KIC 8462852: Ahoy! Is anyone out there?
KIC 8462852 (Tabby’s star), located in constellation Cygnus,
approximately 1480 light years away from Earth could have been just
another one of those billions of glittering stars spread in enormous
vastness of universe, if it didn’t blink at us crazily!
Kepler space telescope observes dipping in brightness of stars, caused by passing of objects like extra-solar planets in front of them. Observations of Kepler found that brightness of KIC 8462852 is dipping on period of roughly 750 days, but by whopping 15 to 22%! Yes, something is out there that is blocking almost quarter of starlight! On 5 March 2011 KIC 8462852 faded by 15% and on 28 February 2013 by 22%. This is huge!
To cause such enormous amount of blockage, any planet in our convention is insufficient in size and pattern of dipping is itself irregular, ruling out planet hypothesis in first place. Possibility of giant gas cloud lurking around is also considered, and ruled out. Generally disks of gas and cloud found circling around young stars, but Tabby’s star is quite past this stage to posses pro-planetary disk around it. Also when gas heats up due to close presence of star, it emits X rays; this one missing too!
Presence of space debris or comets is also considered. A red dwarf star in close proximity can send swarm of comets from its oort cloud towards it due to gravitational fluctuations. And yes, there lies a red dwarf at 885AU distance (1 AU: Distance between Sun and Earth) from KIC 8462852. This is quite close for stellar neighbors to exist together. This could have sent huge amount of comets towards Tabby’s star, causing blockage. This could have been most acceptable hypothesis until some more puzzling observations kicked in!
Bradley Schaefer (Louisiana State University) had observed Tabby’s star and his observations suggest that ‘KIC 8462852 had century long fade during 1889 to 1989’! Well, well I think this also almost rules out comet hypothesis!
If we pick a 200km diameter comet, it will still require 648,000 comets to form a mass that would eclipse 20% of brightness of F3 main sequence star! And these comets have to circle star in single orbit for 100 years, this looks more and more illogical. Oort cloud of our solar system have largest comet we know (Hale-Bopp) of diameter 60 km. It looks improbable that comets will block this much star light for about 100 years!
Human nature seeks most coveted fantasies it can imagine when all natural possibilities run out!Is there any advanced intelligent civilization building a mega structure around KIC 8462852? probably a Dyson sphere?? We might have found first presence of intelligent life in universe other than our planet, if it is true! That can be really really path breaking news considering efforts have been put out to find one since we started observing stars in sky.
Advanced K2 type civilizations can build such huge structures around stars to harness its entire energy. And presence of red dwarf nearby certainly helps this hypothesis. Red dwarfs emit much lesser energy than those of F3 stars, hence they have much longer life spans. Red dwarfs hence become ideal place if any civilization has to bloom to K2 level, as it gives more time for living beings to prosper than regular stars. So we can not rule out the possibility of any such advanced civilization living around that red dwarf and harnessing Tabby’s star by building such mega structure that can block 20% of star light! They might be still building it or may have left it incomplete.. possibilities are endless!
Alien mega structure hypothesis should be last one to consider, but in my opinion after all any other isn’t looking much promising either! We will have to wait until Kepler finds Tabby’s next dipping in brightness.
This will most probably natural cause, we might find some new type of variable star or a swarm of giant comets or may be.. a Dyson sphere! Whatever it may come out KIC 8462852 is going to be most buzzing star for next some years. And irrespective of outcome, we all know that we aren’t alone, may be Tabby’s star will break the ice or may not.. but sooner or later, its surely gonna be molten anyway!
Ahoy! is anyone out there?
Kepler space telescope observes dipping in brightness of stars, caused by passing of objects like extra-solar planets in front of them. Observations of Kepler found that brightness of KIC 8462852 is dipping on period of roughly 750 days, but by whopping 15 to 22%! Yes, something is out there that is blocking almost quarter of starlight! On 5 March 2011 KIC 8462852 faded by 15% and on 28 February 2013 by 22%. This is huge!
To cause such enormous amount of blockage, any planet in our convention is insufficient in size and pattern of dipping is itself irregular, ruling out planet hypothesis in first place. Possibility of giant gas cloud lurking around is also considered, and ruled out. Generally disks of gas and cloud found circling around young stars, but Tabby’s star is quite past this stage to posses pro-planetary disk around it. Also when gas heats up due to close presence of star, it emits X rays; this one missing too!
Presence of space debris or comets is also considered. A red dwarf star in close proximity can send swarm of comets from its oort cloud towards it due to gravitational fluctuations. And yes, there lies a red dwarf at 885AU distance (1 AU: Distance between Sun and Earth) from KIC 8462852. This is quite close for stellar neighbors to exist together. This could have sent huge amount of comets towards Tabby’s star, causing blockage. This could have been most acceptable hypothesis until some more puzzling observations kicked in!
Bradley Schaefer (Louisiana State University) had observed Tabby’s star and his observations suggest that ‘KIC 8462852 had century long fade during 1889 to 1989’! Well, well I think this also almost rules out comet hypothesis!
If we pick a 200km diameter comet, it will still require 648,000 comets to form a mass that would eclipse 20% of brightness of F3 main sequence star! And these comets have to circle star in single orbit for 100 years, this looks more and more illogical. Oort cloud of our solar system have largest comet we know (Hale-Bopp) of diameter 60 km. It looks improbable that comets will block this much star light for about 100 years!
Human nature seeks most coveted fantasies it can imagine when all natural possibilities run out!Is there any advanced intelligent civilization building a mega structure around KIC 8462852? probably a Dyson sphere?? We might have found first presence of intelligent life in universe other than our planet, if it is true! That can be really really path breaking news considering efforts have been put out to find one since we started observing stars in sky.
Advanced K2 type civilizations can build such huge structures around stars to harness its entire energy. And presence of red dwarf nearby certainly helps this hypothesis. Red dwarfs emit much lesser energy than those of F3 stars, hence they have much longer life spans. Red dwarfs hence become ideal place if any civilization has to bloom to K2 level, as it gives more time for living beings to prosper than regular stars. So we can not rule out the possibility of any such advanced civilization living around that red dwarf and harnessing Tabby’s star by building such mega structure that can block 20% of star light! They might be still building it or may have left it incomplete.. possibilities are endless!
Alien mega structure hypothesis should be last one to consider, but in my opinion after all any other isn’t looking much promising either! We will have to wait until Kepler finds Tabby’s next dipping in brightness.
This will most probably natural cause, we might find some new type of variable star or a swarm of giant comets or may be.. a Dyson sphere! Whatever it may come out KIC 8462852 is going to be most buzzing star for next some years. And irrespective of outcome, we all know that we aren’t alone, may be Tabby’s star will break the ice or may not.. but sooner or later, its surely gonna be molten anyway!
Ahoy! is anyone out there?
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