Within
our own galaxy, some astronomers believe there may be a massive piece
of alien technology, built to harvest energy from a distant star. The
star, KIC 8462852, also known as Tabby's Star, exhibits strange
behavior, flickering and dimming, that can't be explained by any known
astronomical phenomena. A new, unpublished study posted to arXiv
reports the results of studying images of the star from the Kepler
Telescope over the past four years. The paper shows shocking results:
the star's luminosity varied, sometimes dipping by 20% over the course
of the study period. Even more perplexingly, its total luminosity, or
flux, diminished by 4% overall over that time.
"The
part that really surprised me was just how rapid and non-linear [the
dimming] was," study author Ben Montet of Caltech told Gizmodo. "We
spent a long time trying to convince ourselves this wasn't real. We just
weren't able to."
Tabby's
Star was first observed in the 19th century, providing scientists
plenty of data to reference in their search for answers. Another
researcher, Bradley Schaefer of Louisiana State University, published a study
earlier this year claiming that the light output of the star has
decreased by 19% in 100 years. His claims were highly disputed. Now,
this data seems to back up the assertion that the star is dimming at an
astonishingly rapid rate, even if Schaefer's data is not totally
accurate.
One of the
explanations for this phenomena, and the one that has received the most
press, is the idea that the star could be flickering and dimming due to
an "alien superstructure"
that extraterrestrial beings are building around their star as a way,
perhaps, to collect energy (these hypothetical structure are known as
Dyson spheres). Though there's been no proof of this hypothesis, it also
can't be ruled out. The other theories, including that the star is
blocked by the debris of a smashed planet, or that the dimming is caused
by what's known as "gravity darkening," would go towards explaining parts of the phenomenon, but no current theory could explain it entirely.
"The
new paper states, and I agree, that we don't have any really good
models for this sort of behavior," Jason Wright, the Penn State
astronomer who first suggested the alien superstructure theory, said.
"That's exciting!"
Source: Gizmodo
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