The Kepler space telescope discovered something very strange.
And there're suspicions that could be a sign of alien intelligence.
Scientists aren't saying it's aliens, but, come on!
It's totally aliens!
Hey everyone tracy here for d news with astronomer Aaron white from the California Academy
of Sciences hi Aaron I'm gonna get excited about aliens you've probably
heard this week about a super weird discovery from the Kepler space
telescope there might be aliens around a distant star KIC 846 2852 or at least
that's how it's being reported
yeah there's a lot of excitement around the story but we've got to keep ourselves
grounded essentially the Kepler space telescope has a specific mission we're
looking for planets around distant stars Kepler spotted something unusual and that
has been blown up by the media to huge proportions we're not saying it's aliens
but maybe aliens. Let me reiterate astronomers are not saying its aliens, they're just not
ruling out aliens as a possibility right? So kepler's mission is to look for
transiting planets around other stars. We've talked about these on Dnews before, Kepler
looks at a star and if a planet passes between the star and our point of view
we'd see a dimming lights so think about it this way normal starlight and the
planet start passing slightly dim more dim slightly brighter back to normal cause
the planet's moved away that's predictable at regular and it's easy to
spot a planet that way. Right exactly that's called the transit it's an easy
way to detect planets around other stars, now just keep in mind a normal run of
the mill a giant planet like jupiter, which by the way is about a hundred and twenty
two times larger than the earth, will only dim a star by about 1% when we see this
transit the crazy thing about this story is that KIC 8 462 8528 is showing dips in
the ballpark of 20% that, is insane. So this could mean, right Aaron,
that something huge is blocking the stars light over on TestTube+ Dr Ian O'Neill
astrophysicist and I talked about how a sufficiently advanced civilization might
build a Dyson Sphere around a sun! We're talking about a Dyson spheres come'on! Dyson spheres! So a Dyson Sphere
is essentially a huge collection of space-based solar panels that gathers up
light from its host star in it converts it into usable energy, any civilization
that could build one of these things would get them access to an enormous
power source but as a side effect it would block the star's light from
a distant viewers perspective,
like maybe us. So a Dyson sphere might explain the observations of KIC whatever
if your goal is to show other civilizations of your existence putting
a beacon like a big artificial thing around your star would definitely do it. So
what we're seeing could be explained by alien intelligence looking to make its
presence known to other intelligent beings, but to be honest it could also be
a lot of other things.
Party pooper. But that's why astronomers have always got to be careful about making any claims
about aliens remember aliens or not this is still a pretty unprecedented finding
the reason that were even at this point of mentioning aliens is that so far the
explanations for this huge dimming have come up pretty short. Good ol' KIC 84
whatever it is that's an f3 type star its on its main sequence basically this
means that the star isn't too old it isn't too young it's a little harder
than our star which tells us that any dust clouds left over from its formation
or particles blown off to the end of the star's life are unlikely sources for
this dimming we're seeing. Absolutely, KIC
whatever also rotate slightly faster than once per earth day this is way faster
than the observed dims that we're seeing meaning star spots which are sun spots
but just but on stars over there on this star surface cannot be responsible one
of their main guess is that some sort of the collision within the system left
debris cloud. It could be asteroids impacting each other, it could be planets
colliding, but even that doesn't fully explain this dimming factor normally dust
from collisions would heat up and then glow with infrared light which we would
then be able to detect using ground-based follow-up surveys and they
did not detect any IR aliens Aaron say yes!? Uh, still unlikely I'm sorry instead
the best explanation is actually commets. Commets?
yeah commets so it turns out that of commets are in a distant orbit around
the star and they were recently perturbed and knocked into the system
they could have bashed together they would leave an abscure debris cloud
that could explain what we're seying commets are in white orbit so any debris would move in
and out of our line of sight so it's possible that when they did these
follow-up surveys looking for the ir missions they could have just missed
that debris cloud and therefore wouldn't have seen the infrared left behind.
This is actually the most likely scientific solution that been offered so far, but it
would have to be a pretty incredible coincidence that out of the billions of
years the star has yet to live this event happened in the four year time
span that Kepler was looking at it seriously the odds are literally
astronomical
astronomical it's important to stress here that all this talk of Dyson spheres
an alien it's it's a far-flung idea A.K.A. as we sometimes say. I hear that you have a saying. Do you want to say it?
"More research is needed"
Remember, twenty years ago we just detected the first batch of exoplanets
like ever exoplanet research is still in its infancy the most likely solution is that
there are some natural phenomenon that we haven't observed, or we haven't thought
of yet and that's what we're saying look astronomers are not saying it's aliens
and they're not saying it's not aliens it's like they're saying it's not not
aliens but we don't know what it is. Yeah, so here's the thing is that finding life
beyond Earth is probably the biggest and most profound discovery that science
could make
so we need to be absolutely sure that we exhaust every other possible explanation
before you make that claim that aliens are responsible so you know whenever you
ask an astronomer is it aliens? the respond with no of course not there's more
plausible explanations don't even think about it but there's always that little
bit in the background minds that says well maybe. What do you guys think about this
discovery? is the media blowing it out of proportion! or is this a conspiracy cover
up of X-File-ien proportions! Luckily scientists have explored the idea of
what alien life might actually look like if we were to come across it and Amy as
wages those alien intelligence in this video here
the arsenic became a building block for any strength cell when this news came out it was massively
exciting for the astrobiology and space world but the discovery was eventually debugged
so thanks for watching everybody make sure you subscribe so you get all of our
videos and Aaran if they have follow-up questions about aliens I hear they can
find you on Twitter at Astro what? Astro W UT it's alien so right I mean I can't say yes
just between you and me aliens? In my heart I want it.