In the last two days we've looked at a discussion of a possible SETI observable, a 'shielding swarm' that an advanced civilization might deploy in the event of a nearby supernova. As with Richard Carrigan's pioneering searches for Dyson swarms in the infrared, this...
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A Renewed Look at Boyajian’s Star
It was inevitable that KIC 8462852 would spawn a nickname, given the public attention given to this mystifying star, whose unusual lightcurves continue to challenge us. 'Tabby's Star' is the moniker I've seen most frequently, but we now seem to be settling in on...
SETI, Astrobiology and Red Dwarfs
If you’ve been following the KIC 8462852 story, you’ll want to be aware of Paul Carr’s Dream of the Open Channel blog, as well as his Wow! Signal Podcast, both of which make for absorbing conversation. In his latest blog post, Carr offers sensible advice about how to...
An Unusual Pulsating Binary
A large part of the fascination of astronomy is the discovery of objects that don't fit our standard definitions. KIC 8462852 -- 'Tabby's Star' -- is deeply mysterious and high on my watchlist. But yesterday we also looked at CX330, a so-called FUor of the kind that...
Making Jupiter into a Star
The SETI concepts now called ‘Dysonian’ are to my mind some of the most exhilarating ideas in the field. Dysonian SETI gets its name from the ‘Dyson spheres’ and ‘Dyson swarms’ analyzed by Freeman Dyson in a 1960 paper. This is a technology that an advanced...
FU Orionis: Implications of Sudden Brightening for Planet Formation
I would like to thank the many Centauri Dreams readers who contributed to the successful Kickstarter campaign to fund a year's worth of study of KIC 8462852. As I write, there is less than an hour to go, but we have already gone well over the needed $100,000 mark....
A Long-Period Circumbinary World
Before getting into today's subject, the discovery of an interesting long-period circumbinary planet, I want to make another pitch for Centauri Dreams readers to support the Kickstarter campaign for Tabby's Star. I've written often about this mysterious star whose...
Cometary Breakup and Reassembly
Yesterday's look at organic compounds on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko needs to be augmented today by a just released study of the comet with implications for how all comets evolve. But first, a renewed pointer to the Kickstarter campaign for KIC 8462852, the...
Alpha Centauri, SETI and Detectability
Heading for the hotel lobby the first night of the Breakthrough Discuss meeting, I thought about a major theme of the Breakthrough Starshot initiative: Making things smaller. Robert Forward wrote about sails hundreds of kilometers in diameter, and vast lenses deep in...
A Transit Signature for SETI?
David Kipping and Alex Teachey have a new paper out on the possibility of ‘cloaking’ a planetary signature. The researchers, both at Columbia University, make the case that any civilization anxious to conceal its existence -- for whatever reason -- would surely become...