Hi, this is Emma, and welcome to Esoteric Detective.
Three months ago, news broke that a giant "alien mega structure" could exist around
a bizarre-looking star 1,500 light-years away.
While the prospect of aliens was first launched by Penn State astronomer Jason Wright, almost
everyone in the astronomy community agreed that the chances that this was the case were
"very low."
Now, the latest investigations into this strange star by Louisiana State University astronomer
Bradley Schaefer have reignited the alien theory, New Scientist reported.
What makes this star, KIC 8 4 6 2 8 5 2, known as Tabby's Star so bizarre is the drastic
changes in light we see from it over time.
Many stars experience temporary fluctuations in brightness, increasing and decreasing in
luminosity over time, but Tabby's Star changes are severe by comparison.
Between 2009 and 2013, astronomers using the Kepler space telescope discovered that it
would sometimes lose up to 20% of its brightness.
What's more, the changes didn't follow any obvious pattern.
That would suggest something gigantic must be blocking the light at random times, meaning
that it couldn't be a planet or other regular orbiting object because that would generate
a distinct pattern of dimming light.
It must be something that changes shape over time, thereby blocking different levels of
light at random intervals.
An alien mega structure, called a Dyson swarm, was suggested as one explanation for what
scientists have observed, but the most likely reason astronomers came up with was comets
— a giant family of them.
"The comet-family idea was reasonably put forth as the best of the proposals, even while
acknowledging that they all were a poor lot," Schaefer told New Scientist.
"But now we have a refutation of the idea, and indeed, of all published ideas."
To make his discovery, Schaefer had to dig deep down into the astronomy archives at Harvard.
It turns out, astronomers have data on Tabby's Star dating back as far as 1890.
By analyzing over 1,200 measurements of this star's brightness taken from 1890 through
1989, Schaefer found that the irregular dimming of Tabby's Star has been going on for over
100 years.
Schaefer published his findings in the online preprint server arXiv dot org.
What's more, he explains in his paper that this "century-long dimming trend requires
an estimated 648,000 giant comets (each with 200 km diameter) all orchestrated to pass
in front of the star within the last century," which he said is "completely implausible."
So what is it?
By killing the comet theory, Schaefer has brought us one step closer to finding out
what is really happening around Tabby's Star.
But at the same time, he's also reignited the possibility that the source could be an
alien mega structure that an advanced alien civilization has been slowly building over
time.
One thing's certain for Schaefer: The bizarre dimmings are probably caused by a single,
physical mechanism that's undergoing some type of ongoing change.
"The century-long dimming and the day-long dips are both just extreme ends of a spectrum
of timescales for unique dimming events, so by Ockham's Razor, all this is produced by
one physical mechanism," Shaefer said in his paper.
"This one mechanism does not appear as any isolated catastrophic event in the last century,
but rather must be some ongoing process with continuous effects."
What do you guys think?
Have we really found something that is beyond our understanding?
Stay tuned and subscribe to Esoteric Detective, to keep up-to-date with the strange and unusual.
And please give a thumbs up if you liked the video, until next time, lets all keep an eye
on Tabby's Star.