Did Astronomers Find Evidence of an Alien Civilization? (Probably Not. But ....)

Astrogeology, Asteroids, Robots, Space Flight & Extraterrestrial Matters

Date posted: 10/17/15

Phil Plait reports that a team of astronomers is getting some notice because of aliens. Now just wait a minute..... The paper does not mention aliens, and it does not even imply aliens. Not directly, at least. But the astronomers found a star system that is so odd, with behavior so difficult to explain, that it is clear that something out of the ordinary is happening there. And some of the astronomers who did the work are now looking into the idea that what they have found might (might!) be due to aliens. But do not let this idea run away with you (as it has with some folks on social media and, no doubt, will in some less reliable media outlets soon). The scientists involved are being very skeptical and approaching this the right way....logically. The star is called KIC 8462852, and it is one of more than a 100,000 stars that was observed by the NASA Kepler mission. Kepler stared at these stars, looking for dips in their brightness. These very slight dimmings can be due to many factors, but one is if the star has planets, and one (or more) of them orbit the star in such a way that it passes directly in front of the star as seen from Earth. If it does, we see a tiny diminution of starlight, usually by less than 1%. Thousands of exoplanets have been found this way recently. Usually the planet is on a short orbit, so the dip we see is periodic, repeating every few days, weeks, or months, depending on the size of the planet orbit. KIC 8462852 is a star somewhat more massive, hotter, and brighter than our Sun. It is about 1,500 light-years from Earth, so it is too faint to see with the naked eye. The Kepler data for the star are pretty bizarre - There are dips in the light, but they are not periodic. They can show very deep dips, one dropped the amount of starlight by 15%, and another by 22%. Whether there are aliens constructing huge megastructures to feed their power needs at KIC 8462852, or it is a natural phenomenon we have not observed before. Good Read ....