{"id":9811,"date":"2015-10-28T19:13:50","date_gmt":"2015-10-28T23:13:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.starshipnivan.com\/blog\/?p=9811"},"modified":"2015-11-02T20:17:27","modified_gmt":"2015-11-03T01:17:27","slug":"starry-starry-night","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/?p=9811","title":{"rendered":"Starry, Starry Night"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Julian<\/a><\/p>\n

This morning, an hour before dawn, I put a coat over my sleeping togs and went outside.<\/p>\n

In the west, the Hunter and his Hounds were accompanying the near-full moon, Sirius as bright as a mithril coin. In the east, where the black was starting to turn to indigo, was the jagged procession of the three bright candles \u2013 silvery Venus, golden Jupiter, bronze Mars.<\/p>\n

It never ceases to grip me, this beauty that floods my breastbone with longing.<\/p>\n

Part of this yearning is our eternal quest for companionship, recently sharpened by the report of odd light dips of the F-type star KIC 8462852 — nicknamed Tabby in honor of Tabetha Boyajian, the lead author of the study and the head of the crowdsourced Planet Hunters project that sifts through the Kepler Space Telescope findings.<\/p>\n

About 1,500 light years away in the direction of the Cygnus constellation, the star is too old and stable to have a dust accretion disk. The dips could be the result of a cometary collision or gravity darkening from rotational flattening\u2026 but for the first time the SETI community uttered the words \u201cDyson swarm\u201d with the slight, slight likelihood they might be more than fond wishes.<\/p>\n

We have to be dispassionate and rigorous in this, as in all other scientific explorations \u2013 especially ones that we\u2019re vested in. After all, pulsars were first designated LGM (Little Green Men) before the non-sentient basis of their regular pulsing was deciphered. But now there\u2019s at least one reputable paper out that outlines how to distinguish megastructures from natural planetary bodies.<\/p>\n

If there was a civilization around Tabby that was advanced enough to create sunlight-capturing structures, what we see may no longer exist or may have evolved into something \u201crich and strange\u201d. More time on different types of telescopes may resolve this. In the end, the yearning will remain; we\u2019re wired for wonder. There\u2019s a reason (beyond the fact that I sorely miss my own beloved father \u2013 ally and confidante since toddlerhood) why the alien in the guise of Ted Arroway caressing Ellie\u2019s cheek in Contact<\/em> brings tears to my eyes.<\/p>\n

Sources and Further Reading<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ross Andersen, \u201cThe Most Mysterious Star in Our Galaxy\u201d<\/a> The Atlantic, October 13, 2015.<\/p>\n

Boyajian et al, \u201cPlanet Hunters X. KIC \u2013 Where\u2019s the Flux?\u201d Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. (preprint<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Wright et al, \u201cThe Search for Extraterrestrial Civilizations with Large Energy Supplies. IV. The Signatures and Information Content of Transiting Megastructures\u201d. Submitted to Astrophysical Journal (preprint<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Conjunction 2015 photo <\/strong>by Julian Kay<\/a>. Left to right: Jupiter, Mars (faint), Moon, Venus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This morning, an hour before dawn, I put a coat over my sleeping togs and went outside. In the west, the Hunter and his Hounds were accompanying the near-full moon, Sirius as bright as a mithril coin. In the east, where the black was starting to turn to indigo, was the jagged procession of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,5],"tags":[22,23,20,21],"class_list":["post-9811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science","category-space-exploration","tag-conjunction","tag-exoplanets","tag-orion","tag-seti"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9811\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}