This is an update in my continuing coverage of KIC 8462852 or Boyajian’s Star for July
1st, 2017.
For the extensive backstory on this star, see my other videos on this channel, or the
dedicated KIC 8462852 playlist specifically.
The star continues to act up, and while a preliminary paper is due out any time from
Dr. Boyajian and her team, a few interesting bits and pieces have been floating around
that are worth considering.
More, Dr. Boyajian has been posting frequent flux updates for the star, including one for
last night which shows ongoing minor dimming.
The star has been intermittently active since late May.
Most prominently was the “Elsie” dip, which Boyajian and her team collected significant
data on.
The one take away from that that’s out there right now is that color data was taken of
the “Elsie” dip and posted by Boyajian on the official site of the star in the blog
section, link in the description below.
That data shows that the star dipped deeper in shorter wavelengths of light than in longer
ones.
This helps narrow things down significantly as to the nature of the material causing the
star to dim in the short term.
It would be consistent with dust as an origin and would generally, but not necessarily,
put checks in the boxes for hypotheses that the phenomenon is of natural origin and involves
dust in an elliptical orbit of the star.
That elliptical orbit would help explain the general lack of infrared in past observations,
as the dust moves away from the star it cools down.
As it moves closer, it would warm up leading to varying InfraRed emissions.
The color data might also seem to push away from the already remote possibility that KIC
8462852’s behavior might be due to the activities of an alien civilization, but it actually
doesn’t really change that, at least yet from what is out in public.
Now, I must caveat before I speculate in that I personally think the chances of this being
due to alien activity is marginally possible, but very remote.
Ever since Schaeffer discovered the long-term dimming trend, and the subsequent determination
that the trend seems to be speeding up, the alien megastructure hypothesis has been in
a modified state from where it was originally.
Originally it was just structures blocking the light from the star.
But with the long-term trend, it became structures under active construction.
Then it became structures being constructed so rapidly, and increasingly so, that it defies
any method of construction I can imagine, even nanotechnology.
This illustrates the big problem with alien origin hypotheses for this star or any other;
they can be retroactively form fit to just about any observation so long as your end
is to prove the existence of intelligent alien life.
I know some commenters take my viewpoints as painfully cautious, and even that I don’t
want to find alien life.
This is not the case, though I do admit that I don’t want to find hostile aliens bent
on converting earth into the alien equivalent of cheeseburgers.
It’s merely that when discussing alien detections, I want truth, unequivocally.
When, and I stress when as I think it will happen sooner rather than later, we do discover
an alien civilization it needs to be flat out unambiguous.
We need to be able to say this is it, and that’s that.
KIC 8462852 on the other hand is too ambiguous for anything close to that, and honestly it
looks like a dust cloud.
But, I am open minded, who knows what’s out there.
And, in hopes of not being too much of a downer, I would point the viewers of the channel to
my video on Przybylski’s Star, link below.
I think that star has a significantly higher likelihood of being a detection of alien activity
than KIC 8462852 due to the apparent presence of transuranic elements in the star’s upper
atmosphere.
This very thing was advanced decades ago by Sagan and Shklovski as one way you might announce
your existence to the universe, you start dumping elements that as far as we know do
not appear in nature into your star.
This star apparently has just such elements in it, such as plutonium, and if proven so
would pose some serious challenges to nuclear physics and misty concepts such as the activities
of the island of stability in nature.
Think either rethink the upper reaches of the periodic table and what heavy elements
can exist in nature, or take a serious look at possible alien activity because you’ve
got nothing else left if you can’t figure out a natural way to generate transuranic
elements outside of a laboratory.
I would also note that sometimes we might use the word unlikely too much regarding the
detection of an alien civilization.
There will come a time when it happens, whether sooner or later, and the words that it will
probably happen within the next 20 years are often muttered by prominent scientists.
And when we talk about likelihoods there are two ways to think about it.
It’s valid to say that the chances of catching the existence of a civilization being active
and building things in geologic time scales is very low.
Fair enough, but why then why do we bother with radio SETI?
What are the chances of catching the existence of an alien transmitter in geologic time?
And there is of course Enrico Fermi, whose paradox states that if alien life exists,
we should see them everywhere.
That thinking would suggest that it should not be surprising to spot the occasional alien
civilization out there.
I would simply ask do we really know what the chances of spotting one are?
I’m skeptical that we do know, or can even guess with any authority.
I simply say it because I suspect intelligent life in the universe is exceedingly rare,
and I do have a basis for that, but that also, admittedly, is a bias.
If it turns out that it’s not rare, then that equation changes and I’m all wet.
But back to KIC 8462852.
Dust clouds don’t suffer from the problems of scale that technology and construction
would, natural dust can be produced or accumulated on these rapid time scales, through cascading
collisions and other ways, and can block the enormous amounts of light as seen at this
star.
Mega structures have a much harder time there.
But, there is a possibility and onto the speculation we go, dust clouds do not necessarily have
to be of natural origin in a star system and if they aren’t, then unnatural ones would
have certain signatures that natural ones would not.
That brings us to a 2011 paper by Duncan Forgan and Martin Elvis, link in the description
below.
This paper details what you would look for as far as dust and waste debris if a civilization
were actively mining asteroids in a star system.
The paper goes on to suggest that this might be an inexpensive form of SETI, whenever someone
happens to be studying an old star system with a debris disk, it would be prudent to
check for markers of alien activity just in case.
I’m not sure how applicable that is to KIC 8462852, I simply don’t know, in fact if
anyone has any ideas drop them in the comments below.
But the paper is an interesting take on a novel form of SETI and I toss it out there
for those interested.
I would also briefly mention in passing that there are murmurs of patterns in the Kepler
and other data for KIC 8462852.
I’ve mentioned these in earlier updates, but would caution that patterns are not always
really there even when they seem to be.
So for that aspect of the story much more study is needed, though it’s very much worth
doing.
If the existence of any kind of pattern is established, this story will heat up in a
hurry.
So there you have it.
The star continues to dip, and the story continues to evolve.
I think the next milestone, barring a massive dip, is when Dr. Boyajian and her team release
their preliminary paper, which I would imagine will be a bit since the star continues to
act up.
And, of course, I will be back with another update as soon as something happens.
I’ve included other relevant links in the description below for those wishing to dig
deep, including the reddit thread on the subject which is full of knowledgeable people and
perspectives on the story and always a good read and a fine way of keeping up on the day
to day events surrounding this star.
Thanks for listening!
I am futurist and science fiction author John Michael Godier and be sure to check out my
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explorations into the interesting, weird and unknown aspects of this amazing universe in
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