This video is made possible by audible. Get a free audio book of your choice from audible exclusively by going to audible.com/reallifelore in the description.
There are countless stars in the universe. There may be around one hundred billion stars just in our Milky Way galaxy alone.
But the single strangest one that we've discovered so far is a pretty close one to home, known officially as
KIC 8 4 6 2 8 5 2, it's only a little larger than the Sun is, and is only located about
1280 light-years away from us. It's been known to humanity for quite some time,
but always remained relatively obscure until recent observations noticed something strange back in 2015.
It seemed like KIC 8 4 6 2 8 5 2 was getting dimmer, and nobody really understood
why. Researchers became aware in 2015 that back in March of 2011,
recordings made by the Kepler space telescope
indicated that the star's brightness was reduced by up to 15%, and by February 2013,
it's brightness had been reduced by up to 22%. The star continued to dim and brighten again,
which suggested that something enormous was orbiting around it. For
comparison, a planet the size of Jupiter would only obscure the star by just 1%.
This indicated that whatever was blocking the light from the star wasn't a planet,
but something way bigger,
covering up to half of the entire width of the star. In addition to these day-long dimming and brightenings, a study of a
century's worth of photographic plates dating between 1890 and 1998
suggested that the star's brightness had gradually faded by 20% in that time, an amount
unprecedented by any other known star of this size and type.
Speculation began to run rampant about what was causing the star to fade,
And one of the more interesting theories was that we were witnessing the construction of a giant alien
mega-structure called a dyson sphere. In a paper written back in 1960 by Freeman Dyson titled, "Search for Artificial Stellar Sources of Infrared Radiation"
Dyson suggested that any other technological civilization in the universe would likely follow a similar power consumption pattern to that of humans.
Since humanity's energy needs have been continuously growing year by year,
It's possible that eventually we'll need more energy than what we can produce on earth, so, the logical end step for maximum energy
harvesting is to harvest it directly from the Sun from one of three different types of Dyson spheres.
Type one is to build a ring of orbiting structures around the star that collect light and wirelessly transfer the energy back to the home planet.
A type two is to build a bubble of satellites around the star that absorbs a good percentage of the light,
but not all of it. And a type three is to completely swallow the star with a solid shell of matter that absorbs
100% of the energy and light that the star
produces. If a sphere like this was built around the Sun with a radius of one au, the spheres surface area would be
550 million times the surface area of Earth, and it would produce a ridiculous 384.6
Yottawatts of energy, about 33 trillion times the entire energy consumption of all of humanity in
1998
Access to such an enormous amount of energy would essentially make any civilization that harnessed it appear to us to be as powerful as Gods.
We don't know what exactly would be possible; it would kind of be like showing
paleolithic people what a nuclear reactor would be capable of doing.
Freeman Dyson speculated that any civilization in space that got advanced enough would eventually build one of these types of structures,
which meant that in theory, we could detect their presence by observing a massive dip in light, sort of like
what was happening with KIC 8 4 6 2 8 5 2.
However, Dyson also believes that most known
substances that would make up a Dyson Sphere would be re-radiating energy in the infrared part of the electromagnetic
spectrum, which was not being detected with our mysterious star. In 2016, the lead researcher into the light
irregularities of the star said in a now famous TED talk that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence,
and it is my job, my responsibility, as an astronomer to remind people that alien
hypotheses should always be a last resort. To further add to the mystery though, the SETI Institute concluded that whatever
material is blocking the light between us and the star is
located inside the star's habitable zone,
where life like ours would be possible. The craziest theory is that we may be currently observing a gigantic
interplanetary space battle that included the apocalyptic destruction of a planet that generated dust obscuring the light from the star.
Seriously, all natural explanations were turning up weak, until a recent study was concluded just last month in January 2018.
More than 1,700 people donated over
$100,000 to fund the study, which concluded that the most likely culprit blocking the star's light was just
dust. The data showed that different colors of light were being blocked at different intensities,
which meant that whatever is passing between us and the star isn't opaque,
which is what would be expected from either a planet or an alien
mega-structure
If it is dust though, it's still not entirely clear
why that much would be in the system though in the first place.
Considering that it doesn't appear to be a young star system, dust should have coalesced into a series of planets by now,
which is yet another part of the puzzle
surrounding KIC 8 4 6 2 8 5 2.
There is still work that needs to be done in finding answers out about this star. We still can't say for certain
what exactly is going on. But what I can't say for certain is how to get a free audio book.
You head over to audible.com/reallifelore. As I'm sure you've heard before,
Audible is a leading provider of audiobooks and other spoken word entertainment.
They have thousands of amazing titles and there are some audiobooks that you can only find on Audible, like Artemis by Andy Weir.
A story that takes place in a city on the moon in
humanity's near future written by the author of the Martian, which I strongly recommend. What's amazing to me about Audible, though,
is that they stand behind their product. If you don't like what you've listened to, you can swap it out for another one with our
great listen guarantee. Once you try out your free book, membership includes
one free title each month and 30% off everything else.
I love listening to audiobooks while I'm driving or exercising,
and I'm sure you will too so it's worth going and try out a book for free with our 30-day free trial at audible.com/reallifelore.