[ExI] Fermi question, was is a FTL drive a dream

[Kelly Anderson]

On Thu, Dec 22, 2011 at 11:34 AM, Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com> wrote:
> That's true.  My assumptions have been that we would see the side
> effects of transportation or exploitation of stars for energy (dimming
> them in visible light).

Uh, maybe dumb question here... but how would we tell a star was
dimmer unless we measured the brightness before and after the
civilization had created their Dyson swarm or whatever it was that
dimmed the star? Is there a way to tell it's dimmer than it should be
without having measured it's brightness before?

Kepler measures dimming, but with and without a planet, so it must be
a different approach than that, assuming we have one.

Is there something about the spectrum of a star that tells us how
bright it should be?

-Kelly