Observations *and* analysis

["Robert J. Bradbury" <bradbury@aeiveos.com>]

Tom,

Re:
> At least some of the long period variables have a large amplitude and thus
> stick out more from our noise. Thus the once a night observations will
> detect most of these with amplitudes over about 0.1 mag in the tass data.
>
> The tass data is biased towards stars of long period and large amplitude.

The astrophysical basis behind most "variable" stars is well understood.
Astronomers have also conducted extensive surveys for stars suddenly
"appearing" (e.g. supernova surveys).

But to the best of my knowledge there has been little, if any, work
on "stars going dark".  [Why?  Because astronomers have difficulty
studying a star which has disappeared.]

The time to take a star dark for an advanced civilization ranges
from months to centuries.  So they are going to look like long period
large amplitude "variables".

And nobody will have looked at them because grad students and
astronomers don't generally write papers that take could require
at least decades to accumulate evidence for the phenomena.

From the TASS perspective, *extremely* long period variables
with continually declining brightness could be highly interesting.

Robert

[and to the list members, yes I know I pushing bunk.  But go
read Lineweaver's papers -- ~70% of the Earth's in our galaxy
are *older* -- *much* older than ours -- Dyson's paper on
a possible path for the evolution of civilizations is almost
45 years old.  It is necessary to integrate these concepts
and see how that impacts what we see and look for in astronomy.]