Damon Alan's Blog, page 6

Why I am an Amazon Author.

When I wrote the first of the Dark Seas series I presented it to about thirty agents. I got a lot of help from them, quite a few responses. The first book became two, for example. A common response. “I love the writing, but your main character isn’t relatable, likable, etc.”

That confused me, because I wrote her as exactly the same military commander I’d expect her to be, man or woman. I felt, without any proof, that the reason she wasn’t likable was because she was a woman with a hard attitude. And these agents were, all but one, women, so that confused me even more. Weren’t we being told at the time, diversity, diversity, diversity?

I didn’t write for diversity. I wrote for my daughters, all of whom can be whatever they want. Screw “relatable”

My recent sales are telling me that these agents were wrong. My reviews are all but a few stellar, I’m shocked and grateful for some of the kind words I’ve received. All I can say about it is that I’m very glad I didn’t listen, and refused to change Sarah Dayson. She is a total badass, yet vulnerable and fallible. She makes mistakes, but she owns them. She takes it to the enemy. That is what a military commander does, male or female. I can entirely relate.

Was it sexism that held the series back? I don’t know. I’m a dude, so I suppose my opinion doesn’t mean shit anyway. But I’m certainly suspicious.

Thank goodness for self-publishing. I don’t have to share any of my 70% royalties with those agents. Even at $3.99, my books pay a higher royalty than most traditional authors make. And I am happier than ever for my decision, because sales are good.

Because of those rejections, the Dark Seas series has fans that I touched to bring them into the story. Heck, in the book just released, Beverly Coutts was written into the story. She bought my book at MalCon, and I’ll probably never forget her. I was very new as an author, and quite happy that someone was taking a chance on me. By the way, Beverly, you’re in Komi Syndicate too. Should I kill your character?

This is sort of rambling, probably, it IS almost 4am, but what I’m saying is this. If you don’t follow the formula, don’t be afraid to self-publish. When I refused to make my main character a man or more inside the social norms, it signed my death warrant for traditionally publishing the series.

And that was a gift horse.

I just didn’t know it until recently.

As an added bonus, cover reveal for Komi Syndicate, book 6 in the series.

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The Depths of War Successfully Launched.

The Depths of War was successfully published on July 14th, 2017. So far it’s doing well on Amazon, and I’m quite happy about that.

If you’re interested in book 5 of the Dark Seas Series, you can get it directly here: The Depths of War

If you’re interested in the series, you can find it here: The Dark Seas Series

From that last link you can find book 1 if you’re interested in that.

I’m also planning on writing short stories, one is already released, Valor at Hamor.

In a shocking twist for an author, I’m going to recommend you don’t buy that yet. “Whut?” you ask.

Seriously. I’m planning on writing several similar stories over time. Amazon will not let me charge less than 99 cents for them.

I will, however, at a later date, put them into a collection for you to buy for a much more reasonable price. Because I want you to read them, and I want you to have value.

In the meantime, enjoy the series. I’m having a blast writing it.

PS> I’m already 8,700 words into book 6, and it’s completely making me giggle like a madman. I bet if you love space opera, you’ll be hyped too.

 

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Point A to Point B

One of the most important factors in writing space based science fiction is: “How do my characters get from point A to point B?”

That’s an easy answer if point A and B are on the same planet. But when point A and B grow farther apart, even if it’s only as far from Earth to the Moon, the answer gets a lot more complicated if scientific accuracy matters.

Engines that exist.

There are currently, in the real world, four types of rocket engines that have been created.

Solid fuel. Once started, cannot be stopped then restarted.
Liquid fuel. Easy started and restarted, but very volatile and complex to make.
Cold-gas. This is simply a bottle under pressure being opened. Very low thrust.
Ion. Low thrust but high impulse, this rocket is versatile but complex to make.

Future Engines, probable and improbable.

The ideal engine puts out large thrust and high impulse, can be restarted, and is easy on fuel. Some fictional (as of yet) engines that may or may not be feasible. When I write sci-fi, I personally try to stick to probable science as much as possible. I believe we will conquer fusion, and I believe it very likely we’ll get around the solar system with such engines in the future.

