> a) Why would aliens expend the enormous energy required to engineer this?

Maybe they built the system, and being lazy like we are they chose some simple numbers

> b) Isn't it vastly more likely to occur naturally as some sort of resonance effect?

Alien intelligence may be less likely than a natural effect, but alien intelligence in this system is much more likely than in a random system.

Maybe we are looking at a case of alien artificial intelligence, e.g. the classic hollywood scenario where an alien society was eventually replaced by sentient AI(e.g. kaylons, cylons, etc).

> Why would aliens expend the enormous energy required to engineer this?

So there are these great big buildings in Egypt...

That’s what they want you to think!

…mostly big piles of rocks… nothing too special…

So these ancient granite constructions exhibit tool markings of computer-aided design precision, laser cutting, and power drilling. These enormous granite obselisks weigh more than even modern cranes can lift. But they were allegedly "hand-chiseled" and lifted from quarries by a dozen men with ropes. Yet no-one with actual modern computers and lasers and drills and cranes has been able to replicate any of it. Oh and every ancient structure is "ceremonial" that these stone age people built in their spare time.

Don't let this distract you from the the fact that in 1966, Al Bundy scored four touchdowns in a single game while playing for the Polk High School Panthers in the 1966 city championship game versus Andrew Johnson High School, including the game-winning touchdown in the final seconds against his old nemesis, "Spare Tire" Dixon.

What exactly is a “marking of computer-aided design precision”?

>So these ancient granite constructions exhibit tool markings of computer-aided design precision, laser cutting, and power drilling.

Ok, I'll bite. Says who?

From the photos I have seen, the blocks look hand cut, not laser cut. I understand the blocks were cut with copper chisels and that archeologists found copper chisels in the quarries.

It is entirely believable that hundreds of men using ramps, ropes, grease and rollers could move these large blocks.

Lol

Building a pyramid is impressive.

Moving planets out of existing orbit is another level. I can only imagine this is possible for a race who can plan multi million year projects and thus you can probably use rockets to do small gravitational slingshots each day and rely on some compounding effect.

I would lean towards this as well. There are countless examples of interesting mathematical patterns in nature. One can get pulled down this rabbit hole by watching some of Randall Carlson's videos [1] and I can see why people could be intrigued by the intelligent patterns. Having said that I am not discounting the possibility of something or someone creating these patterns only that they are replete throughout the universe and even found in natural objects on Earth. There is probably a formula one could use if the mass and composition of the star and planets were known that would explain the orbits.

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/@TheRandallCarlson/videos

"Why would aliens expend the enormous energy required to engineer this" Is a very similar answer to why humans would make microprocessors out of logic gates.

I'm in school for digital design at the moment, and stuff like oscillators and frequency dividers are at the very base/root of almost all electronic circuits.

One guess could be that alignments of planets in specific ways could be used to generate specific impulses of gravitational waves, the way we generate signals in binary. Imagine an alien race who uses gravitational effects from orbiting bodies as the basic building block of their "mega processors" that are the size of galaxies. So one solar system that has a division cycle of "2/3, 2/3, 2/3, 3/4 and 3/4" could be their representation of a value/"bit pattern" but written with planets in orbital mechanics, just like how we represent decimal 10 in binary 1010.

as an aside, it is very easy to also ask "why would humans spend so much energy taking silicate sand and turning it into intricate patterns at the size of angstroms and nano meters just to consume power? wouldn't it be easier to just let the sand organize itself into components as needed?" of course, the answer seems obvious to us, but the question is analogous to yours.

Or maybe, instead of using radio or a golden disc, the aliens decided to synchronize planets of some system (not necessarily theirs), in order to try to communicate intelligent life using the gravitational waves, so the message can reach much further - maybe even to other universes (there are various theories, that we might communicate with other universes in the multiverse using gravity, or maybe with the previous universe before the Big Bang... As well as an idea that the dark matter is another universe that we interact with only gravitationally).

this is a great idea too!

Super interesting answer, thank you for that.

I studied EE and identity with what you’re saying, but I suppose the natural follow-up questions would include an interrogation of the relative benefits of scale. In other words, why build a solar system sized oscillator? Surely, if one simply needs to maintain a clock—and if one has sufficient advanced knowledge and technology to influence the motion of planetary orbits on a large scale—why bother, when the decay of cesium atoms is readily available? The fun answer is because the intelligence responsible for such an endeavor exists on a scale such that this solar system is its equivalent of a cesium atom. But other smarter folks have already established the more likely scenarios elsewhere in this thread. It’s just fun to think about.

I can understand that it could be done as some sort of cosmic scale performance art. But I find it hard to understand that it would have any practical use. But, there again, aliens are likely to have very different thought processes.

yes exactly, the entire goal of my post was to describe how aliens could have entirely different thinking processes and/or scales than humans.

If one alien entity/organism is actually the size of a galaxy, a single solar system would be on the scale of maybe a transistor at 20-30 nm to us.

At that scale it's no longer performance art, but maybe a small part of a engine of some sort.

What I'm saying is thought patterns like "what is it for" "this is inefficient" or "that would be way too big" ... etc is only defined from our point of view.

For what it’s worth, all your comments on this perspective along with the silicon analogy are excellent and were eye opening for me. I too was dismissive and it took me a sec to really understand your analogy and point but I get it now. Nicely stated!

Art, music of the spheres (literally)

So when point out telescope at it, we say "ah, Aliens"?!