So... have we found Ringworld?

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# 1408394 17-Oct-2015 20:41

I suspect that all the mental energy being wasted trying to suggest reasonable hypotheses to support a personal wish that we'd discover "proof" of a bizarre alien construction would be better spent thinking about more mundane reasons why the variation in luminance may have have been observed.
It's hardly as if this is "unprecedented". The discovery of the first pulsar "LGM1" was (until explained) rather more compelling than this (for a while anyway), as a natural phenomenon which was producing pulsating signals at regular 1.3 second intervals seemed truly "out of this world".

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# 1408402 17-Oct-2015 21:07

Rikkitic: Apologies for duplicating this topic. I searched first but missed this thread.

My point was, if this does actually turn out to be alien, The builders of those structures, who were clearly far ahead of us 1500 years ago, have had 1500 years to get even farther ahead of us, not to mention 1500 years to come here. Should we be worried?

1500 light years is not 1500 years; the former a measure of distance, the latter a measure of time

edit: apologies i see what you mean ... no they can't get here in 1500 years. unless they travel at the speed of light ....

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# 1408404 17-Oct-2015 21:13

Fred99: I suspect that all the mental energy being wasted trying to suggest reasonable hypotheses to support a personal wish that we'd discover "proof" of a bizarre alien construction would be better spent thinking about more mundane reasons why the variation in luminance may have have been observed.
It's hardly as if this is "unprecedented". The discovery of the first pulsar "LGM1" was (until explained) rather more compelling than this (for a while anyway), as a natural phenomenon which was producing pulsating signals at regular 1.3 second intervals seemed truly "out of this world".

I was going to suggest a natural phenomenon and I see it has already been suggested

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# 1408405 17-Oct-2015 21:14

Oldmanakbar: Well if they built a Dyson sphere 1500 years ago and hadn't somehow invented warp drive I wouldn't be too worried.

Any civilisation that spent 1500 years travelling towards us in a slowboat (assuming they survived) would have gone totally lord of the flies by now.
A few wall-mart specials could probably handle them.

Unless of course that is us 1500 years ago, and we came here. And in fact we are all aliens.

We should all totally write a book and turn it into a movie.

Meh, been there, done that ... next ...

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# 1408406 17-Oct-2015 21:16

Linuxluver: Looks like a star out there ("KIC 8462852") is surrounded by something that makes its light levels fluctuate chaotically. It might be a huge field of comets, sucked in by a passing star - or it might be alien megastructures blocking the light from the star.....like a kind of Ringworld.

I see the star in question also has a companion dwarf star. Perhaps that has something to do with it, too.

But it's causing quite a stir. It's 454 parsecs / 1480.7 light years away.

an orbiting mini black hole sounds more plausible

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Rikkitic

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# 1408410 17-Oct-2015 21:46

joker97:
Rikkitic: Apologies for duplicating this topic. I searched first but missed this thread.

My point was, if this does actually turn out to be alien, The builders of those structures, who were clearly far ahead of us 1500 years ago, have had 1500 years to get even farther ahead of us, not to mention 1500 years to come here. Should we be worried?

1500 light years is not 1500 years; the former a measure of distance, the latter a measure of time

edit: apologies i see what you mean ... no they can't get here in 1500 years. unless they travel at the speed of light ....

I figure anyone who can run rings around their star can probably figure out how to travel at lightspeed. Or maybe they can go faster but took some breaks along the way. Or maybe they can't, and will arrive here the day after tomorrow instead of yesterday. The precise time frame isn't that important. The question, if one accepts the assumption that there is a 'they', is what will they do when they get here.

I don't think there is ever a bad time to talk about how absurd war is, how old men make decisions and young people die. - George Clooney

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# 1408416 17-Oct-2015 21:55

Rikkitic:
joker97:
Rikkitic: Apologies for duplicating this topic. I searched first but missed this thread.

My point was, if this does actually turn out to be alien, The builders of those structures, who were clearly far ahead of us 1500 years ago, have had 1500 years to get even farther ahead of us, not to mention 1500 years to come here. Should we be worried?

1500 light years is not 1500 years; the former a measure of distance, the latter a measure of time

edit: apologies i see what you mean ... no they can't get here in 1500 years. unless they travel at the speed of light ....

