Most Mysterious Star in the Galaxy

Possibility of enormous artificial construct behind the flickering star (Danielle Futselaar)

If you look through enough information, eventually you’ll find a discrepancy. That’s been a first hand-experience for anyone who dedicates themselves to a task for long enough. Although this inexplicable discrepancy made headlines a year ago after the discovery by Yale University astronomer Tabetha Boyajian, recent observations of Tabby’s Star has ignited the discussion again and prompted even theories about extraterrestrial life.

Around day 800 and day 1500, the brightness strays remarkably from its usual, constant trend

KIC 8462852, as it’s more formally known, was one of more than 150 000 stars that Kepler, a telescope constructed for the sole purpose of finding habitable planets, monitored during its four-year mission. However, this star was extraordinarily unique. While typical planetary transits dip by a few percent for only a few hours, Tabby’s Star would dim for days at a time by up to 20%. The following is a graph illustrating this light curve.

Although there are a list of natural scenarios that could possibly explain the star’s observations such as presence of multiple stellar companions, planets with rings, dust clouds of varying origin, and comets, Jason Wright, an astronomer at Pennsylvania State University, determined that this pattern is very difficult for known natural phenomena to explain.

“No known or proposed stellar phenomena can fully explain all aspects of the observed light curve.” — Wright

As a result, a few scientists even raised the possibility that its flickering is not natural at all. Some researchers noted that the signal was consistent with an “alien mega structure” — perhaps a wall of energy-collecting solar panels known as a Dyson sphere.

Dyson sphere — Individual solar collecting satellites forming a cloud around the star, collecting its energy and beaming it back to the home planet (Renaud Roche)

This speculation quickly led to the nickname of KIC 8462852 as the “alien megastructure star” and prompted a flood of news stories. It even got a mention on Saturday Night Live. Furthermore, Boyajian’s subsequent TED lecture drew even more attention to the star.

“What will it mean when we find another star like this? What will it mean if we don’t find another star like this?” — Boyajian

Addressing this question, Jason Wright and his colleagues plan to conduct another search where they’ve secured time on West Virginia’s Green Bank Telescope.