[ExI] tabby's star dimming again

[Stuart LaForge]

Sorry if this is a double post but . . .

Spike wrote:

> That's way too much to be a planet. It might be comets, or maybe an
> alien-made Dyson swarm. The problem is that
> <http://www.popsci.com/could-black-hole-be-blocking-light-from-that-alien
> -me
> gastructure-star> none of the hypotheses that scientists have come up with
>  (including the one about aliens) really fits with the data. That leads
> them to think that some as-yet-undiscovered phenomena is happening around
> this star.

The only evidence ruling out aliens is the supposed lack of a heat
signature and radio waves. But seriously, you and Keith have both made the
point that vectoring waste heat would be the most efficient form of
entropy exaust. What if they don't have their exhaust pointed along the
galactic plane. That seems to make sense from an interplanetary security
stand point.

Furthermore, like you mentioned, perhaps they have some ingenious
technology that enables them to harness heat energy too. If their
thermodynamic efficiency approached 1.0 then, we might have to look for
radiation with frequencies downshifted to near CMB levels.

A good test for this possibility would be to overlay the position of KIC
8462852 with WMAP data. If they are dead smack in the middle of a hotspot,
then that cranks my Bayes-o-Meter up a few probability points on the alien
hypothesis.


> Go there, go now, explain please!

More important than going there is hedging against them coming here. They
might already be on the way. I sure hope Trump or whoever else thinks they
are in charge of this rock at least has a plan for dealing with the
possibility.  I can't help but think of the Aztecs that saw Cortez's ships
from miles off and refused to believe in them until they were "taken by
surprise".

Stuart LaForge