Solar Sails. Certainly a viable method in the inner solar system, but far away from a star these thin and vulnerable membranes may not be sufficient to move ships in a timely manner.
Plasma Propulsion. This exists, but hasn’t been tested in space. Ad Astra Rocket Company in Texas is developing the VASIMR drive, which could potentially move a spacecraft to Mars in 39 days. Now we’re talking. It works by using magnetic currents and the electric potential of reactive material to accelerate ions of that material out the back.
Thermal Fission. Simple, heat the propellant to insane temperatures and let it explode out the back of the spacecraft as a result of thermal pressure. As long as nuclear energy has the taboo it does, probably not going to happen on a spaceship launched from Earth.
Continuous Fusion. (Caveat: I use this in my sci-fi books.) Hundreds of times more efficient than chemical rockets, fuel superheated to hundreds of millions of degrees fuses and is then vented directionally into space. It is likely this technology could move large ships long distances in a short time.
Pulsed fusion/fission. The Orion Project was an actual study by the US Government to see if atomic bombs could be used to propel a starship. It’s likely it could be done, but it is both enormously expensive and very dangerous. It works by exploding the bombs against a plate on the back of the ship, using the energy released to push the ship forward.
Antimatter. The be all/end all of potential reality based rocket propulsion. 100% efficient at converting material to energy, this method uses the least fuel for the most go. Basically a stream of matter and an equal amount of antimatter meet in a reaction chamber, explode in a massive energy release, which is then directed out the back of the spacecraft. 40% of the energy potential of the matter/antimatter reaction becomes thrust. No other method even approaches that. The problem: In all of history so far, humanity hasn’t been able to produce enough anti-matter to boil 8oz of water. Production is hard, production is limited, so this tech is very far into the future.

What this means to us authors.

If an author is writing science fiction and is willing to use handwavium to create a propulsion system, the sky is literally… no, fictionally the limit. From the impulse engines of Star Trek to the reactionless ion drives on the TIE fighters of Star Wars, a lot of handwavium happens in sci-fi. If we don’t sometimes disregard the realities of physics, the story can bog down with the times involved, the realities of having to carry enough fuel to power the USA for a year… it’s a problem.

But sci-fi has a long and now respected history of using whatever magic drive systems the author sees fit to meet his/her needs. FTL drives (some of which may even be possible, but that’s a different article) are a prime example. We have ideas on how to move faster than light, but nothing is even remotely close to being mathematically proven, let alone put into action.

The truth is it’s called science fiction for a reason. If an author can, rely on feasible technology. That’s why my ships use fusion drives. But if the author can’t, then concoct the best handwavium technology possible. If a society has a galactic empire, for example, there must almost certainly be FTL travel unless the members of that society are immortal and travel does not spend lifespan. The story comes first, and as a result sometimes the author must rely more on the fiction than the science in science fiction.

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Book Blurb for The Depths of War

This is the blurb on the Amazon Kindle page for The Depths of War, book 5 in the Dark Seas series. Within the next few days it will be available as a preorder, releasing on 7/14 for weekend reading.

__________________________________

Epic Space Opera on a massive scale.

Sarah Dayson has done everything she can just to keep herself and her crews alive. The Seventh Fleet is battered, down in numbers, and longing for a chance to come out on top for a change. Sarah, in alliance with the adepts of Refuge, thinks she finally has answers that will give her the upper hand against the enemies that threaten everything she cares about.

The adepts, able to function as one mind through the nexus of power that is Emille Sur’batti, can bring almost unthinkable power to the battles that wrack the galaxy. Sarah needs to build up a defense for Refuge, both to protect her people and the natives from attack by the Hive now that the Hive have a general idea where she’s located. She needs ships and crews, so she heads back to the galaxy for both.

As usual, that doesn’t turn out as expected when she finds yet another enemy on the field of battle.

Author Note: This is a serial set of novels. I recommend reading them in order as each builds on those that came before.

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Book Blurbs.

I’ve been writing new blurbs for my books. I feel that is probably the weak spot in my efforts to get them to readers. Here are the first two to be revised.

The Anvil of Dust and Stars

Epic Space Opera

In the future, the human race is slowly dying. After millennia of expansion, an enemy has arisen that is slowly pushing the human frontier back toward oblivion. The Hive. Soulless and emotionless, they are colonizing star system after star system. The victims of the Hive suffer a fate worse than death…

Against an enemy that is seemingly unstoppable, one woman fights and leads the crews of her fleet in order to save humanity. History has proven again and again that in the darkest hours, heroes arise. Heroes fight. And heroes find a way.  Sarah Dayson is that hero in a dark and violent future where entire planets are swallowed into oblivion.

