Tag: KIC 8462852

NASA’s Kepler Telescope Discovers a Colossal Artificial Structure Orbiting a Star in Our Vicinity

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Article by Steve                      October 15, 2015                      (ufoholic.com)

•  A paper submitted by Tabitha Boyajian, an astronomer at Yale, to the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (in 2015) described a particular star named KIC 8462852 orbiting only 1,500 light years from Earth. “… KIC 8462852 (aka “Tabby’s Star”), was observed by the Kepler Space Telescope (image above) to undergo irregularly shaped, aperatic dips in flux down to below the twenty percent level.” “We’d never seen anything like this star. It was really weird. (But the data) checked out.”

• The study mostly focused on two interesting anomalies of the star. The first event was recorded between days 788 and 795 of the Kepler mission and showed a single transit causing a star brightness drop-off of 15 percent. The second event was recorded between days 1510 to 1570 and showed a burst of several transits with a brightness dip of up to 22 percent. The transiting objects have to be extremely big.

• Scientists are now trying to point a radio antenna at KIC 8462852 in order to pick up their television shows to solve the riddle. Meanwhile, a second paper is being drafted around the possibility of the light obstruction being caused a colossal artificial device engineered by advanced aliens.

• Considering that our galaxy has existed for more than 13 billion years, it’s not hard to imagine that an alien civilization may be out there, possessing technology that allows them to build megastructures around stars. Jason Wright, a fellow astronomer at Penn State said, “This looked like something you would expect an alien civilization to build.” Researchers are hypothesizing the possibility of a mega-engineered project created by a Type 2 alien civilization on the Kardashev scale. With a vast shell or series of rings surrounding a star, a Dyson sphere-like structure could use all the available energy radiating from a star.

 

Besides Kepler’s ability of finding small, rocky worlds orbiting distant stars, it can also detect different space phenomenon like stellar flares, star spots and dusty planetary rings.

This time however, Kepler detected the signal of a supposed vast artificial structure orbiting a star only 1,500 light years away from Earth.

After finishing all plausible explanations, scientists now believe that this complex structure might be an artificial construction made by an advanced alien civilization way up on the Kardashev scale of comparison.

This megastructure works like a supersized solar array orbiting around its host star, stocking the energy and sending it back to the source. The size of the structure is so grand that it’s blocking a considerable fraction of starlight as it spins around its host.

Normally all the exoplanets discovered by Kepler have a typical planet-shape, meaning they are round. This time however, the telescope detected something that isn’t round and behaves unnatural.

A paper has been submitted to the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society in which a particular star named KIC 8462852 is described.

OVER THE DURATION OF THE KEPLER MISSION, KIC 8462852 WAS OBSERVED TO UNDERGO IRREGULARY SHAPED, APERIODIC DIPS IN FLUX DOWN TO BELOW THE TWENTY PERCENT LEVEL.

WE’D NEVER SEEN ANYTHING LIKE THIS STAR, IT WAS REALLY WEIRD. WE THOUGHT IT MIGHT BE BAD DATA OR MOVEMENT ON THE SPACECRAFT, BUT EVERYTHING CHECKED OUT. – TABETHA BOYAJIAN, RESEARCHER AT YALE UNIVERSITY

Studies mostly focused on two interesting anomalies at KIC 8462852, one that was recorded between days 788 and 795 of the Kepler mission and between days 1510 to 1570.

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Alien Megastructure Star: Dimming Of Tabby’s Star Sets New Record

by Allan Adamson             March 27, 2018                (techtimes.com)

KIC 8462852, also known as Tabby’s Star, has dimmed again. Researchers say that it dipped in brightness more dramatically than ever.

• In 2011, the Kepler Space Telescope observed a star that dimmed as much as 22 percent. The star is KIC 8462852, also known as Tabby’s Star named for Tabetha Boyajian, the Louisiana State University astrophysicist who discovered the star. Since then it has been observed to sporadically dim in brightness, then return to normal.

• On March 16, 2018, Boyajian and colleagues recorded the “…deepest dip we have observed since the Kepler Mission in 2013! WOW!!” By March 22nd, the star’s brightness increased rapidly and was nearly back to normal when it started to dim again on March 26th, even moreso than the previous week and setting a new record.

• A planet passing between a star and Earth will typically cause the dimming of the host star by 1 percent or less and at regular intervals. What makes the Tabby’s Star different from many others is that it dims at unpredictable intervals and at varying degrees.

