Forget Alien Megastructures, New Observations Explain Tabby’s Star With Dust Alone
The most unusual star known has finally had its dimming scientifically explained. Here’s the unusual, dusty resolution.
The science of planet-hunting has truly taken off in the 21st century, with the transit method leading the way. When a planet passes in front of its parent star, relative to our line-of-sight, some of the star’s light will disappear for a short while. These transits are a prolific method for exoplanet hunters to search for worlds around other stars. As of today, we know of thousands of stars with worlds around them, and most of them were discovered by transit.
When you design a mission optimized to look for planets, you expect that the technique is going to uncover a few oddities. But nothing prepared astronomers for the oddball that is Tabby’s star, whose flux dims by a tremendous amount, without any regularly repeating signals. After years of speculation involving scenarios ranging from comet storms to alien megastructures, scientists have finally solved the mystery. Dust, in an entirely new way, looks to be the culprit.
