Maybe signs of intelligent life around a distant star.

[Blobbenstein]

“It was kind of unbelievable that it was real data,” said Yale University astronomer Tabetha Boyajian. “We were scratching our heads. For any idea that came up there was always something that would argue against it.”

She was talking to the New Scientist about KIC 8462852, a distant star with a very unusual flickering habit. Something was making the star dim drastically every few years, and she wasn’t sure what.

The strange star that has serious scientists talking about an alien megastructure

 

[Blobbenstein]

KIC 8462852 is a star somewhat more massive, hotter, and brighter than the Sun. It’s about 1,500 light-years away, a decent distance, so it’s too faint to see with the naked eye. The Kepler data for the star are pretty bizarre: There are dips in the light, but they aren’t periodic. They can be very deep; one dropped the amount of starlight by 15 percent, and another by a whopping 22 percent!


Straight away, we know we’re not dealing with a planet here. Even a Jupiter-sized planet only blocks roughly 1 percent of this kind of star’s light, and that’s about as big as a planet gets. It can’t be due to a star, either; we’d see it if it were. And the lack of a regular, repeating signal belies both of these as well. Whatever is blocking the star is big, though, up to half the width of the star itself!

Weird star: Strange dips in brightness are a bit baffling.

 

[Second Summer]

I was just reading about this elsewhere. Half the size of the star - that would be ridiculously big, though! I struggle to comprehend how an artificial structure could be that big.

 

[Blobbenstein]

I was just reading about this elsewhere. Half the size of the star - that would be ridiculously big, though! I struggle to comprehend how an artificial structure could be that big.

My guess(if it is artificial) is that robots are involved..lots and lots or robots, and material taken from the outer part of that star system.

As you have probably read, it might only be a very thin structure...something to collect the star's energy....solar panels....stellarpannels?

 

[Blobbenstein]

The search for signs of life in a mysterious star system hypothesized to potentially harbor an "alien megastructure" is now underway.

Astronomers have begun using the Allen Telescope Array (ATA), a system of radio dishes about 300 miles (483 kilometers) northeast of San Francisco, to hunt for signals coming from the vicinity of KIC 8462852, a star that lies 1,500 light-years from Earth.

Search For Intelligent Aliens Near Bizarre Dimming Star Has Begun

 

[Mischief]

Kinda cool!