@ChrisWhite So... what is really going on with KIC8462852?

I presume you don't fall into the alien Dyson sphere line of thought :)

We've detected an alien Dyson sphere?!?! ;)

Holy šit

I volunteer for the first mission

::goes off to write pop-sci article about it::

what if it's not alien

but ancient human

mind=blown

@0celo7 I'd be more impressed if it's modern human

or maybe Dyson is the alien

We really didn't land on the moon -- they kept flying and got to that star and started a new society.

@ChrisWhite so time travel is possible

I knew it!

Suck it people at the psych ward!

Is "exoplanet people" the technical term for "alien"?

why would they dismiss it

I don't dismiss the unicorn behind the sun

or string theory

@ChrisWhite arxiv.org/abs/1601.03256 Apparently it has been undergoing long-term dimming as well as the seemingly random dimming

And that guy seems to think it's due to the same physical process and it would take a ridiculously large number of huge comets to make the observations make sense

Is the number of comets more or less ridiculous than the existence of a Dyson sphere?

I don't know enough about astro to know if that's a reliable analysis or not of course

@ACuriousMind Depends on just how crazy you are

@ACuriousMind probably more

Fermi's thingie and all

we know there are ayy lmaos out there

@tpg2114 Let's say I'm moderately crazy

alleged alien sighting ^

@ACuriousMind Then they are equally probable and that guy's paper is inconclusive and is just part of the scientific system trying to manipulate people to hide the truth.

k

@tpg2114 exactly

And you hold out hope that somebody will come along and post the real explanation here as a question to get people's review/discuss it, but it will be closed as non-mainstream by the overzealous censors on the site.

now let me tell you about the conspiracy

@tpg2114 what is an electron

Who are also part of the establishment trying to suppress the truth

Hehe...amazing how it all fits together

@0celo7 A rigid little ball that orbits another, bigger, rigid ball along fixed orbits.

@tpg2114 wrong

@ACuriousMind Yeah -- but you're still undecided on the real truth, it could be comets or it could be aliens, but the establishment wants to hide the real truth from you.

it's a standing wave 511keV photon going round and round a spinorial dirac belt

now I can't give you a source for that

but just do some research, think for yourself

read Einstein and Maxwell and others and it will be clear

I don't need a source. A dictionary might help so I could understand any word of that sentence though.

@tpg2114 So...maybe the government invented the Dyson sphere to obscure that we actually see comets?

How...clever

I read it and see "something orbiting something else" and assume that I'm still correct

@tpg2114 take your belt and make a Mobius band

now imagine a wave going around that

How do you know he's wearing a belt?

boom. electron.

Yeah, creeper

@ACuriousMind I...don't. Why would I know that???

Stop looking at me funny!!

please note that while there is not a single shred of evidence for this explanation

@tpg2114 Look, it's blue

Also recall the Einstein-de Hass effect

I like Scully better than Mulder.

Skepticism is helpful sometimes

@tpg2114 also remember that there is no motion in spacetime

did you know that spacetime is a gin clear ghostly elastic solid?

I could do this all day

@0celo7 pls don't

I haven't seen the new ones

Ah, The X Files. Never seen it

I like the old ones, but after the first couples seasons of it, I got tired of the monster of the week episodes. Just watched the plotline ones

see the shear stress?

spacetime is a solid

and you curve spacetime by injecting more of it

Only solids have shear stress?

kinda like vodka gummi melons now that I think about it...

@tpg2114 yup.

There's a lot of liquids and gasses that would disagree with that

@tpg2114 yeah and there are people who peddle time travel

can you tell me what a string is made out of?

didn't think so

Probably some cotton or linen

My shoelaces are probably polyester though

and what is a quantum field?

LOL I've never seen one and neither have you

Nothing quantum exists -- that's why electrons orbit around the protons.

can you see a string in the sky? didn't think so!

It's Newton all the way down baby

if you're wondering about light, don't

the speed of light varies

stop reading your lies-to-children stroytime books

Heh, ignoring a user has a snazzy effect where chat shrinks while all the mesages disappear.

That does sound like it could be fun to watch

noooooo

I can't stop it

I've gone maaaaaad

So anyway @ChrisWhite, you're still voting comets?

I guess if the option is binary -- but any other competing thoughts?

how would we tell one way or the other?

Side note... chat is really busy. What the heck is going on

Are we sure it's not dirt on the telescopes or a loose cable?

What if it's a Dyson sphere with comets

And I think there have been others who have confirmed Kepler's observations

Consistent dimming like...during construction of a Dyson sphere? :O

So I'm ACM's first ignore. I don't know if that's an honor or not.

