That weird 'alien megastructure' star is dimming again right now | Cosmology | Space

That weird ‘alien megastructure’ star is dimming again right now

Sarah Fecht

at 10:42 AM May 22 2017

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That weird 'alien megastructure' star is dimming again right now

Illustration of the star KIC 8462852

NASA/JPL-Caltech

Cosmology //

In late 2015, astronomers noticed something absurd happening around a distant star. Something massive seemed to be blocking as much as 20 percent of the star’s light.

That’s way too much to be a planet. It might be comets, or maybe an alien-made Dyson swarm. The problem is that none of the hypotheses that scientists have come up with (including the one about aliens) really fits with the data. That leads them to think that some as-yet-undiscovered phenomena is happening around this star.

For years, astronomer Tabetha Boyajian and her colleagues have been waiting for the mysterious light dips to happen again, so that they could collect more data and try to get to the bottom of the mystery. And now it seems the star is finally dimming again:

The team is hosting a webcast now to discuss the implications and what comes next. Watch along with us: