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

TheDemSocialist

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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.
Boyajian wrote up a paper on possible explanations for the star’s bizarre behavior, and it was published recently in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. But she also sent her data to fellow astronomer Jason Wright, a Penn State University researcher who helped developed a protocol for seeking signs of unearthly civilization, wondering what he would make of it.
To Wright, it looked like the kind of star he and his colleagues had been waiting for. If none of the ordinary reasons for the star’s flux quite seemed to fit, perhaps an extraordinary one was in order.
Aliens.
Or, to be more specific, something built by aliens — a “swarm of megastructures,” as he told the Atlantic, likely outfitted with solar panels to collect energy from the star.
Read more @: The strange star that has serious scientists talking about an alien megastructure


Fascinating and interesting stuff. Scientists are keeping open the theory that there may be alien life on this and some sort of huge structure which is causing this strange flickering.
 
As many will note, the theory of aliens is a rather drastic long shot, but it is always incredible when legitimate astronomers are at least willing to entertain the theory.

From my understanding of the data, the biggest problem is the speed with which this light obstruction has developed. I read that the amount of light obstruction nearly doubled in one year and, as such, the technological development/construction would have to be incredibly immense. As such, my current favorite theory (still amazingly exciting) is that we may have found an instance of a planet-sized destruction event that would have tossed out a large amount of rapidly expanding material.
 
As many will note, the theory of aliens is a rather drastic long shot, but it is always incredible when legitimate astronomers are at least willing to entertain the theory.

From my understanding of the data, the biggest problem is the speed with which this light obstruction has developed. I read that the amount of light obstruction nearly doubled in one year and, as such, the technological development/construction would have to be incredibly immense. As such, my current favorite theory (still amazingly exciting) is that we may have found an instance of a planet-sized destruction event that would have tossed out a large amount of rapidly expanding material.

Planetary collision

High resolution spectroscopy, spectral energy distribution and imaging observations have also been made.[1] A massive collision scenario would create warm dust that glows in infrared wavelengths, but there is no observed excess infrared energy, ruling out massive planetary collision debris.[5] Other researchers think the planetary debris field explanation is unlikely, given there is a very low probability that Kepler could ever witness such an event.[1]


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KIC_8462852
 
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Interesting, appreciate the info
 
With ever increasing abilities of technology we will some day discover life elsewhere but it will be unreachable in terms of vehicles to get there to verify.
 
With ever increasing abilities of technology we will some day discover life elsewhere but it will be unreachable in terms of vehicles to get there to verify.

At some point it may be.

What about sending androids that can withstand the rigors of thousands of years of space travel there and back?
 
It is certainly an intersting hypothesis and I am all in favor of SETI examining the system. I still find it highly unlikely. My guess is this will be another case similar to when we discovered pulsars. But while those turned out not be alien signals, it was still a cool discovery.
 
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