Posted on 10/28/2015 12:56:27 PM PDT by ETL
The mystery behind a strangely dimming star could soon be solved.
Astronomers around the world are keeping a close eye on the star KIC 8462852, which has dimmed dramatically numerous times over the past few years, dropping in brightness by up to 22 percent. These big dips have spurred speculation that the star may be surrounded by some type of alien megastructure — a hypothesis that will be put to the test if and when KIC 8462852 dims again.
"As long as one of those events occurs again, we should be able to catch it in the act, and then we'll definitely be able to figure out what we're seeing," said Jason Wright, an astronomer at Pennsylvania State University.
"The simplest measurements we can take — just looking in different wavelengths [of light] — should rule out, or suggest, alien megastructures right away," Wright told Space.com.
KIC 8462852 is a large star that lies about 1,500 light-years from Earth. The dimming events, which were observed by NASA's Kepler space telescope between 2009 and 2013, seem too substantial to be caused by an orbiting planet, many astronomers say.
Another plausible explanation — a planet-forming disk — doesn't seem to make sense, either, because KIC 8462852 appears to be a mature star whose planets (if it has any) have already formed.
So scientists are entertaining a number of other ideas, hypothesizing that the dimming might be caused by a swarm of exocomets or perhaps even some type of orbiting alien megastructure. This latter possibility is unlikely, researchers stress, but it's still worth checking out. Indeed, astronomers have aimed radio telescopes at KIC 8462852 to search for signals that may have been generated by intelligent aliens.
And follow-up is proceeding on other fronts as well. A number of optical telescopes are watching the star, waiting for another multiday dimming event to take place. Once such an event begins, large scopes outfitted with spectrographs will swing into action, studying and monitoring the various wavelengths of light emanating from KIC 8462852, Wright said.
"That'll tell us what that material is that the starlight is being filtered through," he said. "It'll tell us if maybe we're looking at ordinary astrophysical dust; it'll tell us if we're looking at gas."
"If we see any color dependence in the dimming — if it gets dimmer in the ultraviolet than it does in the infrared, for instance — then that would rule out that whatever we're looking at is a solid object," Wright added.
Wright thinks the data will eventually show that KIC 8462852's dimming events are caused by dust. If that turns out to be the case, it would raise another mystery for astronomers to solve — namely, where all that dust is coming from. Is it being shed by exocomets, for example, or is the material trapped in a giant ring system around a Saturn-like alien planet?
"The amount of dimming we get tells us something about the size of the dust — is it as fine as smoke, or is it pebbles and things?" Wright said. "That'll help us figure out which of those scenarios we're looking at."
NASA’s Kepler space telescope has a Space Fly on the lens
I’m assuming its natural.
But is it still a megastructure today?
While I believe it’s more likely than not that life exists, or has existed, elsewhere in the universe, I would tend to use Occam’s Razor here and look for a natural explanation involving something we already know does exist out there, like a large, dark planet or dead star, or something like that. Could it be an alien megastructure? Sure, it *could* be anything, but common sense suggests a natural explanation for the phenomenon is much, much more likely.
With all that dust, no way its a Dyson
With all that dust, no way its a Dyson
Always an issue when you are looking into history of course. But also the sheer size of any man-made object capable of causing exo-solar output fluctuations would be STAGGERING.
With all that dust, no way its a Dyson
/johnny
Hour is about 10, 10:30-ish in the evening, Southern California, where there is lots of air traffic seen from our deck, and it's nice to watch while enjoying an evening smoke (tobacco!!!). These nights, the sky was clear, no big banks of clouds.
Location is beneath flight paths of two international airports as well as who knows how many small city/county airports for civil aviation.
On most any evening, you might see as many as five or six moving objects in the sky at various distances, all blinking except those too far away to discern any blink. Their lights are not as bright as the closer planes/helicopters.
On three nights (two consecutive, then the night after) I saw what I first assumed was a plane/helicopter coming from the west traveling east, as it was the same speed and certain brightness of other air traffic and what looked to be the same general altitude. However, it didn't blink, turned very bright, dimmed, and disappeared over the course of maybe three seconds. It reappeared, dim at first then brightening like a glitterball, then dim again, at the same rate of speed only an inch or two higher in the sky traveling east, then disappear as it travelled ... to reappear again where it would be same rate of speed, only, again, an inch or two higher, then ... dim, but not reappear.
Per night, I saw this from the same point on the horizon, about four or five of them the first night during two visits to the deck over the course of an hour, maybe three the second, and the third night maybe twice, and never again since then.
It was if they would stay in motion, but only be illuminated for periods lasting three seconds or so before either disappearing at the height of brightness, or disappearing by dimming out ... then reappearing three or four seconds later at what looks like considerably higher altitude.
Was it a satellite? Or, I should say, were they satellites? I am totally perplexed.
But surely not beyond the capabilities of the Krell!
:)
It might have been a plane or chopper intermittently shinning a searchlight in your direction.
There are various atmospheric conditions and/or local environmental conditions that can produce all sorts of strange “mirage-like” optical effects, some of which involve distant car head or tail lights, or other such man-made sources of light. The cars themselves can actually be *below* the horizon, their light being refracted, or bent, by the atmosphere.
Helicopters.
Or a small private plane.
What you saw was a course correction. At one perspective it was coming at you. Then it turned and rose. Then it was coming back at you. When the lights were not turned at you...they were far enough away so you did not see anything.
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