Reminds me of Titius–Bode law[1], where simple equation correctly gave orbits of all the known planets, while predicting one more in asteroid belt and correct distance to Uranus. Only was considered disproven when Neptune didn't work.<p>I would not trust these relations even existing (other than by pure chance). Even less I'd trust any intelligent design behind it<p>[1]<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titius%E2%80%93Bode_law" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titius%E2%80%93Bode_law</a>
The Planets Are Weirdly In Sync - Steve Mould - <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qyn64b4LNJ0" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qyn64b4LNJ0</a><p>"Consider the three largest moons of Jupyter. Europa takes exactly twice as long as IO to orbit Jupyter, and Ganymede takes exactly twice as long as that. How can that be? This is an example of synchronization, but what's the mechanism? That's what this video is about: it's an explanation of something called orbital resonance."
I've often thought planet TrEs-2b [0], the darkest planet ever discovered orbiting a star, would be the best candidate for extra terrestrial life. My theory is that its darkness is down to the fact that the civilisation there has figured out a way to harness solar energy to near 100% capacity, along the lines of a Dyson sphere [1].<p>[0] <a href="https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/exoplanet-catalog/1716/tres-2-b" rel="nofollow">https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/exoplanet-catalog/1716/tres-2-b</a>
[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere</a>
I think the authors do not understand how planetary resonances work and how precise (or imprecise) the orbits need to be for the resonance to hold.<p>Resonances are very common. We have lots of resonances in our Solar system in all different places between bodies.<p>For the resonance to be stable, two bodies do not need to have mathematically precise orbits in relation to each other. There is quite a wide margin for error. Once two planets are close enough to the resonance, the resonance may become stable due to feedback. What happens is planets will exchange energy back and forth on each orbit in a way, that preserves the resonance. A substantial input needs to be provided to break up the resonance.<p>What is actually interesting about this particular system is the long chain of resonances. But that is also nothing super special -- once you know how resonances form you can see how all of the planets, when they are close enough to the resonance, will transfer energy between themselves to snap into it and then continue on their resonant orbits.<p>There is absolutely no reason to suggest that a resonance like this must have come from unnatural origin. It would be like saying that because the period of our Moons rotation is so precisely the same as period of its orbit around Earth that it always faces Earth with one side, that somebody must have put the Moon on the orbit. That's obviously false, these resonances form easily and naturally.
Wiki page for the star system: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD_110067" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD_110067</a>
For those saying that resonance explains the phenomenon, the paper doesn't seem to say that the 'mathamatically perfect' orbits are signs of intelligence:<p><i>... the star HD 110067 has six sub-Neptune planets, all of which orbit their host star in a stable resonant chain. As the brightest star known to have at least four planets, with all planets in a remarkably ordered orbital configuration, HD 110067 offers an unprecedented opportunity to study the orbital evolution of planetary systems and the atmospheric compositions of sub-Neptunes. Three of the planets have low densities which suggest large, hydrogen-rich atmospheres. Sub-Neptune planets are one of the most common types of exoplanet discovered to date, so the question of whether they could support liquid water is crucial for target prioritization in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.</i><p>...<p><i>... HD 110067 is valuable as a technosignature target not only because of its interest for biosignature searches. First, Earth views the system edge-on, which increases the likelihood of detecting radiation from any transmitters present whether intentional (Traas et al. 2021) or resulting from planet-to-planet transmissions which could be observed by their "spillover" during planet–planet occultations (Ashtari 2023); second, the large number of planets regardless of their position in the star's habitable zone increases the likelihood that an advanced civilization could have spread technology to neighboring planets, as has happened in our own solar system (Wright et al. 2022).</i><p><a href="https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2515-5172/ad235f" rel="nofollow">https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2515-5172/ad235f</a>
> radio waves from satellites and telescopes beaming out in the plane of our solar system<p>Surely radio telescopes don't "beam out" radio waves? They receive them. If they are configured to transmit, like the Deep Space Array, they don't beam in the plane of the solar system; they beam at whatever spaceship they are trying to communicate with.<p>Satellites even less; they have to conserve power, so they don't send radio waves into outer space. Their antennae point at the Earth.<p>Also, the sentence containing that fragment has no main verb, so I had to read it several times to figure out what it meant.
From what I have heard, pretty much every star system astrophysicists look at is investigated for potential anomalies given how big a deal it would be to actually find strong evidence of alien tech.
Reminds me of a bit from a novel I read (won't be naming the title to avoid spoilers) where one of the minor twists is that the gigastructure of galaxies that we observe in the universe - the thing that's conducive to things like "star formation" and "life" - is an art project by intelligent species who've been alive since around the time of the Big Bang.<p>(No, it's not part of the Xeelee Sequence :P)
Two orbital things we might look for:<p>1. Activity in geostationary orbits.<p>2. Orbits where the planet's year is exactly divisible by its day, eliminating leap years.
This is a great video on why planetary orbits tend to sync up: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qyn64b4LNJ0" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qyn64b4LNJ0</a>. Ultimately, it comes down to the concept of entrainment (the same reason metronomes on the same surface tend to sync up).
This is about as exciting as the Face on Mars, and for the same reasons<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cydonia_(Mars)" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cydonia_(Mars)</a>
What's the reasoning to suspect aliens here?<p>Are we hypothesising Aliens could be anal for mathematical perfection, or is it that there's some utility in having a mathematically perfect star system such that an advanced alien civilisation might decide to engineer their star system in this way?
Imagine there are no aliens intelligent in the way humans are, and nature doesn't care about us any more than it cares about a species of gnat, and that knowledge and discovery is not the purpose of life.
Clickbait. Isnt this just orbital resonance?<p>My solution to fermi paradox is intelligent civilizations realize futility of life and get enlightened and just die out. Similar to moksha in hinduism.
tldr:<p>1. Star system 100ly away.<p>2. Piqued interest of astronomical community, because "The six planets orbit their central star HD 110067 in a harmonic rhythm with planets aligning every few orbits"<p>3. No accurate data on masses of planets.<p>4. No radio signals or other "technosignatures" detected.<p>So, super unclear what #2 means and why this is interesting at all / whether it's uncommon.
Just your regular resonant planetary system...Nothing to see here...Call me back when you find one where they orbit the star with periods that are a sequence of prime numbers....<p>"Resonance in the planetary system HD 110067" - <a href="https://www.dlr.de/en/latest/news/2023/04/six-planets-in-resonance-in-the-constellation-coma-berenices/resonance-in-the-planetary-system-hd-110067" rel="nofollow">https://www.dlr.de/en/latest/news/2023/04/six-planets-in-res...</a>
To paraphrase Pratchett: million to one chances happen nine times out of ten.<p>Space is big, really big, etc. so it's no surprise we've found something like this just through chance alone. One of the planets is probably Bethselamin.