Boyajian's Star (KIC 8462852) Updates: The Mystery Continues
For a long time, extraterrestrial megastructures have piqued the interest of many experts and
amateur astronomers.
Tabby's star was one such huge draw.
The strange lowering of light incident has sparked a flurry of speculation.
Tabby's Star, also known as star KIC 8462852, has been a source of fascination and investigation
in the scientific community for quite some time, with scientists attempting to discover
why it experiences unpredictable episodes of brightening and fading.
We talked about the strangeness of Tabby’s star in one of our previous videos with possible
explanations of the weird dimming of light.
But more strangeness seems to have emerged from the new data of Tabby’s star.
Surprising evidence has been discovered that might help explain the enigma of this strangely
fading star.
So just sit back and relax while we explain to you the mysterious circumstances surrounding
the star KIC 8462852 or Tabby’s star.
NASA's Kepler mission has fundamentally altered the game when it comes to studying exoplanets
and other distant worlds.
It has observed around 530,000 stars to date.
There are over 2600 undiscovered exoplanets.
One of these hundreds of thousands of stars jumps out as particularly odd.
KIC 8462852, commonly known as Tabby's star or Boyajian's star, possesses some of the
universe's most unusual properties: Its flux drops by around 25%, which is 25 times more
than what an exoplanet circling its star might do.
It also fades gradually over decades, with unique brightening occurrences and no infrared
emission (which all the other stars with large flux dips possess).
Scientists were perplexed by these discoveries as they attempted to unravel the mystery.
We talked about different possibilities including the possibility of an alien megastructure
in our previous video about the Tabby’s star.
But things have taken a turn yet again.
The star's behavior altered somewhat last month, and it appears to have entered a persistent
1% dimming stage.
This is not typical of the star, which often shows short-term but frequently quite profound
dips.
In the Kepler data, for example, drops reached as high as 22%, but only lasted a few days
or so.
Instead, we've been experiencing a consistent plus or minus 1% drop for about a month.
That also displays extremely brief intervals of recuperation, nearly the inverse mirror
image of what it generally does.
Another feature of this one percent dimming is its shallowness.
Since the Kepler mission, the dips in the star's brightness have tended to be lesser
and weaker dimming episodes.
This might be explained by a collisional scenario, such as colliding icy comets, as proposed
by Dr. Boyajian in the early days of this event.
The difficulty is that this requires an impossibly large number of comets, or basically a big
comet that is more akin to a planet disintegrating.
But, thus far, no models of this type have accurately anticipated what has been observed
with this star.
Another notable development with the present dimming is that one observer discovered that
the material concealing the star during this dimming became optically thick for a brief
period of time, effectively floating in and out of optical thickness.
This was discovered by studying different wavelengths of light, and if true, it would
imply that the dust cloud became much thicker and thinner as it passed in front of the star,
yet stayed thick enough to keep the star visibly dimmed.
Optical thickness may indicate a variety of things, including a massive solid object covering
a star, such as a massive extraterrestrial megastructure, but in this case it appears
that the dust just became thick for a short period of time, confusing current ideas.
But, while unlikely, some kind of alien origin theory should be the last resort in our options.
The point is, this star is acting unusually, even for dust phenomena.
One especially perplexing element of this star is how the dust is still there in the
system.
The star has a long-term dimming tendency that is most likely related to the short-term
dimming occurrences.
After all, how plausible is it that two distinct but uncommon events will occur with the same
star without being connected, especially when both entail dimming?
However, investigations comparing different wavelengths of light absorption during dips
have revealed that this dust is quite modest.
This is submicron material that should be blasted out of the system on a regular basis.
So whatever is going on appears to be replenishing the dust faster than it is being blown away,
contradicting collisional models.
On the other hand, the fact that the dips have lately gotten shallower than when Kepler
discovered them appears to corroborate a collisional scenario in which objects are dispersing.
Another interesting finding is that the drop appears to correspond with astronomers' estimates
of periodicity.
The establishment of periodicity is critical in determining what is going on with this
star.
Establishing periodicity would answer many unanswered concerns, such as whether this
is a phenomena of interstellar dust that we are just witnessing from our vantage point,
or whether it is truly in orbit around this star.
Interstellar dust is implausible since we should notice it influencing nearer stars
to KIC 8462852 from our vantage point.
