back to article Soz, guys. No 'alien megastructure' around Tabby's Star, only cosmic dustbunnies

Sorry to burst your bubble, folks, but the mysteriously dimming Tabby's Star isn't due to an "alien megastructure" after all – it's just obscured by dust, according to a paper published today. KIC 8462852 (but Tabby's Star is catchier) was first spotted by NASA's Kepler telescope. It quickly became an object of fascination for …

  1. Steve K
    Coat

    Occam's Razor

    Occam's Razor would have saved them $107k!

    Dyson spheres just suck!

    1. Dan 55 Silver badge
      Black Helicopters

      Re: Occam's Razor

      Now the deep state has verifiable money trails to people who knew the TRUTH!

      The Men in Black will be paying them a visit with flashy things.

    2. Steve K

      Re: Occam's Razor

      What I should have said above is that Dyson Spheres would have sucked all the dust away....

      1. Scroticus Canis
        Happy

        Re: Dyson Spheres would have sucked all the dust away.

        That's a hell of an upgrade from the Dyson Ball vacuum cleaner range. Really big dust canister I expect.

        1. Sgt_Oddball

          Re: Dyson Spheres would have sucked all the dust away.

          More like Spaceballs 1. Shouldn't take long to get there with ludicrous speed...

          1. bombastic bob Silver badge
            Trollface

            Re: Dyson Spheres would have sucked all the dust away.

            "Shouldn't take long to get there with ludicrous speed"

            'Buckle This', let's take it all the way to PLAID!

    3. cray74

      Re: Occam's Razor

      Occam's Razor would have saved them $107k!

      There are dumb ways to spend large amounts of crowdfunding, like a $55,000 bowl of potato salad, an $8,000 Lionel Richie head, or a $107 million presidential inauguration. $107,000 on an astronomical research project, even if it has a predictable answer, seems comparatively sensible.

    4. Kabukiwookie
      Alien

      Re: Occam's Razor

      This used to be a Dyson Sphere, but then other aliens blew it up. Now they've detected that we caught them red-handed and they've changed course for Earth.

      There's my 2018 blockbuster. Now where do I get paid?

    5. handleoclast

      Re: Occam's Razor

      Dyson spheres just suck!

      So you're saying Tabby's star has two contra-rotating rings?

    6. bombastic bob Silver badge
      Coat

      Re: Occam's Razor

      /me imagines applying Occam's Razor to a Tabby... (ouch those claws)

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It's only dust,,,

    Yeah...that's what they want you to believe...right up to the moment when the invasion fleet full of little green men appears

    1. dnicholas

      Re: It's only dust,,,

      You're assuming their gender?! You're worse than our new brain eating alien overloards :mad:

      1. Alister

        Re: It's only dust,,,

        OH! Alien Overlords is it? (or overloards...)

        What about OverLadies, or Over-non-specific-gender-stereotypes?

        Hey?

        1. Kabukiwookie

          Re: It's only dust,,,

          'They' are coming. Or maybe it's 'zher' or 'xe' are coming. Sounds alien to me.

        2. DropBear
          Joke

          Re: It's only dust,,,

          Say "OverPerson". I dare you, say it. I swear I blow this kitten six way to hell that instant...

    2. Captain DaFt

      Re: It's only dust,,,

      Yeah...that's what they want you to believe...right up to the moment when the invasion fleet full of little green men appears

      Or:

      [Several thousand years ago... give or take a couple]

      Yzrak, the leader of the Ngda, flashed his chromatophores at the assembled beings in the Hall of Science, "There must be intelligent life elsewhere out there. How can we communicate with it?"

      Myriad beings flash a confused babble of lights as they mutter among themselves, until a strobe of consensus flashes through the hall.

      Gathered scientists in unison, "Great Yzrak, if we sent a fleet of small probes into the great dust cloud that encircles our sun, within a few rotations they could manipulate the cloud to modulate our sun's rays into a beacon that would proclaim, "We are here, Welcome." to all stars for thousands of lightyears around.

      Any species capable of intelligent flashing will be able to see it and know we are here and sapient."

