[ExI] Tabby's star

[Stuart LaForge]

On Sun, Dec 11, 2016 at 4:47 PM, Stuart LaForge <avant at sollegro.com> wrote:

​> ​Maybe the aliens aren't expansionist.

John Clark wrote:
<​They're expansionist enough to take apart an object the size of Jupiter
and use the matter in it to build an energy generating structure around an
entire star, but apparently not expansionist enough to go one step
further!  They must have Nanotechnology so why isn't the entire Galaxy
engineered?>

I can think of lots of possible reasons all of which are pure speculation.
For the record, I estimate the liklihood of aliens around Tabby's star to
be only around 5%. That being said, it is important to realize that an
absense of evidence is NOT evidence of absense. Unless you are in the
vicinity of a black hole, there are more possible futures than there are
possible pasts.

Granted we listened for primitive radio signals and found none. If you
have been following the discussion, then that makes sense. A significant
constraint on Dyson-level technology is latency. If I have a latency
problem, I would try to compensate for it by using the highest possible
bandwidth. Bandwidth is a function of frequency. That's the whole reason
that the Internet is built on optical cables instead of radio towers.

Have we been looking for visible light or shorter wavelength signals from
the star? If my subjective time was CPU speed, I would go crazy trying
communicate at MHz bandwidths. It would be like talking
rrreeeaaaallllllyyyyyy ssssslllllloooowwwwwwllllllyyyyy.

John Clark
<OK so perhaps the Tabby's star​ ​ET's are just shy weirdos, but if we
have really found something like a Dyson Sphere so close to ​the ​Earth
just by looking at one very small patch of sky then hundreds of thousands
or millions of other civilizations in the Galaxy must have that technology
too; is every single one of them also a ​shy ​weirdo?>

If Earth can exist, then we probably live in a galactic neighborhood that
is hospitable to life. This makes it more likely that aliens would be
"close". Also we only observe one technogical civilization. That makes it
more likely that there are only two such civilizations rather than
"millions".

We have observed the star dimming overall by 20% in the last century, but
it is 1277 LY away. Which means that if it is a civilization, we are
watching its history and not its present. For all we know, it may have
already spread to nearby stars and we would not know it for over a
millenium.

Stuart LaForge