TED anomaly - The most mysterious star in the universe

[King Leto]

Please note: this is not really relevant for Stellaris gameplay, I just would like to share this. Still I think that this is an interesting piece on how our own real life scientists approach and search when coming across unknown space anomalies.

Yesterday TED uploaded a video from a study about this particular anomaly spotted at a distant star. This anomaly shows there are that there are unusual light reflectations coming from the star. These light reflectations are used to discover objects (say a planet) orbiting the star. Throughout the years of observations, multiple dips of variable time (up to around a week) of the star's brightness have been shown. These drops have been recorded up to 15-22%. Compare this to a planet the size of Jupiter which would only obscure a star of this size by 1%, and its transit would only last a couple of hours.

The video down below puts forward multiple hypotheses, although more clearer observations will follow in 2017. These studies will determine if the eclipsing mass is a solid object, dust or gas.

I personally can't help but be intrigued or fascinated by it, whatever the outcome may be.

 

[Number 7]

send mercedes romero, she'd have it figured out

 

[EntropyAvatar]

I thought I read somewhere that this star also had a longer-term decrease in brightness, like 15% over the last century or so. Definitely something I'd like to learn more about!

 

[TheBeautifulVoid2]

Cool, thanks for linking this. I'll watch it when I get home. I read Boyajian's paper a little while ago but always enjoy a good TED talk. It'll be really exciting to see what comes out of this.

They say that the exclamation which you really have to watch for in science isn't "eureka!" but "hang on, that's weird..." This is definitely a case of the latter.

 

[S.C. Watson]

I've been following this for a while - thanks for posting the TED talk. I hadn't seen it yet. Really fascinating stuff. I love the fact that while she says her money is on natural phenomena, her face is saying "oh my fuck, I think I am the first person in history to discover aliens D:"

 

[Attalus]

Cool, thanks for linking this. I'll watch it when I get home. I read Boyajian's paper a little while ago but always enjoy a good TED talk. It'll be really exciting to see what comes out of this.

They say that the exclamation which you really have to watch for in science isn't "eureka!" but "hang on, that's weird..." This is definitely a case of the latter.

Another case for the astroknowledge series perhaps ?

 

[TheBeautifulVoid2]

Another case for the astroknowledge series perhaps ?

With one exception, the Astroknowledge series has been about things that I, TBV, understand. From the sounds of it nobody understands this; I'd simply be restating Boyajian's list of hypotheses, and I try not to write things that other people have written before.

If it is aliens, then this is probably a good way to discover them: close enough to say hello but too far to visit.

 

[sterrius]

"This is blorg infiltration party unity 75BX sending message to brothers home, confirmation that they know!".

"This is brothers home, send party invitation, repeat, send party invitation!"

"Roger, preparing the party for the incoming of brothers home, sending invitation to the scientist tomorrow".

 

[King Leto]

Cool, thanks for linking this. I'll watch it when I get home. I read Boyajian's paper a little while ago but always enjoy a good TED talk. It'll be really exciting to see what comes out of this.

They say that the exclamation which you really have to watch for in science isn't "eureka!" but "hang on, that's weird..." This is definitely a case of the latter.

Cool, do you (or others) happen to know what possibilities or hypotheses of explanation they bring up in the paper in detail? There are a few mentioned in the video but Boyajian and others pretty much regard those and even the most plausible one (comet swarm) as contrived at best. And from what I can observe, they are trying really hard to find a natural explanation for this anomaly instead of jumping right away on the "this could be aliens" boat.

 

[S.C. Watson]

Cool, do you (or others) happen to know what possibilities or hypotheses of explanation they bring up in the paper in detail? There are a few mentioned in the video but Boyajian and others pretty much regard those and even the most plausible one (comet swarm) as contrived at best. And from what I can observe, they are trying really hard to find a natural explanation for this anomaly instead of jumping right away on the "this could be aliens" boat.

I read the paper, and that's about it. They're kind of stuck, because what they're seeing matching literally nothing from the hundreds of thousands of stars we've surveyed.

She glossed over it in the video, but in order for the comet swarm to work, it would require more mass passing in front of the star than the star itself to create those numbers we see in the dip, not to mention the total lack of IR signal from dust that would be present from that large a comet cloud.

At present, non of the natural hypothesis work, and are easily falsified.

 

[Uhlume]

The same goes for the alien megastructure theory. It is expected that a Dyson Swarm or partial Dyson Sphere would glow very strongly in infrared.
And since there is no excess of infrared light in the star's spectrum, they're kind of stuck.

 

[S.C. Watson]

The same goes for the alien megastructure theory. It is expected that a Dyson Swarm or partial Dyson Sphere would glow very strongly in infrared.
And since there is no excess of infrared light in the star's spectrum, they're kind of stuck.

True - but she did point out that the excessive heat could be being redirected/absorbed, as a possible explanation of why we're not seeing it. But you're right. The whole thing is just kind of wonky.

 

[TheBeautifulVoid2]

I've just watched it. I have no idea either: Boyajian and her team seem to be good scientists and have covered off everything methodically, so I trust that anything I say would be something they've considered. I await the results of further study with great interest.

I think it's probably not aliens, but that's more of a gut feel: as Boyajian (and others in this thread) have said, we aren't seeing what we would see if it was. Light can't just disappear: it has to turn into other sorts of energy and be radiated away or else the heat buildup would kill everyone, and we aren't seeing that radiation.

@King Leto: I'll reread her paper and then see if I can summarise it.

 

[Ijiero]

Perhaps an orbiting black hole somewhere between the star and Earth? When it's inbetween, it sucks up the light.

I know, crazy..

 

[alphasam]

I read the paper, and that's about it. They're kind of stuck, because what they're seeing matching literally nothing from the hundreds of thousands of stars we've surveyed.

I happen to be one of the co-authors of the paper and one of the Planet Hunters members who found it. After searching through thousands of Kepler light curves by hand I would agree it most definitely is special.

It just doesn't really fit any scenario well. To my mind some features of the curve like the smaller v-shaped dips that don't get much mention reminded me of Heartbeat stars (a special type of binary). And especially the "transit" events near the end of the observation reminded me of multiple star systems we had seen where a binary star system was orbiting another star creating that distinctive undulating pattern. Problem is these simply don't fit the rest of what is going on.

True - but she did point out that the excessive heat could be being redirected/absorbed, as a possible explanation of why we're not seeing it. But you're right. The whole thing is just kind of wonky.

This is entirely the problem of invoking "aliens" to explain any phenomena, you could make up pretty much any excuse as for why things don't add up. You might as well say it's magic.

 

[Uhlume]

Perhaps an orbiting black hole somewhere between the star and Earth? When it's inbetween, it sucks up the light.

I know, crazy..

The singularity wouldn't be visible, true. But it's accretion disc sure would be.
Black Holes are perhaps some of the most visible structures out there, so they'd know if there was a black hole binary partner.

 

[Ijiero]

The singularity wouldn't be visible, true. But it's accretion disc sure would be.
Black Holes are perhaps some of the most visible structures out there, so they'd know if there was a black hole binary partner.

Ah, there goes that idea. Thank you for the info though; I'm utterly fascinated by these kinds of things.

 

[paranoidsteve]

it is obscured by a big black obelisk.

 

[Uhlume]

it is obscured by a big black obelisk.

That would be one seriously enormous obelisk/monolith...
Like King Leto said, an average Jovian only obscures like 1% of a star this size...

 

[Cannes]

The singularity wouldn't be visible, true. But it's accretion disc sure would be.
Black Holes are perhaps some of the most visible structures out there, so they'd know if there was a black hole binary partner.

Free floating stellar mass blackholes don't generally have accretion disks.
The pretty much only way to spot these is when they move in front of background stars. There have been many such studies done in the milkyway in order to establish just how many stellar mass blackholes there are creeping about in the galaxy and the signal we see from this is pretty well understood. So you're right on one front, it is very unlikely to be a black hole.