Follow the rise of Sarah Dayson from fresh cadet fighting for her life in a four man ship to Fleet Captain, where she’s commanding a squadron of ships designed for one purpose. War. The Hive may have the advantage in numbers, but they lack one thing that will always push humanity over the top. The will to live.

Ships will die. Planets will burn. But humanity will survive if Sarah Dayson has her way, no matter what the cost.

Amazon Reviews:

“Alan’s writing style is solid and easy to read. The technology is referenced in ways that don’t bog down the pacing but do help a person like myself (more an artsy-type than a scientist) to follow along and become immersed. The “Save Humanity” plot unfolds in not just a universal way but a very personal one“

“Overall I was very much entertained and found myself unable to put down my kindle.”

“The space battles are beautiful. My heart raced while in the thick of battle and I shed tears when the fallen were honored.”

Goodreads Reviews:

“Up until about the 50% mark I’d say it was an enjoyable read. I had by then noted that I was reading an imaginative story based upon well-speculated scientific principles, a veritable hard military sci-fi book (thus hitting my genre preference dead center). But from mid-way onwards the story took off and became an excellent, excellent read.”

“The space combat was fantastic in all its Newtonian glory. FTL, AI, and Fighters(Grapplers) are all well handled and carefully thought out concepts.”

You can get this book here: The Anvil of Dust and Stars.

On the Shores of a Dark Sea

Sarah Dayson thought she’d found safety. A fertile world ready for life. A star system so far off the ecliptic plane of the galaxy that nobody would look for her people… but she was wrong. Refuge is not at all what she expected. Her fight isn’t over, in fact, it’s more dangerous than it’s ever been. With battle broken ships and her crews on the edge, Sarah must once again struggle for those who matter most to her, the crew of the Seventh Fleet. Winning might mean risking everything she holds dear, but losing means death.

Evolution doesn’t always favor those who are left behind.

Amazon Reviews:

“Damon is able to bring realistic highs and lows to the emotions of the reader.”

“This book and Alan’s first had me riveted from start to finish. Wonderful characters in an exotic universe great action, moral dilemmas, fun technology, Alan’s got the right stuff.”

Goodreads Reviews:

“Love a kick-ass heroine? Love Space Operas? Want to see how late the two together can make you stay up reading? Damon Alan’s On the Shores of a Dark Sea is for you.“

“I’ll admit to not being a rabid SF reader, but this book and Alan’s first had me riveted from start to finish.”

You can get this book here: On the Shores of a Dark Sea.

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The Future We Might Know

A lot of papers have talked about the idea of science fiction becoming science fact. This is particularly pervasive in the Star Trek universe. We now have our smart phones (communicators), tricorders, and we’re teleporting particles at a quantum level.  Remember the hyposprays that McCoy would use on Kirk or Spock every other episode? In 2012 MIT updated a design that’s been around since the 1960s that injects drugs into a person at the speed of sound. Sounds more like a weapon.

Fantasy becoming reality is true for Star Wars as well, we potentially have a reactionless drive (the EM Drive) and hyperspace travel (the Albucierre Drive). An Australian university has created a tractor beam using ultrasound. It only works in an atmosphere, unlike Star Wars, but it works. On super tiny objects.

Similar to Larry Niven’s Ringworld, we potentially have aliens building megastructures at Tabby’s Star.

The debit card was predicted in 1888 in a novel called Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy.

Jules Verne wrote From Earth to the Moon in 1865, over a hundred years before the moon landings. He wrote Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea in 1870, predicting the modern submarine with great accuracy. The subs of the time were death traps, specifically the submarines of the Civil War. The CSS Hunley, the CSS David, the USS Alligator being a few examples.

The fact is that science fiction has become science fact with great regularity. As a sci-fi author, I have written things that I thought were many years off, only to find them being deployed in our military or produced by our society. The railgun is the perfect example, the US Navy is building them right now, and preparing for sea trials.

DARPA is developing power armor that would make any Stark Enterprise engineer happy. We’ll probably see that on the battlefield within the next few decades.

What should we make of all this?

It’s probably a good idea to treat Science Fiction something like a think tank. There are a lot of amazing things in sci-fi, from the biological to the mechanical. Immortality. Cyborg body replacement. Mind enhancing chips. Personal spacecraft. Colonization of other worlds.

But there are a lot of bad things too.  George Orwell predicted the surveillance state which seems to be coming to fruition. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World predicted the use of mind altering drugs to keep humanity sane. We have predictions of weapons worse than nukes, plagues that wipe out mankind or knock down our civilization. Wars with aliens.

