The rapidly disappearing universe

[Littlefish]

In late 2015 Tabby's star became famous for having impossibly large, cold objects orbiting it. If the profile of the largest object was a circle it would be about 2/3 the diameter of our sun, which is also the diameter of the largest class of red dwarf stars.

 

Within months a study of photographic plates reported a gradual 19% dimming of the star from 1890 through 1989. Then someone thought to check all 4+ years of Kepler data and found that Tabby's star had dimmed 3%, with 2/3 of it occurring during a 200 day period.

 

Kepler watched only 150 thousand stars out of 150 billion in our galaxy. That means there must be around a million stars in our galaxy currently going dark like Tabby's star. Many more fading stars must be recorded on those photo plates, and in fact the authors of the photo plate study identified other stars that appear to be fading, according to Popular Science magazine. If those special stars take 500 years to fade, as the photo plate and Kepler studies suggest, and there are currently a million fading in the galaxy, then we can estimate that 2000 stars start their fade every year. That's far more than the three luminous solar masses born in the galaxy each year. At that rate, the entire galaxy would be dark in a mere 75 million years.

 

Unfortunately, this might not be as far fetched as it sounds. If Tabby's star completely fades away it could become indistinguishable from dark matter. The only way we would be able to detect it from a distance would be by its gravitational pull on luminous stars. While the Milky Way is currently about 83% dark matter, a galaxy the same size was recently discovered that's 99.99% dark. Are those ratios stable over time? Maybe that galaxy is a picture of what ours will look like someday.

 

What if the darkening of galaxies is natural and our star is doomed to start fading at any moment? Fortunately, the rate of dimming of Tabby's star is far too high to be natural. Star's contain enough free photons to remain bright for many thousands (some say millions) of years even if fusion stops, and since they move about randomly the photon density of a star would remain uniform even as it cooled. Star dimming can only be slow and uniform.

 

The only way to dim a star rapidly is to grow a mega structure around it. For that reason, Tabby's star seems to be unequivocal evidence of a super technology bottling a star. What if all the dark matter, 85% of the matter in the universe, is bottled stars!

 

The biggest problem with the shrouded stars idea is that the stars aren't producing enough radiation for us to measure. Where's the waste heat from the 750 billion shrouded stars in our galaxy? Their energy is missing from the environment. Similarly, the objects dimming Tabby's star by at least 22% from our perspective are not emitting the infrared radiation we would expect. Where's the energy going?

 

There's only one reasonable way to account for the missing heat that I can think of: Photoelectric panels tuned for infrared radiation could recycle waste heat as electricity. Although we can't do that yet, our technology is still young. However, the use of heat recycling technology would imply that all the radiant energy of the stars is being used or stored somehow, possibly by being converted into matter. That's a bit hard to believe.

 

The stars in our galaxy and most others are all moving as if they were part of a much larger invisible galaxy that extends outward from the edge of the visible part in a region called the halo. That's the evidence for dark matter. We don't know the geometry of the dark matter distribution, but I picture the spiral arms being six times longer with the outer 5/6 dark. Similarly, Hubble data has recently been used to calculate a dark matter ring surrounding an entire group of galaxies. Dark matter seems to avoid the places where the highest densities of matter and radiation are found, yet it also tends to concentrate near them. If we were colonizing the galaxy we'd probably head straight to the fringes where it's safest from collisions and supernovas, and then work our way inward. Dark matter prefers the same places we would.

 

Theory and simulation predicts that our galaxy should be orbited by hundreds of luminous dwarf galaxies but we only see eleven. The missing dwarf galaxies problem is currently unsolved, but I suspect that they actually do exist and are simply dark now. Dwarf galaxies would be the most coveted real estate in the universe.

 

How can we prove or disprove the bottled-star hypothesis? Tabby's star seems to be a star in the process of being bottled, but until more of it disappears we won't know if it's really destined to become cold like dark matter. If Tabby's star and those other stars suspected of fading were all found to be near the edge of the visible galaxy, that would be strong circumstantial evidence that luminous matter transmutes to dark matter.

 

The 99.99% dark matter galaxy is interesting because its few visible stars are not clustered near the core as expected but are spread-out through the entire mass. For that reason they call it a fluffy galaxy. If aliens darkened that galaxy, why did they skip those ten million stars? Could those be the ones that independently produced life? Are they the home systems of a federation or a zoo? Similarly, there are visible stars within the dark matter halo of our own galaxy. If those stars were chosen to remain visible, they may reveal a statistical anomaly by being heavy in certain types of stars.

 

A final thought about this far-fetched scenario. If dark matter really is a great number of shrouded stars, perhaps their purpose is to convert the stars' luminous energy into dark energy, the force that pushes galaxies apart. I can understand that aliens might want to avoid the big crunch at the end of time, if it wasn't too much trouble.