      Pylok the otherthinker flashed in disagreement, "But what if other intelligent life out there don't communicate by light?"

      Yzrak flashed mockingly, "And how else would an intelligent species communicate? Farts and belches?"

      The laughter of the assembled was visible for yergs around.

      1. jake Silver badge

        Re: It's only dust,,,

        Oh, shit ... the ground just shook. Are they firing at us?

        (Earthquake just hit. USGS says a 4.5, centered under the Berkeley/Oakland border ... Was a mild jolt & a little rolling here in Sonoma.)

    3. Muscleguy

      Re: It's only dust,,,

      Sigh, you mean half way through their flight when they turn the ships round and burn to decelerate? Then we will see them coming. Interstellar invasion 101, that which accelerates must decelerate to arrive. See Oumumua on what happens when you don't decelerate, except be quick as it is disappearing fast.

    4. Trigonoceps occipitalis

      Re: It's only dust,,,

      "invasion fleet full of little green men appears"

      Its OK, I've got a small dog that will deal with them.

  3. WraithCadmus
    Alien

    They've gone

    We can turn the lights back on

  4. Philip Stott

    OMG

    Philip Pullman ... was right!?!?

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Has anyone on our planet ever considered building a large device that would sit in between our sun and a chosen star, and would blink the light on and off in order to send messages? Like a huge Venetian blind.

    Given the size of the moon needed at Earth to eclipse the sun, it might be practical to build such a thing if it were 80AU out, only needing to be 80x smaller than the moon. Is that right? Or it wouldn't have to be that big, only big enough to noticeably vary the light output, which would be how big?

    1. ArrZarr Silver badge

      You could only send messages to a very small area of sky. For that reason, you may as well just send a radio signal on/off/on/off and you would achieve the same results I believe.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Well, a radio signal would need someone to be listening for a radio signal, SETI style.

        A light signal would be noticeable by any old astronomer looking at the star who would notice the unusual activity.

        1. LaeMing

          Rather than an object, a bunch of orbiting dust clouds from exploding appropriately placed asteroids might be more feasible, though changing the message would be hard. (Full credit to Liu Cixin, author of 'Three body problem' for that idea).

          1. TRT Silver badge

            You want to turn the sun into a Klacks tower?

        2. Hans Neeson-Bumpsadese Silver badge

          A light signal would be noticeable by any old astronomer looking at the star who would notice the unusual activity.

          True, but that presupposes that the alien species in question has evolved some form of optical sense, in a similar way to how we Earthlings developed eyes.

          Considering the countless ways in which things could evolve, I don't think *any* form of communication could be taken as a given.

        3. phuzz Silver badge
          Alien

          Visible light signals would require an alien species that had eyes that use the same wavelengths as us, which might be the case if we're looking at a similar planet and sun to our own, but it's an unknown.

          Perhaps a better idea would be to transmit in one of the absorption lines, where it should look out of place to an alien radio astronomer, and hence pique their interest.

    2. Justthefacts Silver badge

      Sorry, doesn’t work....

      Moon works to eclipse, as seen from Earth, because it is much closer to Earth than it is to the Sun.

      You have got your thinking the wrong way round geometrically.

      One could either:

      A) Make the eclipsing object small, but close to the aliens. Then why signal at all, just reach out and touch, in terms of astronomical distance. Something asteroid sized is easily big enough, if located in their home system. If you want something 1/80th of the size of the sun, you have to be 79/80 of the way there......

      B) Make the eclipsing object of order sun-sized, but located in *our* system. Parallel light rays etc, means this is a good eclipsing body. This is hard, but actually *not quite* as nuts as it sounds. Nearly, but not quite.

      Compare the energy cost of signalling -*the total output of our sun* with manufacturing a couple of mm thick, electrically controllable glass (which does exist) and a million kilometres in diameter. Spin forward technology to make it electrically controllable Mylar, and modulating the suns output to 1% depth => 100000 kilometres. This would be an engineering feat for the 22nd century, but *not completely impossible*

      The problems are more - where do you put it?

      1) The eclipse is aimed at a particular star. You have to already know where they are, and that they might be looking.

