Plasma physicist James Benford, CEO of Microwave Sciences, is well known here on Centauri Dreams. Today he is joined by his son Dominic, whose work focuses on the development of ultrasensitive technologies for far-infrared through millimeter-wave astronomy. The younger Dr. Benford is Program Scientist for NASA's WFIRST mission, which is designed to conduct major surveys in the near-infrared to answer fundamental questions on the nature of dark energy, the distribution of dark matter, the occurrence of planets around other stars, and even to enable the direct imaging of planetary systems. Previously, Dominic was Chief Scientist for the Cosmic Origins Program Office, as well as Deputy Mission Scientist for WISE, the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer. In today's entry, the Benfords look at the SETI Institute's recent observations of KIC 8462852 and analyze the detectability of power beaming at these distances. by James and Dominic Benford The recent report from the SETI Institute of...

I've mentioned before that I think the name 'Tabby's Star' is a wonderful addition to the catalog. It trips off the tongue so much more easily than the tongue-twisting KIC 8462852, and of course it honors the person who brought this unusual object to our attention, Yale University postdoc Tabetha Boyajian. 1480 light years away, Tabby's Star is an F3 with a difference. It produces light curves showing objects transiting across its face, some of them quite large, and the search is on to find an explanation that fits within the realm of natural causes. Five articles about Tabby's Star have already appeared in these pages, with the most likely explanation being some kind of cometary activity, an answer that seems to satisfy no one. We've also consulted both Boyajian's paper on the subject and a paper by Jason Wright and colleagues out of the Glimpsing Heat from Alien Technologies project at Penn State. The light curves we're looking at do fit the scenario of a 'Dyson swarm,' a cluster...

How do you feel about a universe that shows no signs of intelligent life? Let’s suppose that we pursue various forms of SETI for the next century or two and at the end of that time, find no evidence whatsoever for extraterrestrial civilizations. Would scientists of that era be disappointed or simply perplexed? Would they, for that matter, keep on looking? I suspect the latter is the case, not because extraterrestrial civilizations would demonstrate that we’re not alone, but because in matters of great scientific interest, it’s the truth we’re after, not just the results we want to see. In my view, learning that there was no other civilization within our galaxy -- at least, not one we can detect -- would be a profoundly interesting result. It might imply that life itself is rare, or even more to the point, that any civilizations that do arise are short-lived. This is that tricky term in the Drake equation that refers to the lifespan of a technological civilization, and if that...

Back from my break, I have to explain to those who asked about what exotic destination I was headed for that I didn’t actually go anywhere (the South Pacific will have to wait). The break was from writing Centauri Dreams posts in order to concentrate on some other pressing matters that I had neglected for too long. Happily, I managed to get most of these taken care of, all the while keeping an eye on interstellar news and especially the interesting case of KIC 8462852 (for those just joining us, start with KIC 8462852: Cometary Origin of an Unusual Light Curve? and track the story through the next two entries). Whatever the explanation for what can only be described as a bizarre light curve from this star, KIC 8462852 is a significant object. While Dysonian SETI has been percolating along, ably studied by projects like Glimpsing Heat from Alien Technologies, the public has continued to see SETI largely in terms of radio and deliberate attempts to communicate. Tabetha Boyajian and...

I had no idea when the week began that I would be ending it with a third consecutive post on Dysonian SETI, but the recent paper on KIC 8462852 by Tabetha Boyajian and colleagues has forced the issue. My original plan for today was to focus in on Cassini’s work at Enceladus, not only because of the high quality of the imagery but the fact that we’re nearing the end of Cassini’s great run investigating Saturn’s icy moons. Then last night I received Jason Wright’s new paper (thanks Brian McConnell!) and there was more to say about KIC 8462852. Actually, I’m going to look at Wright’s paper in stages. It was late enough last night that I began reading it that I don’t want to rush a paper that covers a broad discussion of megastructures around other stars and how their particular orbits and properties would make them stand out from exoplanets. But the material in the paper on KIC 8462852 certainly follows up our discussion of the last two days, so I’ll focus on that alone this morning....

I want to revisit the paper on KIC 8462852 briefly this morning, as I’m increasingly fascinated with the astrophysics we’re digging into here. The fact that the star, some 1480 light years away, is also a candidate for further SETI investigation makes it all the more intriguing, but all my defaults lean toward natural processes, if highly interesting ones. Let’s think some more about what we could be looking at and why the ‘cometary’ hypothesis seems strongest. Remember that we’re looking at KIC 8462852 not only because the Kepler instrument took the relevant data, but because the Kepler team took advantage of crowdsourcing to create Planet Hunters, where interested parties could sign up to study the light curves of distant stars on their home computers. KIC 8462852 has been causing ripples since 2011 because while we do seem to be seeing something passing between its light and us, that something is not a planet but a large number of objects in motion around the star. Some of the...

Dysonian SETI operates under the assumption that our search for extraterrestrial civilizations should not stop with radio waves and laser communications. A sufficiently advanced civilization might be visible to us without ever intending to establish a dialogue, observed through its activities around its parent star or within its galaxy. Find an anomalous object difficult to explain through conventional causes and you have a candidate for much closer examination. Is KIC 8462852 such a star? Writing for The Atlantic, Ross Andersen took a look at the possibilities yesterday (see The Most Mysterious Star in Our Galaxy), noting that this F3-class star puts out a light curve indicating not a planetary transit or two, but a disk of debris. That wouldn't be cause for particular interest, as we've found numerous debris disks around young stars, but by at least one standard KIC 8462852 doesn't appear to be young. In a paper on this work, Tabetha Boyajian, a Yale University postdoc, and...