The Strange Star That Has Serious Scientists Talking About An Alien Megastructure - WaPo

[WillyT]

The strange star that has serious scientists talking about an alien megastructure
Sarah Kaplan - WaPo
October 15 at 4:11 AM

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“It was kind of unbelievable that it was real data,” said Yale University astronomer Tabetha Boyajian. “We were scratching our heads. For any idea that came up there was always something that would argue against it.” She was talking to the New Scientist about KIC 8462852, a distant star with a very unusual flickering habit. Something was making the star dim drastically every few years, and she wasn’t sure what.

Boyajian wrote up a paper on possible explanations for the star’s bizarre behavior, and it was published recently in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. But she also sent her data to fellow astronomer Jason Wright, a Penn State University researcher who helped developed a protocol for seeking signs of unearthly civilization, wondering what he would make of it.

To Wright, it looked like the kind of star he and his colleagues had been waiting for. If none of the ordinary reasons for the star’s flux quite seemed to fit, perhaps an extraordinary one was in order.

Aliens.

Or, to be more specific, something built by aliens — a “swarm of megastructures,” as he told the Atlantic, likely outfitted with solar panels to collect energy from the star.

“When Boyajian showed me the data, I was fascinated by how crazy it looked,” Wright said. “Aliens should always be the very last hypothesis you consider, but this looked like something you would expect an alien civilization to build.”

To be sure, both Boyajian and Wright believe the possibility of alien megastructures around KIC 8462852 is very, very remote. It’s worthy of hypothesis, Wright told Slate, “but we should also approach it skeptically.”

Yet compared to the vast majority of supposed sightings of signs of extraterrestrial life, this one has some credibility. Here’s why:

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More: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/10/15/the-strange-star-that-has-serious-scientists-talking-about-an-alien-megastructure/

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

1. ...

[Fumesucker]

2. A brighter, hotter and more massive star than the Sun has a shorter lifespan

Which doesn't give aliens as much time to evolve as we have had, if they happen to come from the star in question rather than elsewhere. So either they have interstellar travel or they have evolved intelligence faster than us.

In the probably unlikely case that it is aliens and not some entirely natural phenomenon of course.

http://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-can-t-explain-the-bizarre-mass-of-objects-orbiting-a-distant-star

First up, though, a little about the star in question: KIC 8462852. Located about 1,500 light-years away between the Cygnus and Lyre constellations of our Milky Way galaxy, KIC 8462852 is brighter, hotter, and more massive than the Sun.

[DetlefK]

5. Well, Earth had several mass-extinction events. But what if the aliens didn't?

Imagine an unbroken line of evolution from bacterium, to worm, to something with limbs, to something with opposable thumbs, to an environment where intelligence and tool-making are superior to violence and mass-reproduction.

Imagine a Velociraptor-like dinosaur that starts out by using sticks to forage for food. Then he learns how to use sticks to fight against larger predators. Velociraptors that use sticks have a higher probability of survival, so stick-wielding and increased intelligence get passed on... That means, Earth could have developed a civilization 70 million years earlier!

[saturnsring]

3. In the constellation of Cygnus, there lurks a mysterious, invisible force: the black hole of

In the constellation of Cygnus, there lurks a mysterious, invisible force: the black hole
of Cygnus X-1...

Six Stars of the Northern Cross
In mourning for their sister's loss
In a final flash of glory
Nevermore to grace the night...

I set a course just east of Lyra
And northwest of Pegasus
Flew into the light of Deneb
Sailed across the Milky Way
On my ship, the 'Rocinante'
Wheeling through the galaxies
Headed for the heart of Cygnus
Headlong into mystery

neil peart

[MisterP]

4. the only sure sign would be a system-sized blackbody radiator, nu?