[ExI] extropy-chat Digest, Vol 148, Issue 12

Keith Henson hkeithhenson at gmail.com
Mon Feb 1 01:43:50 UTC 2016


On Sun, Jan 31, 2016 at 12:12 PM,  Anders Sandberg <anders at aleph.se> wrote:

> On 2016-01-26 01:31, Keith Henson wrote:
>> One of the arguments used against it being alien mega structures is
>> the lack of IR. That's kind of funny when you consider we are far
>> along with the James Webb telescope. Looking into a giant telescope
>> like JW (or certain kinds of power satellites) we would not see excess
>> IR.
>
> Actually, the Webb telescope is radiating a lot of IR in most
> directions. It is only the the business end that is cold.
>
> [ If you have an object of finite temperature and radiate its IR into a
> fraction of the sky, the total volume where it is detectable (assuming
> some fixed detection threshold) actually increases! ]

Consider the power satellite in this video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-Lrj35HcbQ

The radiator is shaded from the sun which prevents any of it's
radiation from going out in the plane of the ecliptic.  If something
comes between the star and Kepler, it's assumed to be in the plane of
the ecliptic.  So swarms of power satellites of this class would block
light, but not emit IR along the direction we are looking.

Keith



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