We have no idea which of those predictions will come true. Not that the authors saw them as predictions, they saw them as cool additions to a story. But the fact is that if a sci-fi author can think something up, someone out there is going to think of the same idea as a potential reality and look into developing it.

So when we read or watch science fiction, let’s keep that in our minds.  The possibility that replicants might one day be a reality. Or our grandkids might live on Ceres. Or we may be invaded by hostile aliens. Think about those things and how they’d change your life, the good and the bad. Because science fiction opens that door for us, almost like a television set that shows the viewer potential futures that might come to be.

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Consciousness

When a person is asked “Who are you?” they often will say their name, or point to their body. The question of who we are is a lot more in depth that where we are.  Or is it?

Consciousness is something that nobody has been able to define. We know when we have it, and we have no clue when we don’t.  The indefinable nature of what and who we are escapes us even as it is us. Are we really the simple interactions of chemicals within a bone casement? Or are we transcendent of that limitation?

This article looks at it solely from the scientific standpoint. One can argue theological implications of the soul, consciousness, or awareness until we are blue in the face. That is not being addressed here, mainly because there is no solution that can be researched.

On the science side, many have tried (and pretty much 100% failed) to lock down the meaning of consciousness. When we say “I”, we often mean our body, other times our mind, and still other times we mean what we’re thinking right then. “I hurt.” when our body aches. “I have a headache.” Or “I feel like a taco.”

A physicist once tried to weigh the soul. I’m not making that up. Check here for verification: Snopes

What he found was that as a person died, the body lost 1/60th of an ounce per minute, and at the time of death an immediate and surprising loss of 3/4ths of an ounce.

Admittedly this was in 1907, a time when the accuracy of the measuring system might be called into question, and it was only done once, which violates the requirement that experimentation be repeatable. There is also the issue that actual mass can’t just teleport, something must have entered the room’s air if the body actually did lose the weight.

There is also some thought that what’s behind our eyes is only part of the consciousness equation.  What about the unconscious equation? Strangely, when we’re offered complex information to reach a hard decision, we often make a more rational decision if we don’t think much about it. Or if we’re distracted during the time we’re reasoning out the problem. This means that part of our existence is beyond what we’re aware of. What does that mean? It means there’s the you that you know, and the you that you don’t know behind the scenes. Your unconscious. For a good paper on rational unconscious thought, check this out: Not merely experiential.

But we’re not done yet.  Some argue that our consciousness is entirely rooted in the brain, simply a function of our gray matter. Others argue that the brain is simply a computational foundation for software, that our consciousness is a virtual program that runs in the processor that is our brain. Still others believe that only part of the computational power that is you resides in the brain, and part is elsewhere. Elsewhere being undefined. In the last theory quantum entanglement comes into play, and we are quantum computers.  This theory was developed by Sir Roger Penrose, a British physicist.

Let him explain it to you in this video: Sir Roger Penrose.

Someone that is deeply involved in the nature of consciousness would be an anesthesiologist. It is their very job to rob us of consciousness. Dr. Stuart Hameroff, Professor Emeritus at the University of Arizona and Director of the Center for Consciousness Studies has a website that you can go to for a much deeper study of the concept of quantum consciousness.

Quantum Consciousness

With all these various theories and studies of consciousness, we still have absolutely no idea what we are. Or what we’re dealing with. It’s as if we were trying to figure out what a car is, but it might be a motorcycle, a horse, a car, or an airplane, but the solution is a million times harder than simply walking up to the car and putting your hand on it.

Regardless, what we do know is this. We are conscious. Our collective of individual consciousnesses is building a civilization that may one day answer exactly what it is that fostered the origin of that civilization. On the day we solve the question we’ll not only be self aware, but self explaining.

I hope I consciously experience that in my lifetime.

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Finished Book 5

The Depths of War is now completed, except the for the process I am about to detail below.

I’d be curious to see how other Indie Authors handle the process of completing a book. Here’s mine.

