A megastructure built in a star by aliens sounds like science fiction, but a new study trying to explain goings on there could help unwind the mystery about the strange celestial body in the constellation Cygnus.
Aliens at work within the star is a favorite theory of some amateur astronomers, while scientific minds like to think orbiting bodies coming between the star and observers causes the pulsations.
The study about the strange lighting of star KIC8462852, which is being monitored by NASA's Kepler space telescope, was recently accepted for publication by The Astrophysical Journal. It was written by Josh Simon of the Carnegie Institute and Ben Monet of the California Institute of Technology.
Simon and Monet researched the star's rapid brightening and slow fading during the four years it has been examined by the Kepler telescope.
"Speculation to explain KIC 8462852’s dips in brightness has ranged from an unusually large group of comets orbiting the star to an alien megastructure," said a Carnegie Institute release on their study. "In general, stars can appear to dim because a solid object like a planet or a cloud of dust and gas passes between it and the observer, eclipsing and effectively dimming its brightness for a time."
"But the erratic pattern of abrupt fading and re-brightening in KIC 8462852 is unlike that seen for any other star."
Kepler has been hunting for Earth-like planets in the Milky Way galaxy by examining the brightness of stars, looking for small tips in light patterns that could signal the presence of orbiting planets, said USA Today.
KIC 8462852 is one of roughly 160,000 stars that the space telescope has found since 2009, but its unusual light pattern has puzzled many observers.
"The steady brightness change in KIC 8462852 is pretty astounding," said Montet. "Our highly accurate measurements over four years demonstrate that the star really is getting fainter with time. It is unprecedented for this type of star to slowly fade for years, and we don't see anything else like it in the Kepler data."
Space.com noted that the dimming of KIC 8462852 was also noticed by Yale University's Tabetha Boyajim and a team of astronomers last September. Boyajim said that in one case, the star's brightness dipped by 22 percent.
"These brightness dips are too significant to be caused by an orbiting planet, so scientists began suggesting alternative explanations," said Michael Wall, senior writer for Space.com. "Perhaps a planet or a family of orbiting comets broke up, for example, and the ensuing cloud of dust and fragments periodically blocks the star's light. Or maybe some unknown object in the depths of space between the star and Earth is causing the dimming."
Monet and Simon said many of those explanations would not explain the longer-term dimming observed during the first three years of Kepler's monitoring.
"It's a big challenge to come up with a good explanation for a star doing three different things that have never been seen before," said Monet. "But these observations will provide an important clue to solving the mystery of KIC 8462852."
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