KIC 8462852 (Tabby's Star) Faded Throughout the Kepler Mission

kamaz said:
The skeptical mindset nowadays prevalent in the scientific community is characterized by being extremely harsh on people making false positive (type 1) errors combined with extreme leniency on people making false negative (type 2) errors.
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I don't want to get into the rest of the debate, but the above is an extremely good point.

Anyone remember what happened to some of the senior people at OPERA a few years ago? (The case of the anomalous arrival times of neutrinos.) They published the anomalous results to attract possible explanations (I read their conclusion very carefully and it was pretty neutral in tone). When an explanation did appear they were roasted for publishing.

So anyone publishing a hypothetical "big result" in this case will be in serious trouble if there is any mistake...
 
Ravenous said:
I don't want to get into the rest of the debate, but the above is an extremely good point.

Anyone remember what happened to some of the senior people at OPERA a few years ago? (The case of the anomalous arrival times of neutrinos.) They published the anomalous results to attract possible explanations (I read their conclusion very carefully and it was pretty neutral in tone). When an explanation did appear they were roasted for publishing.

So anyone publishing a hypothetical "big result" in this case will be in serious trouble if there is any mistake...
Click to expand...

Now the big question is: Who did roast whom for which reason?

Of course the team required getting criticized by scientific community, because their experiment set-up was deeply flawed and the strange results caused directly by it. It was nearly a beginners error that happened there.

But the biggest damage was caused by also getting into the media with the results - they really published it, not just for finding out what might be wrong.

Now, you have to publish your results before somebody else does. That is part of modern US dominated science: Publish early, publish often. Many scientists here hate it, because of many problems, like the above. But also it too often results in a large number of insignificant publications. Instead of having one good publication done with careful quality assurance before publication already, you now have to produce a small paper for every other conference. And maybe one paper at the end, that is halfway useful for other scientists to cite. And along the way, many papers with such errors as above.
 
Well, there's really only one solution: build a starship and let's go see what's going on out there!
 
Have they looked at all/most electromagnetic radiation coming from there? I know there was a radio survey a while back... Are there any historical radio bursts who might have come from that direction?
 
I find it difficult to believe that just one star in that region of the sky would experience such a dimming if it's really due to interstellar dust.
 
Except it's not one, but two as the article says.
 
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boogabooga said:
Except it's not one, but two as the article says.
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Still - just two with such a behavior is pretty rare in a huge sky. But it is a nice theory for the next months until additional observations prove it wrong again... :lol:

EDIT: Actually it is not even a good theory. It is Russels Teapot for professionals. "Maybe there are interstellar comets, but we fail to see them."
 
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boogabooga said:
Except it's not one, but two as the article says.
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Unless I'm mistaken, the other star in question is EPIC 204278916, which isn't directly related or in the FOV of Tabby's Star. EPIC 204278916 is a very young red dwarf with a directly resolved circumstellar disk (and an IR signature for it) that is producing dips of up to >60%. Tabby's Star is an older, F-class main sequence star with no such resolved circumstellar disk.
 
Why does a 2% variation cause so much interest?

N.
 
Notebook said:
Why does a 2% variation cause so much interest?

N.
Click to expand...

Because 2% is a lot in just four years, when speaking about stars.

For example, the sun needs 100 million years for a 1% increase in luminosity.
 
Could be gone in 50 years then?

N.
 
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