A cloud at night does not obscure just one star; it obscures all neighboring stars from
your vantage point.
This is the same for the galaxies too.
This is not observed, and whatever is going on is just affecting this single point-like
star system, implying that the dust surrounding it is circling it.
This orbit is critical, as it appears that the material obstructing Tabby's star is orbiting
it within the star's habitable zone.
The evidence for this appears to be mounting.
But here's the rub: at the observed size of the dust, which is a very small smoke-like
particle, it should be warming in Infrared as well as blowing out of the system.
No infrared emissions from this dust have been observed, and given the star's long-term
dimming tendency of at least a century, some of it must be hanging around and should be
shining with warmth.
It appears not, but established periodicity will aid in sorting this out and maybe offer
information on whether the dust is genuinely chilly.
The best natural idea for explaining the star's activity is some kind of collisional model
in which cascades of material smash and form dust clouds.
But it's difficult to imagine a technology that could do it continually throughout time.
If you can recall, significant evidence for dips in this star's brightness has been found
in previous sky surveys stretching from the 1930s to the 1970s, in addition to Kepler's
observations and those made subsequently.
Whatever is going on is happening in a continuous and long-term process.
What that procedure is still a mystery.
And it gets even more mysterious now with the new findings.
Edward Schmidt discusses searches he's done through historical sky surveys to try to locate
candidates acting similarly to KIC 8462852 in a recent paper, which you can easily find
in the description below[https://arxiv.org/pdf/2111.01208.pdf].
Schmidt had little trouble finding applicants.
This is wonderful news for Tabby's star since those candidates may now be viewed and tracked.
If they are caused by the same phenomena, observers will be able to gather a lot more
data on various candidates and gain a much clearer picture of what is going on with these
stars.
In fact, he discovered that Tabby's star may be part of a compact cluster of about 15 stars
that exhibit the same puzzling variations in brightness.
The light curves of these stars, known as slow dippers, are extremely similar to Boyajian's
star, yet there's something strange about them.
Two distinct patterns have arisen in this data that do not appear to be the result of
random chance, albeit additional data and candidates are required to proceed.
The first is that the candidate stars appear to group together.
More and more of them appear to congregate in the surrounding vicinity of KIC 8462852.
This is not consistent with a random distribution of stars.
And that’s where this gets strange.
Coz This is what you would expect from an expanding alien civilization.
You might wonder, Fifteen stars, tightly clustered in the same part of the milky way, appear
to be flickering in an unnatural way.
Is this a techno-signature of an advanced civilisation?
However, the clustering remains unusual.
Naturally, the following question is, "Is the cause for the grouping superficial?"
and that the effect is caused by some intervening dust in the interstellar medium.
This isn't the case since, once again, you'd observe neighboring stars fading and experience
the impact, which isn't visible.
So whatever it is, it is happening immediately around these stars, and there is no reasonable
justification for the apparent grouping, if it is truly genuine, as it appears to be.
But then there's weirdness number two.
The candidate stars cluster not just in space, but also in type on the Hertzprung-Russell
diagram.
This is quite strange; all of the stars are either Type F, like Tabby's, or Type G, like
the sun.
This does not appear to be the case for giant or tiny stars.
On the surface, this makes no sense.
You'd assume it'd happen with orange dwarfs, red dwarfs, and all kinds of stars.
However, it's possible that those sorts of stars destroy material like this more efficiently
than Type F and G stars, but that's just a wild guess.However, it is worth mentioning
that Type G stars are obviously really excellent for life, since we live next to one, and Type
F stars are a bit shorter lived, but rather stable, and while they may not be ideal for
life to develop around, they may be just great for aliens to inhabit and utilize.
But it goes without saying that this development is a little strange, clustering in space and
clustering in star classification all at the same time.
As a consequence, the article proposes that these new possibilities may be worthy of further
investigation by SETI.
And, moreover, they should be investigated in general to attempt to figure out what this
perplexing event that appears to happen to certain stars selectively is, whether natural
or otherwise.
Just when you think you've got a good hold on what's going on, you find out you don't.
This has been the case for this celebrity since 2015, and I have no doubt that there
will be more surprises in store.
So what do you think about the continued strange behavior of the Tabby’s star?
What possible explanation can account for such events?
Let us know what you think in the comment section below.
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