[ExI] tabby's star again

[spike]

There was an excellent talk hosted by SETI over at the Microsloth campus
last week.  Now, a good new article on the latest on Tabby's star:

 

http://www.space.com/33813-alien-megastructure-mystery-tabbys-star.html

 

This SETI talk went over all the known natural explanations for Tabby's
dimming, and why none of them work very well.  Then (being the SETI crowd)
he indulged us with the models involving a Dyson Swarm, indicating that the
IR signature doesn't match that model either.  I had to run to pick up my
son at school, so I didn't get a chance to point out that if the Dyson Swarm
needed to reflect most of the energy from the star in a low-entropy state
(and thus not use the energy for computing) for some very good reason (such
as: it would otherwise overheat inboard in accordance with my understanding
of how Bessel functions explain the thermal gradient in a planet.)

 

If there is a physical limitation requiring this low-entropy heat rejection,
if that phenomenon is fundamental and real (and I wasn't just
misunderstanding my thermal model (which is entirely possible)) then an
alien technological megastructure would be the only proposed explanation for
Tabby's dimming spectrum we cannot directly counter-indicate or disprove.

 

Keeeewwwaaaalllllll.  {8-]

 

Have we any currently active (preferably with industry or academic contacts)
thermal science hipsters?  We should work on this.

 

spike

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