I figure anyone who can run rings around their star can probably figure out how to travel at lightspeed. Or maybe they can go faster but took some breaks along the way. Or maybe they can't, and will arrive here the day after tomorrow instead of yesterday. The precise time frame isn't that important. The question, if one accepts the assumption that there is a 'they', is what will they do when they get here.

I think someone's given the answer already.

But no, why come all the way here, there are infinite other destinations to visit, including nearer solar systems.

Involuntary autocorrect in operation on mobile device. Apologies in advance.

gzt

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# 1408417 17-Oct-2015 21:56

jpoc:
gzt: Building dyson structures and still using radio? Unlikely.

You have a better suggestion?

Really?

Something with a lower latency? After all, radio waves only travel at the speed of light.

Something that can be used for communication between different bodies orbiting in a star system? Bit hard to do that with fibre optics.

Something that can communicate with space ships travelling around in a solar system?

Something that can broadcast information to mobile consumers of information? Even when those consumers are out of line of sight?

Don't duck out by saying something like "they would have better ways that we cannot comprehend" because what we have seen would suggest otherwise.

We have seen a Dyson scale construction around one star - and quite importantly, not around any other stars in their vicinity. If they had FTL capabilities they would probably be erecting that stuff in other stars in their neighborhood.

If they had access to unlimited amounts of energy, they would have no need for Dyson scale construction projects. No breakthroughs in extracting energy from the zero point field then.

It seems unlikely that they will be using sub-ether wavebands or zero latency tachyon pulses for their general communications so yes, I still expect them to be using radio waves to pass information around.

There are a couple of candidate technologies but only in early stages on Earth, so we have no reliable detection methods. These are borderline on the constraints you have set for an answer (and do not include tachyons) so I will go no further on those. The constraints are a kind of catch 22.

But I think in essense you may be correct. There are many other uses of radio besides communication and it is very reasonable to look for those.

oxnsox

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# 1408440 17-Oct-2015 22:33

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Rikkitic:
I figure anyone who can run rings around their star can probably figure out how to travel at lightspeed. Or maybe they can go faster but took some breaks along the way. Or maybe they can't, and will arrive here the day after tomorrow instead of yesterday. The precise time frame isn't that important. The question, if one accepts the assumption that there is a 'they', is what will they do when they get here.

Doubt they'll bother.... looking out their windows 1500 (light) years ago we weren't emitting great wads of RF life signs. So they probably said 'nothing to see there... what's over the other fence'. And promptly set about making a Shark-Navigator Romboid.

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# 1408445 17-Oct-2015 23:06

oxnsox:
Rikkitic:
I figure anyone who can run rings around their star can probably figure out how to travel at lightspeed. Or maybe they can go faster but took some breaks along the way. Or maybe they can't, and will arrive here the day after tomorrow instead of yesterday. The precise time frame isn't that important. The question, if one accepts the assumption that there is a 'they', is what will they do when they get here.

Doubt they'll bother.... looking out their windows 1500 (light) years ago we weren't emitting great wads of RF life signs. So they probably said 'nothing to see there... what's over the other fence'. And promptly set about making a Shark-Navigator Romboid.

So in parallel universes people have intricate relationships with their vacuum cleaners huh

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TheWinterDragon

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# 1408463 18-Oct-2015 00:05

you guys are so weird, off topic posts usually degrade into dick and fart jokes at this point.
But you just geek it up, it's so great. Love it!

Wait so who wrote Ringworld, wasn't Clive Barker was it?

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# 1408488 18-Oct-2015 06:48

TheWinterDragon: you guys are so weird, off topic posts usually degrade into dick and fart jokes at this point.
But you just geek it up, it's so great. Love it!

Wait so who wrote Ringworld, wasn't Clive Barker was it?

Larry Niven?

Jon

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# 1408492 18-Oct-2015 07:38

What ever it was it's history now

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# 1408493 18-Oct-2015 07:45

TheWinterDragon: you guys are so weird, off topic posts usually degrade into dick and fart jokes at this point.
But you just geek it up, it's so great. Love it!

Wait so who wrote Ringworld, wasn't Clive Barker was it?

Parallel universes are real!

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mdf

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# 1408494 18-Oct-2015 07:45

Yep, Larry Niven.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Niven

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