detectable even with groundbased instruments, as long as you have adequate time coverage. So you needed a space mission like Kepler to find it, but having found it, continued monitoring can be done from Earth's surface (admittedly with some loss of sensitivity, but the big drops lasting days is duck soup). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Christopher Posted November 2, 2015 Report Share Posted November 2, 2015 I *think* you might be able to prevent IR emission in some range of directions, but nowhere close to all of them. But that leads to the question ... how do they know what direction to choose for that no-IR-emission preference? At 450 parsecs away, nothing like technological signals from us have reached them yet. Our Sun would be just another undistinguished 13th magnitude G star to them, and they can't have detected us the way we detected them, because they are nowhere near our ecliptic (i.e., we cannot possibly be making transits they would see). Just don't emit in the same direction as your interstellar "shadow". Anyone in position to measure your passage by light, will not get any IR signature. Anybody seeing your IR signature, will not be able to measure your passage by light. In either case the other side has no idea if this is a natural phenomenon or not. Until they actually go a lot closer, wich without FTL drives will take a whole lot of time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted November 2, 2015 Report Share Posted November 2, 2015 But if you only prevent IR emission in the direction which your shadow extends, someone is bound to notice the correlation between transit and IR-faint status. That's just screaming-out-loud asking for attention. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tkdguy Posted November 3, 2015 Author Report Share Posted November 3, 2015 Looking good for the EM Drive so far http://finance.yahoo.com/news/nasa-latest-tests-show-physics-230112770.html L. Marcus and Christopher 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tkdguy Posted November 3, 2015 Author Report Share Posted November 3, 2015 New findings on the Martian atmosphere Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tkdguy Posted November 4, 2015 Author Report Share Posted November 4, 2015 SABRE Engine Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Old Man Posted November 4, 2015 Report Share Posted November 4, 2015 Looking good for the EM Drive so far http://finance.yahoo.com/news/nasa-latest-tests-show-physics-230112770.html I want to believe, but without an explanation in known physics, and such a tiny amount of measured thrust, I can't help but be very skeptical. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Christopher Posted November 4, 2015 Report Share Posted November 4, 2015 I want to believe, but without an explanation in known physics, and such a tiny amount of measured thrust, I can't help but be very skeptical. I concur. They have not yet even reached the "peer reviewed paper" stage. Wich means they are still working on getting measurement errors figured out. Anywsay it sounds like a good case for a Neutrino Bet. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Old Man Posted November 5, 2015 Report Share Posted November 5, 2015 I will bet two neutrinos. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
megaplayboy Posted November 5, 2015 Report Share Posted November 5, 2015 How many quatloos is that? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted November 5, 2015 Report Share Posted November 5, 2015 Two firkins shy of a metric barleycorn. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Old Man Posted November 6, 2015 Report Share Posted November 6, 2015 Approximately a gross of zorkmids or roughly one Triganic Pu. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greywind Posted November 6, 2015 Report Share Posted November 6, 2015 http://astronomynow.com/2015/11/03/jupiter-kicked-a-giant-planet-out-of-the-solarsystem-4-billion-years-ago/ Old Man and tkdguy 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted November 6, 2015 Report Share Posted November 6, 2015 The technical preprint associated with that is here. tkdguy and Old Man 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Christopher Posted November 6, 2015 Report Share Posted November 6, 2015 http://astronomynow.com/2015/11/03/jupiter-kicked-a-giant-planet-out-of-the-solarsystem-4-billion-years-ago/ So, Jupiter was the solar systems bouncer? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
L. Marcus Posted November 6, 2015 Report Share Posted November 6, 2015 He loves pool. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IndianaJoe3 Posted November 7, 2015 Report Share Posted November 7, 2015 Has anyone suggested naming this hypothetical planet, "Cronus?" Lucius and tkdguy 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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