 

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The most mysterious star in the galaxy
https://board.freedomainradio.com/topic/47251-the-most-mysterious-star-in-the-universe/

 

Tabby's star
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KIC_8462852

 

The fluffy galaxy
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/234672-found-a-fluffy-galaxy-made-from-99-dark-matter

 

Popular Science
http://www.popsci.com/controversy-still-brewing-over-alien-megastructure-star

 

Dark matter ring
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/news/dark_matter_ring_feature.html

 

Another fading star

[rosencrantz]

In late 2015 Tabby's star became famous for having impossibly large, cold objects orbiting it. If the profile of the largest object was a circle it would be about 2/3 the diameter of our sun, which is also the diameter of the largest class of red dwarf stars.

 

 

It became famous for having no flux. That can be explained by several hypotheses the Dysonsphere being the most unlikely one.

[Littlefish]

 

It became famous for having no flux. That can be explained by several hypotheses the Dysonsphere being the most unlikely one.

 

 

A few weeks ago that was true. Now there's no longer any doubt that the star has been fading for 100+ years. None of the proposed explanations except a Dysonsphere can account for that. I'd like to hear what you think is a more likely hypothesis.

[rosencrantz]

Now there's no longer any doubt that the star has been fading for 100+ years.

 

That's odd because the photometry done is only 3 years old.

[Littlefish]

That's odd because the photometry done is only 3 years old.

The wikipedia entry for Tabby's star provides details on two long term studies that both show it dimming over time. A century long study of photographic plates found that the star dimmed 19% compared to neighboring stars on the same plates. A modern 4 year study by the Kepler Observatory recorded the star dimming a few times faster.

 

I'd like to see a hypothesis that can account for that within the framework of known physics.

[rosencrantz]

A century long study of photographic plates found that the star dimmed 19% compared to neighboring stars on the same plates. A modern 4 year study by the Kepler Observatory recorded the star dimming a few times faster.

 

 

This is disputed 

 

 However, teasing accurate magnitudes from long-term photographic archives is a complex procedure, requiring adjustment for equipment changes, and is strongly dependent on the choice of comparison stars. A contrasting study, examining the same photographic plates, concluded that the possible century-long dimming was likely a data artifact, and not a real astrophysical event.

 

Even if the 100 year long dimming was correct it doesn't prove the Dyson sphere, unless you assume the aliens have unions for space construction. They work for 100 years on it, then all of a sudden there are major changes. Doesn't make sense.

[Littlefish]

This is disputed 

 

Even if the 100 year long dimming was correct it doesn't prove the Dyson sphere, unless you assume the aliens have unions for space construction. They work for 100 years on it, then all of a sudden there are major changes. Doesn't make sense.

 

Yes that study was originally debunked, but the debunkery itself has since been debunked by the big modern telescope at the Kepler Observatory which also records it fading over time. The Kepler space telescope, The Kepler Observatory's telescope, and the photoplates all show the same thing.

 

I don't understand your remark about alien unions. What changes did they suddenly make? It seems most likely that the star has been fading in the same chaotic fashion all along.

 

Accept the fact that the star is fading rapidly. Do you have a more likely explanation than a dyson sphere?

Correction:

 

It seems that there is no Earth based Kepler telescope, and that wikipedia's reference to data from the Kepler Observatory was actually referring to the space telescope's data. So that's the only modern telescope that has measured the fading of Tabby's star.

[rosencrantz]

I don't understand your remark about alien unions

 

Only alien workers who are unionized work that erratically.

[Littlefish]

It turns out that Tabby's star is only 1400 light years away. That's very close and nowhere near the edge of the visible galaxy where it would most easily be interpreted as progressive dark matter. Give me time and I'll think of more arguments against this silly and unwelcome hypothesis.

[Crallask]

If we had tech taht could go this far into affecting the universe, wouldn't we merely search for a way to get beyond the universe rather than trying to change something so vast?

[NiemandKnows]

 

It became famous for having no flux. That can be explained by several hypotheses the Dysonsphere being the most unlikely one.

 

A Dysonsphere may not be the most likely explanation,but it is the most fun. While most astronomers are discounting it as more in line with Ancient Aliens,I am sure all are thinking "wouldn't it be cool if.it were Aliens"

[rosencrantz]

It would be cool if there were aliens. But it's not realistic because we haven't been contacted yet. If there is no faster than light travel, alien civilisation could send out self replicating drones, thus making contact with other civilisations. Given that the existence of aliens is very likely the fact that we haven't been contacted can mean two things. First, we missed each other in terms of time. There may have been alien civilisations before or after us, but they didn't find us when we became human. Second, and that is more likely civilisations don't make it past space travel. They destroy each other with the advent of nuclear bombs, nanotechnology, biotechnology and E.T. knows what else.