• A popular theory of the cause of Tabby’s Star’s erratic dimming is the orbit of an alien megastructure around the star, such as an array of solar panels created by an intelligent extraterrestrial civilization. Other theories involve the star devouring a nearby planet, or interference by a comet, or interstellar dust.

 

Louisiana State University astrophysicist Tabetha Boyajian, who discovered the star, and colleagues, revealed that the star has dimmed by at least 5 percent and possibly 10 percent.

The scientists said that Tabby’s star, also called “alien megastructure star” due to its bizarre behaviors suspected to be associated with an intelligent alien civilization, started to dim on March 16 and then returned to normal.

Boyajian and colleagues said that the dip in brightness was the largest observed dip in the star since 2013.

                 Tabetha Boyajian

 

“On Friday (2018 March 16) we noted the last data taken were significantly down compared to normal,” the researchers wrote in their Tabby Star observation blog. “This is the deepest dip we have observed since the Kepler Mission in 2013! WOW!!”

By March 22, the star’s brightness increased rapidly and was nearly back to normal but it started to dim again on March 26.

“Today we have some very big news – data taken at TFN last night show the flux is down 5 percent,” Boyajian and colleagues reported on March 26. “Looks like we beat the record set just last week on the deepest dip observed since Kepler!”

In 2011, the Kepler Space Telescope observed that the star dimmed as much as 22 percent. Other dimming events also occurred throughout 2017.

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Scientists Wrong In Ruling Out ‘Alien Megastructure’ Around Dimming Star

by Norman Byrd          January 21, 2018          (inquisitr.com)

• “Tabby’s Star”, or KIC 8462852, is over 1000 light years from Earth and displays four separate dips in the star’s brightness. It made news in 2017 that its dimming might be due to an alien megastructure or some type of artificial construct of alien design such as a ‘Dyson Sphere’ partially covering the star.

• Now, in an article posted to Phys.org, one of the lead co-authors of the study, the star’s namesake Tabetha Boyajian, notes that the dimming and brightening of Tabby’s Star is due to a massive cloud of dust and is “not opaque, as would be expected from a planet or alien megastructure.” She and her co-authors say that an artificial alien structure can be ruled out because if it were a solid megastructure, the wavelength depth of the dimming would more consistent.

• But couldn’t an alien structure surrounding the system’s star not necessarily be of a solid material, but rather made of a type of material that would allow some filtering of the light? Or what if it is only partially completed and therefore not consistent in its dimming? It is, therefore, wrong to strictly rule out the possibility that the star’s dimming might be due to an alien construct around the star. On the other hand, it could be simply due causes that are natural in the cosmos, as the astrophysicists now say.

 

One of the continuing story subtexts in all the recent deep space and exoplanet discovery articles, not to mention those covering the accumulating data from planets and moons within our own Solar System, is that the existence of alien life cannot be ruled out. As an exception to this, in further study of Tabby’s Star, the mysterious dimming star KIC 8462852, it was revealed that the cause of the dimming effect was most likely due to a natural phenomenon, and it could be ruled out that the strange effect was caused by an alien megastructure or some artificial construct of alien design.

But is that correct?

To be precise, according to an article posted to Phys.org, one of the lead co-authors of the study, star namesake Louisiana State University’s Tabetha Boyajian, noted that the dimming and brightening of KIC 8462852 was due to a massive cloud of dust and was “not opaque, as would be expected from a planet or alien megastructure.” The conclusion was derived from perusing months of observation data of the so-called “dimming star” — which is over a thousand light years from Earth — that captured four separate dips in the object’s brightness. By studying the various wavelengths, it was determined that the effect, if it were a more solid or opaque obstruction, would present itself in the dimming data as a similarity in wavelength depth.

Penn State’s Jason Wright, also a co-author of the study, supports Boyajian’s conclusion. He writes in his blog, AstroWright, that the new study suggests “we now have no reason to think alien megastructures have anything to do with the dips of Tabby’s Star.”

Although they may be correct, Boyajian and Wright’s conclusion could well be flawed in the thinking that an extraterrestrial civilization so advanced to be able to build an alien megastructure that could surround (or even partially surround) something as large as a star would be constrained to using materials that might not allow some filtering. That is, not getting similar wavelengths or some wavelength uniformity from the dimming star data might not actually rule out an alien megastructure if such a massive construct was built using materials that allowed at least some of the star’s light to pass through.

And then there is the possibility that the dimming is caused by a structure that is itself only partially complete.

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