Short-lived light sources discovered in the sky

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/12/191212105854.htm

by lelf • 7 years ago

88 44 7 years ago

imglorp• 7 years ago

Do we really need to bring ET into every unexplained observation, just for the PR bump maybe?

TL;DR: some appearing/disappearing objects were found using old sky images. New stellar lifecycle ideas may be required.

dvfjsdhgfv• 7 years ago

And why not? Extraterrestial life is a hypothesis just like many other possible explanations. I had hoped we've long past the anthropocentric attitude, at least the discovery of exoplanets should finally end it.

mc32• 7 years ago

By ET it’s not clear to me they mean beings but rather objects outside our solar system....

That said sure, when evidence suggests such rather than as the immediate hypothesis to grab it, given the odds.

ganzuul2• 7 years ago

Human exceptionalism seems to have a lot of cognitive inertia behind it, regardless of how educated we are. What do you do when first contact is made? There are a lot of mental hurdles to overcome trying to answer this question.

rumanator3• 7 years ago

And why not?

Occam's razor. Until now zero ET have been found, thus it has the same likelihood as being Santa Claus.

pc86• 7 years ago

It's not anthropocentric to ignore the least likely possibility until presented with evidence to the contrary.

fsiefken• 7 years ago

red stars?

"Captain Christopher Pike takes emergency command of the Discovery and explains that the Enterprise was investigating seven mysterious red signals when it was catastrophically damaged. All but one of the signals have disappeared,..."

ASalazarMX2• 7 years ago

"Oh, those. You see, there's actually a very coherent and canonical explanation for the super space suit/ship that produced them, which is clearly well beyond any known technology, Federation or not.

Unfortunately, no one shall speak of it under penalty of death. Yes, we just introduced death penalty to Federation law."

rsynnott3• 7 years ago

Argh! That really long Peter Hamilton novel is coming true!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_Saga#Pandora's_St...

jbattle• 7 years ago

This book and its sequel are AMAZING

(Spoilers for the first page and a half or so): The plot point that kicks the whole thing off is when astronomers discover a star suddenly winking out of view. It turns out someone enclosed the star.

But who? The inhabitants to hide / protect themselves? Someone else who wanted to trap the inhabitants?

Everyone with any interest in sci fi should read these two books

comboy• 7 years ago

Or maybe it's the Alien Message (highly recommend if you don't know it yet) https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/5wMcKNAwB6X4mp9og/that-alien...

mongol• 7 years ago

768 pages? I have not read any book that long in ages..

ASalazarMX2• 7 years ago

Don't think of it as a long book, focus on a chapter at a time, like reading several tiny books.

rsynnott3• 7 years ago

Also there's a sequel, which is basically part of the same book. I'm pretty sure he just split it up because the publisher wouldn't let him publish a 1500 page novel.

paulmd2• 7 years ago

That really long Peter Hamilton novel

I'm afraid you're going to have to be more specific! ;)

ceejayoz• 7 years ago

"The one with all the sex."

arethuza• 7 years ago

It's the OnOff star from Deepness in the Sky :-)

rsynnott3• 7 years ago

That one had a slow switch-off process, tho, right? It was the light-up that was abrupt.

beamatronic• 7 years ago

I often wonder what’s the best humanity can do. Maybe we will never go lightspeed. Maybe we can’t build a wormhole. But I think that we can watch all of the sky, all of the time and in high-resolution. We can get there.

danhon• 7 years ago

Here’s the paper on Arxiv:

https://arxiv.org/abs/1911.05068

viggity• 7 years ago

Is it possible that the disappearing stars are really just fictitious entries designed to catch copycats?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fictitious_entry

ddevault• 7 years ago

In the scientific literature? It had better not be.

mannykannot• 7 years ago

Is gravitational lensing ruled out (i.e. the idea that when these sources were found, their images were abnormally brightened or displaced through lensing by an object relatively close to Earth (close enough that relative motion and parallax accounts for the disappearance.))

captainredbeard• 7 years ago

Could that account for 8-9x magnitude shifts? Seems unlikely.

77544cec• 7 years ago

There is also recurring novae (objects that have been seen to experience multiple nova eruptions), and the idea that our sun might be one of them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nova#Recurrent_novae

Short-lived light sources discovered in the sky

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