Why look for aliens in space and not right here?

[Delta4Embassy]

Not true size of course, but tardigrades are amazing critters.

This will bug you... The indestructible micro-animals that can survive the vacuum of space - and most of them are after your blood

"There is only one creature known to man which can survive the ravages of deep space.

It is the water bear - officially known as the tardigrade - and despite being a fraction of a millimetre in length and mostly consigned to a lazy life exploring pond moss, it is almost indestructible.

You can freeze it at close to absolute zero - at minus 273C - or heat it to above 151C.

Or you could keep it without water for a decade, subject it to almost any kind of pressure, or send it into the radiation-filled vacuum of space where it can survive beyond ten days without any damage.

It is just one of the micro-sized and extraordinary bugs living in our back gardens - or even in our own bodies."

Could an actual alien being be any stranger than things right here on Earth?

 

[Pete7469]

I see aliens all over the place in TX. I think we should start sending them back via catapult.

 

[easyt65]

"Why look for aliens in space and not right here?"

'Cause between Syria and Mexico there still aren't enough coming into our country illegally, so Obama wants to go find more and bring 'em back.... a vote's a vote' man!

 

[Ernie S.]

 

[waltky]

Mebbe it's dat one-eyed, one-horned flyin' purple people eater?...

Signs of alien life? Mysterious star stirs controversy
20 Oct 2015 - Mysterious light on a distant star could be a sign of alien civilisation, some astronomers have claimed, stirring controversy among their peers.

Not so fast, said NASA. "The mysterious star, KIC 8462852, does have an odd light curve," said Steve Howell, a US space agency scientist working on the Kepler space telescope's planet-hunting mission, which launched in 2009 but lost its key orientation abilities in 2013. "It does not look like a normal exoplanet or binary star light curve. However, I think that saying that it immediately is alien is a bit of a stretch," Howell said in an email to AFP. A paper recently authored by Tabetha Boyajian, a postdoctoral student at Yale University, and several citizen scientists, described the planet as having a unusual light pattern, and suggested that it appeared to have matter circling it.

The Kepler space telescope's planet-hunting mission was launched in 2009 but lost its key orientation abilities in 2013​

The paper was published in October in a British journal called the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. "We'd never seen anything like this star," Boyajian was quoted as saying in The Atlantic magazine. "It was really weird." Kepler observes distant planets and stars by observing transits, or the dimming of light when another celestial body passes in front. The light from this strange world was seen to dim from 15 to 22 percent at irregular intervals. A planet could not be the cause, because even if it were the size of Jupiter -- the largest planet in our solar system -- the light from the star would dim only about one percent when it passed in between the star and the telescope. Boyajian's paper explored various natural scenarios, including defects with the Kepler space telescope, an asteroid pile-up or an impact that created a sea of comet debris.

A small portion of the Kepler space telescope's full field of view -- an expansive, 100-square-degree patch of sky in our Milky Way galaxy​

But another astronomer, Jason Wright, Penn State University, is preparing his own paper that interprets the light pattern as being the sign of an extraterrestrial civilization. Wright theorizes that a "swarm of megastructures," perhaps on the order of alien solar energy panels, are to blame. "When (Boyajian) showed me the data, I was fascinated by how crazy it looked," Wright told The Atlantic. "Aliens should always be the very last hypothesis you consider, but this looked like something you would expect an alien civilization to build." His theory took off on the Internet, but was swiftly debunked. Howell pointed out that another star, known as KIC 4110611, was previously found to have an odd light curve. "But after a few years of working to find out why, it turned out to be a five star system. Yes, perhaps unique, but not alien structures," he said. "I think we as scientists will make additional observations of the mysterious star and eventually, more than likely, find out it too is an odd but stellar signal."

AFP.com

 

[waltky]

Alien megastructure may be exocomets...

'Alien Megastructure' Mystery May Soon Be Solved
October 28, 2015 - The mystery behind a strangely dimming star could soon be solved.

Astronomers around the world are keeping a close eye on the star KIC 8462852, which has dimmed dramatically numerous times over the past few years, dropping in brightness by up to 22 percent. These big dips have spurred speculation that the star may be surrounded by some type of alien megastructure — a hypothesis that will be put to the test if and when KIC 8462852 dims again. "As long as one of those events occurs again, we should be able to catch it in the act, and then we'll definitely be able to figure out what we're seeing," said Jason Wright, an astronomer at Pennsylvania State University. "The simplest measurements we can take — just looking in different wavelengths [of light] — should rule out, or suggest, alien megastructures right away," Wright told Space.com.

KIC 8462852 is a large star that lies about 1,500 light-years from Earth. The dimming events, which were observed by NASA's Kepler space telescope between 2009 and 2013, seem too substantial to be caused by an orbiting planet, many astronomers say. Another plausible explanation — a planet-forming disk — doesn't seem to make sense, either, because KIC 8462852 appears to be a mature star whose planets (if it has any) have already formed. So scientists are entertaining a number of other ideas, hypothesizing that the dimming might be caused by a swarm of exocomets or perhaps even some type of orbiting alien megastructure. This latter possibility is unlikely, researchers stress, but it's still worth checking out. Indeed, astronomers have aimed radio telescopes at KIC 8462852 to search for signals that may have been generated by intelligent aliens.

Artist's illustration of NASA's Kepler space telescope, which observed that the star KIC 8462852 dimmed dramatically numerous times between 2009 and 2013.​

And follow-up is proceeding on other fronts as well. A number of optical telescopes are watching the star, waiting for another multiday dimming event to take place. Once such an event begins, large scopes outfitted with spectrographs will swing into action, studying and monitoring the various wavelengths of light emanating from KIC 8462852, Wright said. "That'll tell us what that material is that the starlight is being filtered through," he said. "It'll tell us if maybe we're looking at ordinary astrophysical dust; it'll tell us if we're looking at gas." "If we see any color dependence in the dimming — if it gets dimmer in the ultraviolet than it does in the infrared, for instance — then that would rule out that whatever we're looking at is a solid object," Wright added.

Wright thinks the data will eventually show that KIC 8462852's dimming events are caused by dust. If that turns out to be the case, it would raise another mystery for astronomers to solve — namely, where all that dust is coming from. Is it being shed by exocomets, for example, or is the material trapped in a giant ring system around a Saturn-like alien planet? "The amount of dimming we get tells us something about the size of the dust — is it as fine as smoke, or is it pebbles and things?" Wright said. "That'll help us figure out which of those scenarios we're looking at."

'Alien Megastructure' Mystery May Soon Be Solved