Planetary Scale Artworks
A highly advanced civilization has developed and is about to ascend to become beings of pure energy in a hyper-dimensional universe. Before leaving they restore our universe to a reasonably pristine state so that new life can evolve and explore it. For the most part they remove all trace of their existence, however they want to leave something behind. This could either be out of a sense of fun (they still have practical jokers) or just to leave a signature behind to show that they existed.
What sort of things could they leave behind that would be stable for millions or even billions of years, clearly the work of sentient beings, and possible to spot from a distance of many light-years. In other words it must be on at least a planetary scale.
There must be no doubt at all to anyone detecting it that this is something unusual, and that it's an artificial construction. However it is a signature, not a library or anything else. It contains nothing of meaning and certainly no intelligence. This includes technology that could be salvaged (for example maintenance robots). It's just a huge "we were here" in the sky that needs to last for billions of years with no maintenance.
This post was sourced from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/6565. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
1 answer
Hmm. How about a nebula? Pavel Janicek mentioned it briefly in his answer, but I want to elaborate on it a little.
You have a bunch of choices if you want to pick a nebula:
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Dark nebula: As you can imagine, dark nebulae are - well, dark! They block light from objects behind them. They're made of dust particles. A dark nebula in itself wouldn't look like artowrk, but you could use it to blot out select regions of the sky, letting only certain light sources through. You don't have to create any light, only block the light you don't want! Here's a picture of one, Lupus 4:
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Emission nebula: An emission nebula - guess what - emits light. A typical emission nebula is a cloud of gas filled with ions. The source of the cloud may be a star throwing off its outer layers, or a place where stars are born. In both scenarios, hot gas - or stars inside, but typically gas - emits light. Here's the Ring Nebula, my favorite:
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Reflection nebula: A reflection nebula reflects the light of nearby stars or other light sources. Like the other types of nebulae, they span interstellar space and may contain many stars. You need a central source of light. Here's the Witch Head Nebula:
Create any of these and you're going to have some pretty nice artwork. But to make any watchers know that they're artificial, make sure that they follow patterns that Nature alone could not produce.
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