Having just entered, how far up should I read for this to make any sense whatsoever - besides the day the chatroom started?

@HDE226868 tpg's first message

@HDE226868 Well, if you want the actual conversation -- there is a paper that came out 2 days ago saying that the crazy star has been dimming for 100 years in addition to daily dimming observed recently

Just block me and read all the way through

And it also said that comets are not a likely explanation

But I don't know enough about astro to judge the content, so I asked Chris' opinion

Then unblock, obviously. Although my Dyson sphere comets idea is good.

Paper is at: arxiv.org/abs/1601.03256

Given the rapid influx of (high reputation) people, I figured somebody must be chat-flagging like crazy

KIC 8462852 caused a bit of a minor stir on Astronomy. The most interesting post (in my opinion) was Why can't this be the simple (and obvious) explanation for the dimming of KIC 8462852?

@ChrisWhite That's been ruled out here?

Oh, wait, Wikipedia says as much.

It's gotta be hard to work in a field where you might have to wait more than your career or lifetime for validation/next occurrence

Do observational astro papers include all the members of the group as authors?

Gotcha

@ChrisWhite seems like a lot of fading

@ACuriousMind I'm having trouble following the proof of: let $f:M\to N$ be a smooth bijection between manifolds of the same dimension $m$. Then $f$ is a diff iff its rank at each point of $M$ is $m$. The first step is apparently to realize that the conditions of rank and smoothness are local properties (I don't understand this) so one may consider $M$ and $N$ as open subsets of $\mathbb{R}^n$ (I understand this given the local condition)

And I understand why he wants to do this...we can then use the chain rule and inverse function theorem

@0celo7 ...you understand what a local property is but you don't understand why rank and smoothness are local?

@ACuriousMind Well the theorem is a global thing...so are we considering the properties on points and their neighborhoods and then stitching everything back together?

Yep

So to prove $\Leftarrow$ he assumes that $f$ has maximal rank

(wow)

"Lightarrow"...seems legit

And then he uses the inverse function theorem to show there is a smooth local inverse for $f$

I get that

So how do we know that $f$ has a smooth global inverse?

i.e. how do we know that when we piece together the inverses, the whole thing is smooth?

You already know that it has a global inverse - it's a bijection. You're just checking it's smooth.

@ACuriousMind Yeah...don't see what my confusion actually was now

If I'm worried about two local inverses meeting at a point and not being smooth there I just make a new local inverse at the point of contention

Then everything should piece together smoothly.

@ACuriousMind does that make any sense

or am I rambling

@0celo7 yes

@ACuriousMind ok, thanks

Now if I can process the definition of a folitation in terms of plaques and flat charts I'd be happy...

First people are starting to get acceptances to a couple of the universities I applied to D;

damn that's early

I know Stonybrook sends it really early

possibly UCSB

I hope UCSB hasn't sent it yet because that sucks for meeee

Stony Brook wasn't even due until today

yeah but it's rolling

last year a friend of mine heard back from Stonybrook on the 17th

I wonder when chicago sends out emails

so scary ermagherd

People have gotten acceptances for U Washington and Brown already

wtf wasn't brown due like Jan 1?

i'm so confused with my maths =/

@GBeau you in high school?

@FenderLesPaul No, the 4th!

that's a random date

but damn they're fast

any MIT offers that you know of

or other schools?

Ohio state has sent out a bunch of acceptances

I've heard of berkely rejecting some international already

wait berkeley rejects first?

if the internet is to be believed, somebody was rejected 4 days ago

wow damn

that's fucked up

well if chicago hasn't sent out any first offers yet I'm still on the edge of my seat

U Michigan has sent some acceptances

looking at history it looks like U Washington starts sending out acceptances today and sends out a bunch in the next week, then slows down until the end of january

and then spreads the rejections out over the rest with the occasional waitlist and acceptance

I see

well

...people are actually monitoring the rhythm with which universities send accepts/rejects?

we'll have to wait and see I guess

If I don't hear from UCSB by the 21st of Jan

@ACuriousMind What do you expect us to do, study physics or something?

I'm going to assume they rejected me

le sad face

it looks like if you're a domestic student, odds are really high that if you got accepted, you'll know by late February

for most unis

yeah but typically you'll know earlier I assume

if not mid-February

for mos unis

by late jan to mid feb

for domestic that is

I don't know how it works for internationals

were you talking about international acceptances earlier?

for UC SB I see a bunch of people that all got rejected on Feb 24 or 25th

and the people that got accepted got accepted at various dates in late January

yeah that sounds about right

(low sample size, except for the rejections)

so scary

aaah

I know Maryland sends them out by 2nd week of Feb

idk about Harvard

or Berkeley