      2) What happens to the reflected energy?......

    3. Gordon 10

      Given our current tech can only find earth size exoplanets that kinda puts a *big* lower bound on the size of your blind assuming early 21C Earth tech.

      And 80 AU is approx double the average orbital radius of Pluto and only 5 man made objects have passed Pluto (2 Voyagers and Pioneers + New Horizons)

    4. mr.K
      Alien

      Nice thought

      "Is that right?"

      No, not really. The moon eclipse the sun because it is about 400 times closer and the sun is 400 times bigger. Given that the closest star is over 270 000 AU away then 80 won't do much difference, some, but not much. So we have to look at dimming, and assuming at least our capabilities at the receiving end it would have to the size of a planet. Our planet is something we would have trouble spotting, depending on the size of the star it orbits. So even with greatly superior techniques we are talking a rather large device. After all at these distances there is only that many photons left.

      If you build further out the orbital speed would be lower and thus you should be able to keep it longer between the target star and our sun, but the further out the more narrow the shadow also becomes. Also at 80 AU the speed is still 3.35 km/s so keeping it still will not be an option.

      Then there is the time aspect. We are talking many years for light to reach the systems in the neighbourhood and we don't even know if there are anybody around the see it.

      I do like the idea though. Made me think.

  6. Alfie
    Alien

    Dust?

    Are we sure its just dust and not the remains of a supercomputer surrounding the planet of Krikket?

    1. Martin Gregorie

      Re: Dust?

      ... or might it be surrounded by a Smoke Ring, with the dimming caused by forests of Integral Trees.

    2. Mike Moyle

      Re: Dust?

      "The new data shows that different colors of light are being blocked at different intensities. Therefore, whatever is passing between us and the star is not opaque, as would be expected from a planet or alien megastructure."

      A stained glass Dyson Sphere! Lovely!

  7. This post has been deleted by its author

    1. Uffish

      Re: Converting C to F

      Enough of these unnecessary and impossible to understand temperature scales! It is Gas Mark 62 hotter than our sun.

  8. Alistair
    Windows

    Okay -- so -- Tabby's star is surrounded by dust, which is why it dims and brightens oddly.

    What will happen when it sneezes?

    1. Ugotta B. Kiddingme

      Re: what will happen when it sneezes?

      According to scholarly somewhat apocryphal reference material I've read, the Jatravartids refer to that event as the Coming of the Great White Handkerchief

    2. bombastic bob Silver badge
      Coat

      "What will happen when it sneezes?"

      or coughs up a hairball... *ack* *gag* *fssst*

  9. captain_solo

    Clearly not a Dyson sphere as those never lose suction and would have cleared up the dust by now

    1. John H Woods Silver badge

      clearly not a Dyson sphere...

      ... because we'd be able to hear it from here

      1. TRT Silver badge

        Re: because we'd be able to hear it from here...

        No, because sound doesn't propagate in a vacuum.

      2. Captain DaFt

        Re: clearly not a Dyson sphere...

        ... because we'd be able to hear it from here

        But in space, no one can hear you clean!

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Facepalm

    QUICK!!!..

    ...say something game-changing and paradigm-shifting about DATA GRAVITY!!!! It's JUST like Astrophysics!!!!

  11. Florida1920
  12. Anonymous Coward
    Black Helicopters

    Meanwhile...

    The Smoking Man was seen leaving El Reg's offices, and the editorial staff have been assured of abnormally large tax refunds this year.

  13. Ben1892
    Coat

    Silver beetles

    ...'nuff said

    Sent from: Earth West 1,217,756

    1. Alister

      Re: Silver beetles

      Joshua! Is that you?

  14. Romy

    No bubble no trouble

    Well, I told you there is impossible for such a structure So. you did not burst my bubble

  15. jake Silver badge

    Look here brother,

    Who you jivin' with that Cosmik Debris?

    (I'd apologize, but somehow I suspect Frank would approve.)

  16. DropBear
    Trollface

    Come on, of course it's still a Dyson sphere. Honestly, would you bother building one and not put in tinted windows...?!?

  17. This post has been deleted by its author

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