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(January 13, 2016 at 10:32 pm)vorlon13 Wrote: Here's an update on yon weird beastie.
Also note, we have observations of this star going back over 100 years, and it turns out it is and has been a weird little goomer.
The star KIC 8462852 is a completely-ordinary F3 main sequence star, except that the light curve from the Kepler spacecraft shows episodes of unique and inexplicable day-long dips with up to 20% dimming. Here, I provide a light curve of 1232 Johnson B-band magnitudes from 1890 to 1989 taken from archival photographic plates at Harvard. KIC 8462852 displays a highly significant and highly confident secular dimming at an average rate of 0.165+-0.013 magnitudes per century. From the early 1890s to the late 1980s, KIC 8462852 has faded by 0.193+-0.030 mag. This century-long dimming is completely unprecedented for any F-type main sequence star. So the Harvard light curve provides the first confirmation (past the several dips seen in the Kepler light curve alone) that KIC 8462852 has anything unusual going on. The century-long dimming and the day-long dips are both just extreme ends of a spectrum of timescales for unique dimming events, so by Ockham's Razor, all this is produced by one physical mechanism. This one mechanism does not appear as any isolated catastrophic event in the last century, but rather must be some ongoing process with continuous effects. Within the context of dust-occultation models, the century-long dimming trend requires 10^4 to 10^7 times as much dust as for the one deepest Kepler dip. Within the context of the comet-family idea, the century-long dimming trend requires an estimated 648,000 giant comets (each with 200 km diameter) all orchestrated to pass in front of the star within the last century.
January 14, 2016 at 3:25 am (This post was last modified: January 14, 2016 at 3:26 am by ApeNotKillApe.)
(January 14, 2016 at 2:56 am)Irrational Wrote:
(January 13, 2016 at 10:32 pm)vorlon13 Wrote:
Here's an update on yon weird beastie.
Also note, we have observations of this star going back over 100 years, and it turns out it is and has been a weird little goomer.
The star KIC 8462852 is a completely-ordinary F3 main sequence star, except that the light curve from the Kepler spacecraft shows episodes of unique and inexplicable day-long dips with up to 20% dimming. Here, I provide a light curve of 1232 Johnson B-band magnitudes from 1890 to 1989 taken from archival photographic plates at Harvard. KIC 8462852 displays a highly significant and highly confident secular dimming at an average rate of 0.165+-0.013 magnitudes per century. From the early 1890s to the late 1980s, KIC 8462852 has faded by 0.193+-0.030 mag. This century-long dimming is completely unprecedented for any F-type main sequence star. So the Harvard light curve provides the first confirmation (past the several dips seen in the Kepler light curve alone) that KIC 8462852 has anything unusual going on. The century-long dimming and the day-long dips are both just extreme ends of a spectrum of timescales for unique dimming events, so by Ockham's Razor, all this is produced by one physical mechanism. This one mechanism does not appear as any isolated catastrophic event in the last century, but rather must be some ongoing process with continuous effects. Within the context of dust-occultation models, the century-long dimming trend requires 10^4 to 10^7 times as much dust as for the one deepest Kepler dip. Within the context of the comet-family idea, the century-long dimming trend requires an estimated 648,000 giant comets (each with 200 km diameter) all orchestrated to pass in front of the star within the last century.
The star has shown a slight dimming trend over the last century. Stars of that particular stripe have not been observed to do that.
Additionally, the eclipses, which are (so far) unique are apparently part of what is 'unusual' about this star, meaning the eventual explanation needs to cover both the odd eclipses we see and the slow steady dimming.
The granting of a pardon is an imputation of guilt, and the acceptance a confession of it.
(January 14, 2016 at 11:06 am)vorlon13 Wrote: The star has shown a slight dimming trend over the last century. Stars of that particular stripe have not been observed to do that.
Additionally, the eclipses, which are (so far) unique are apparently part of what is 'unusual' about this star, meaning the eventual explanation needs to cover both the odd eclipses we see and the slow steady dimming.
So now we know how long it takes average super aliens to build a Dyson sphere!
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