Talk:Tabby's Star

Thanks for wonderful job updating consolidated plot

Renerpho, thanks for the marvelous job you've done updating the consolidated plot of Tabby's Star dimmings! And thanks to Bruce Gary for the data!

Updating current consolidated plot

Does anyone have any objections to updating the current consolidated plot with the following version, which reflects the likely 1,574 day periodicity, and which throws a spotlight on the crucial October 2021 portion of the current observing season? Synchronist (talk) 00:15, 3 April 2021 (UTC)

aliens

i am no expert but i saw the counter explanation to it being a alien structure being that the light would be even in all wavelengths. wouldn't this be true too if they were made of a transparent material? transparent solar panels now exist. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:C7F:567C:2F00:59E1:BF7:314A:909C (talk) 00:11, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

Transparent solar panels let through visible light mostly, but heavily absorb in the ultraviolet below 400nm, and they also absorb more in infrared. But unless someone published on this topic in relation to this star, we won't be mentioning it here. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 05:39, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

Megastructures and the physics limits of computation

This is original research and because of that not suitable for Wikipedia. But it is something editors of this article might watch for since I can't imagine the information staying out of the media and science papers very much longer. One related paper is

https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.16111

"Rebuilding the Habitable Zone from the Bottom Up with Computational Zones" This article mentions 56 K for one of the computation temperatures, close to the measured 65 K.

I don't consider it at all likely that life forms could evolve except on a planet in the habitable zone. But once they have evolved, and lifted off into space (an interest of mine since 1975) it's hard to imagine what direction they might take. They might upload and move into cyberspace, in which case, they are going to make the fastest and most energy efficient computers physics will allow.

If they are individuals and want to communicate, then minimum physical separation is also a consideration. Still, the biggest dip object is around 2.5 seconds across.

https://www.sciencealert.com/a-star-with-random-dimming-has-become-one-of-the-most-mysterious-in-the-milky-way

https://www.sciencealert.com/a-bunch-of-potential-tabby-s-star-alikes-have-just-been-identified

This is sort of related to computers. Assuming they are megastructures, the only thing that makes much sense is computation. The idea of computronium and Jupiter Brains came from the Extropian list in the early 90s.. My contribution then was to pour cold water on the idea because a large brain is going to be a slow brain due to the speed of light.

If we are looking at data centers 400 times the area of the Earth, powered by more than a million times the energy humans use, and operating at around 65 K then what are they doing? Any ideas? Keith Henson (talk) 09:22, 8 September 2023 (UTC) Keith Henson (talk) 09:25, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

@Hkhenson: Indeed, this is mostly original research; it seems to be largely off-topic, too.

This leaves the three url's you posted. I don't see how the Arxiv paper would be a useful reference for this article, because 1. it doesn't mention Tabby's Star, and 2. it hasn't been peer-reviewed yet.

The second of the two ScienceAlert articles you posted is already used. However, the first one may be usable (not necessarily for the WP:OR content you were discussing, but in general). Renerpho (talk) 23:56, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

I have repaired the section that has used the second ScienceAlert article, which has been broken since June 2023.[1] Renerpho (talk) 23:57, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

Main source of luminosity fluctuations

Our article currently says

The main source of information about the luminosity fluctuations of Tabby's Star is the Kepler space telescope. During its primary and extended mission from 2009 to 2013 it continuously monitored the light curves of over 100,000 stars in a patch of sky in the constellations Cygnus and Lyra.

sourced to a NASA Kepler FAQ. Such a source doesn't seem the best one, but in any case it's form before the published paper so unsurprisingly doesn't mention Tabby's star in any way AFAICT. I assume it verifies what Kepler did, but that's about it. Putting that aside I wonder if this needs to be reworded since I suspect even if it were true at one time (it was added in 2016 so not that long after public announcement), it's arguably no longer true. As the lead explains, the Kepler observations were what enabled it's discovery. And I assume that even going back through earlier observations from elsewhere, in the early days of us first noticing the unusual fluctuations e.g. in 2016 it may have been true we had very limited data about the fluctuations besides Kepler. But I'm guessing interest in this has been high enough that we actually have a lot of data now that isn't from Kepler hence the 2017, 2018, 2019 (probably continuing just no one added it) including from amateurs e.g. via AAVSO (see the Kickstarter 608159144/) which while maybe not able to provide the level of detail and precision, have by now possibly been observing for longer than Kepler. So while the Kepler data may still be an important part of the puzzle, I wonder if it's really still true it's the "main source". (One thing I'm not sure is how useful Kepler's post reaction wheel malfunction mission was for this, if its data was still very useful then perhaps it actually have decent data until 2018 but if not and it ended in 2013 then from late 2015 to now 2024 if quite a long period compared to 2009-2013.) Nil Einne (talk) 08:31, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you're suggesting here, but it is my impression that not any Earth-based astrometry can replace Kepler, let alone amateur observations. ☆ Bri (talk) 17:05, 13 May 2024 (UTC)