I write <<< To Be Continued >>> for my series, or <<< The End >>> for a standalone.
I set up Scrivener to compile the book into a .rtf file. This often takes a long time because Scrivener doesn’t remember how you set it up for the last book you published. It resets to the default. There is probably a way to change it to how I want it for good, but I don’t know that way and learning is time that could be spent writing.
Once I have the .rtf file, I edit it to be how I want it. Another hour or so invested.
After that I open the .docx template for Createspace’s 6×9 format. I copy the text in the .rtf file, and paste it into the template.
Formatting that takes a bit more time, adding in the front matter (Title, dedication, etc). I edit the text to make sure there are no blank pages and set all of the styles properly.
Put the table of contacts in place. A quick procedure if you used the styles option on the home tab of Word. Check the page numbering. If you do any edits after this, delete the table of contents and do it again to make sure the numbers are correct. Sometimes one character will add or delete a page in the book.
Set up the page numbering. This is a nightmare for me every time. Because I don’t do it often, I have to relearn. Every time.
Upload to Createspace. Inspect the book with the online previewer. Edit. Reupload. Inspect. Repeat until hair is clean… er, I mean the book looks good.
Here is where I might deviate from the norm: I order 3 proofs in print. My editor gets one. I get one. And if anyone volunteers to read it and mark it up, they get one.
Once I have all three books edited and in my possession again, I go through and fix what I found. I put a big red checkmark next to each thing I fix that is marked in the book. Then I take care of the other two copies. If there is any content editing, I’ll repeat the entire process from uploading to Createspace to ordering proofs, but this time I only order 2. 1 for me, 1 for the editor.
After everything is in order, I approve the file at Createspace and they set about making the print copy available on Amazon. I take that final file for Createspace and copy it, paste it into a non-templated .docx file, and edit it for the ebook. Once that’s done, I upload the ebook to Amazon.

I always provide my contact information in the Author Notes I put at the end of the book. Once in a while a reader will let me know when they see the error, then I edit the file for that book with their correction and re-upload it.

Viola! Book is completed. Book 5 is about to get this entire treatment. Wish it luck.

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Guest Blogger Carol James Marshall

Hello, my name is…..Carol James Marshall author of The Women of the Grey series Starburst book 1 and Red Drug book 2 are now on Kindle Unlimited.  Let me explain myself….

 

It is often said, by those people that say things and well I’m guessing say those things to people who create memes then post them. “Those people” often say that writers write what they love.

Sounds wonderful, doesn’t it? Rainbows and sparkly things awesome until you consider those that write the not so nice things. Think of Mr. Stephen King is that evil clown something he loves? Does Stephen King love clowns and we got him all wrong?

It’s something to consider when reading a book. Another example is the Fifty Shades of Grey author EL James, do we all believe she loves a good paddling? We might, or perhaps readers never consider that. I’m going with readers do consider it when they think of an author.

I am one of those writers that write the not so nice things. I dwell in the science fiction horror side of the planet. I’m known to be creepy, mysterious and disturbing. Does that mean I love being creeped out or creeping readers out? Could it mean that I get off on people twitching after reading a passage? Kind of, but not really.

I think it’s a bit different for the writers that skate or dive into horror. There might be some of us who love the gore of horror. It’s best to avoid those houses on Halloween. The majority of horror writers love the psychology of horror and there is a difference.

I don’t necessarily love the disturbing. I love the reaction disturbing gives the reader.  I hope that makes sense. I personally write about what scares me and add some stuff for flavor.

What scares me; outer space, aliens, all those things that can come down from those stars and eat my face. Flavor; alpha women that are a bit deranged but in the end do the right thing or not (most often not).

I like my horror with a wink and a sprinkle of science fiction. The Women of the Grey series is a coming of age tale in my own twisted fashion. In the series we follow Lisa a Women of the Grey, who is discovering that all she has ever known in the Grey is upside down, sideways and wrong.

The Grey have a saying “We are all the same” and none different. In Lisa’s first mission out among humans she discovers that all she has been taught about herself and the Grey is a lie. Or maybe it’s not (see there’s that wink). I’m not telling.

Going back to writers write what they love, well I don’t love Aliens. I find the thought of Alien life forms terrifying and that is why I write about them. I find the unknown, those things that can’t be seen also scary as heck and that is why my books are mysterious.

Perhaps “the people” that say things should state that writers write what they find interesting. I’ve always been a sociologist at heart. It’s not what people do, but why they do it that is most intriguing to me.

So there it is I write for reaction from readers. I write the things that scare me and I write the type of female I find engaging. If you take all these things together and smush them into one big ball it might be I write what I love, but loves a strong word.

 

Interested in my series? Please sign up for my subscriber list at caroljamesmarshall.com. I am available exclusively on Amazon. Side note: I am in the process of having my books reformatted, because of this paperbacks are temporarily unavailable, but will be up and running in a couple weeks. You might find a used copy on Amazon. However I am on Kindle and Kindle unlimited.

