‘Alien mega-structure’ blocking light from distant star?

Image courtesy: sitsshow.blogspot.com
Deepu Aby Varghese Deepu Aby Varghese folomojo staff

“Are we alone in the universe?” is one of the many questions which mankind has been desperately trying to answer for the last few centuries. There have many theories like Fermi paradox, Drake’s Equation and Anthropic Principle which have stood ‘for’ and ‘against’ while trying to theorize a possible existence of a Type II or Type III civilizations in the unobserved reserves of universe.

It is at this juncture, Tabby’ star or KIC 8462852 was observed and it turned to be a very uncanny one. It was found that KIC 8462852, which is 1,480 light years away in the Cygnus constellation, has been on a dimming course ever since it was first observed.

While the most known cosmic phenomena are being suggested to rule out any mystery surrounding Tabby’s Star, some from the scientific community tends to believe that the whopping rate of decline in its brightness is caused by colossal alien ‘mega structure’.

Data from a four-year long observation by the Kepler Space Telescope has testified the continuous dimming of Tabby’s Star. A study, which was appeared in the online pre-print research journal Arxiv, used Kepler’s database to analyse the star’s brightness from 2009 to 2013 and found it to have dimmed constantly over that period.

Also read: Earth-sized planets capable of intelligent life orbit a dwarf star near us!

 Subsequently, astronomers Ben Montet and Joshua Simon from Caltech recorded at drop of 2.5 percent light in just 200 days after the weird behavior was first spotted in 2015.

“The part that really surprised me was just how rapid and non-linear it was,” said Montet to Gizmodo. “We spent a long time trying to convince ourselves this wasn’t real. We just weren’t able to.”

To examine if plummeting dimness of the star is caused by any common reasons such as the swirling comet swarms, effects of distorted stars or effects of exploded planet debris – the astronomers studied over 500 other stars in its vicinity. However, results of those studies failed to poke holes in the mystery surrounding KIC 8462852.

Also read: Kepler mission catalouges 20 Earth-like exoplanets

Now internet backed ideas suggest that a mega structure like a Dyson’s Sphere built by a Type II civilization to harness energy must be blocking the light from the star. Type II civilization is a hypothetical alien group which would harness the energy resources outside its home planet, especially from its home star.

As the Kepler’s observations suggest that Tabby’s Star is dimming twice as fast as earlier, researchers are preparing to look at it using Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network for a whole year in a bid to reconfirm the bizarre dimming of the star.

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