Currently, I am writing Stainless Steel book 3 in my Women of the Grey series, along with an independent horror novel The Demon Dealer. Both books will be released this winter and early new year.

Thank you Damon Alan for having me as a guest on your blog.

Helpful Links

Goodreads

Facebook

Amazon

I keep a nonfiction memoir series at Scriggler. It’s a 100% nonfiction and will soon be complete. Once complete Barflies will be removed for compilation and publishing. Have a look.

XOXO Carol

 

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Tabby’s Star? A mystery solved?

If you haven’t heard about Tabby’s star, you’re probably wondering what the big deal is. The big deal is this. Over the last centuries astronomy has pretty much worked out how stars are born, age, and die. It depends on size mostly, but if astronomers know the mass of a star, they can work out how it will behave at just about every point of its life.

But Tabby’s star, also known as KIC8462852 or Boyajian’s star, is an oddity in a field where no oddities should exist. It dims up to 20% on an irregular schedule, which is something stars are not supposed to do. The theories for why have run the gamut.

Theory #1: A cloud of comets and dust surround the star, orbiting in irregular patterns and occluding the light in an unpredictable way. Say there were a billion comets orbiting the star, each with a different orbital period. Over time the percentage of comets between Tabby’s star and us would vary, and any pattern would be practically impossible to detect.

Problem with Theory #1: Over time a billion comets would diffuse through their orbital patterns in such a way that the star would always be dimmed to some degree. That is not the case.

Theory #2: Planet fragments. This one is similar theory #1, but instead of comets, the mass blocking the light is planetary remnants, the leftovers of some star system level smash up derby.

Problem with Theory #2: Nobody has been able to explain how a planetary system becomes a collection of planetary fragments.

Theory #3: This one is spectacular, the theory is that we might be watching the construction of an alien superstructure. If you’re familiar with the concept of a Dyson Sphere, an advanced civilization captures all the energy from its star via a thin shell of material around that star, and lives on the inside of the sphere once it’s complete. The surface area inside is equivalent to millions of Earths. This theory says that the shell isn’t complete yet, and light is being blocked by the parts that are built already.

Problem with Theory #3: The first problem is that we’ve found no credible evidence of alien life, let alone alien intelligent life. Radio and optical telescopes trained on Tabby’s star have found no evidence of radio or laser communication used to coordinate the building of such a massive engineering feat. So while theory 3 hasn’t been eliminated, it hasn’t a shred of evidence to support it.

Theory #4: Tabby’s star is eating a planet. The thought here is that Tabby’s star is consuming a gas giant. As the planet gets close to the star, the outer atmosphere and moons are stripped away, blocking light from the star and causing it to dim. Eventually the dust is cleared, either blown away by the solar wind or pulled into the star, and the star returns to normal.

Problem with Theory #4: The star has dimmed more than once. It is possible that the star is breaking apart the moons of any planet it consumed over time, but it’s not likely that the dimming would be so similar with each moon destroyed. Due to that similarity, this theory is unlikely.

Theory #5: The dimming is because of a gas giant several times larger than Jupiter with what may well be the most incredible ring system imaginable, as well as the Trojan asteroids associated with that gas giant. Trojan asteroids are dense asteroid fields that follow and precede a planet at the L4 and L5 Lagrangian points. Jupiter has them, so we know they’re possible and exist. A primer on Lagrange Points.

Problems with Theory #5: We haven’t had enough time to prove this one. If this theory is correct, there will be another dip in brightness in 2021. The dip in 2011 would have been the planet and the expansive rings passing in front of the planet. The dip in 2013 would have been the trailing asteroids at the L5 Lagrange point. The dip we’re seeing now could be from the planet passing behind the star, as the planet and those glorious rings would reflect a lot of light. So ironically the latest dip might not be the star at all, but the planet. In 2021, if the theory is correct, the L4 point asteroids will occlude the star, and we’ll finally have an answer that fits the observations. So the problem with Theory 5? Not enough time has passed to match the data to the theory.

There you have it. A summary of Tabby’s star and the behavior that has even the most respectable of scientists hoping they’ve finally discovered an advanced civilization. The favored theory by many at this time will be far more mundane, if you can consider a super-massive gas giant with rings that would make Saturn hide in shame mundane.

Images: http://www.nasa.gov

 

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