Read the Beforeitsnews.com story here. Advertise at Before It's News here.
Profile image
By Desdemona Despair (Reporter)
Contributor profile | More stories
Story Views
Now:
Last hour:
Last 24 hours:
Total:

Update on the “alien megastructures” star, 21 May 2017

% of readers think this story is Fact. Add your two cents.



Desdemona Despair

By Jim Galasyn
21 May 2017

(Desdemona Despair) – The most interesting star in the galaxy just got more interesting. Recall that in October 2015,  The Atlantic reported on KIC 8462852, a star that’s about 1,500 light-years away, and how it was caught exhibiting strange fluctuations in its light emissions. The Atlantic interviewed Yale Postdoc Tabetha Boyajian, the lead author of the now-famous paper, “Planet Hunters X. KIC 8462852 – Where’s the flux?”. She said, “We’d never seen anything like this star. It was really weird. We thought it might be bad data or movement on the spacecraft, but everything checked out.” The Internet hive mind unleashed its imagination, and almost immediately, there was serious speculation that humans had witnessed the first tangible evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI).

Desdemona became obsessed with the light-curve data and threw in with an off-topic blog post, “Did the Kepler space telescope discover alien megastructures? The mystery of Tabby’s star solved”, which turned out to be the most popular post in the blog’s history, earning Des fifteen minutes of Internet fame. The Boyajian team predicted that given the orbital parameters for hypothetical objects revolving around KIC 8462852, we should see another set of dimming events in May 2017, and Des settled in to wait.

So it was immensely exciting to read Friday’s story in The Atlantic, “The ‘Alien Megastructure’ Star Is Dimming Again”. This time, there are numerous telescopes trained on KIC 8462852, so we can collect much more data in near real-time, as events unfold. Here’s a wrap-up of the situation on Sunday.

The Planet Hunters team successfully predicted the current dimming event

A measure of success for a scientific theory is how well it makes testable predictions, and the WTF paper scores a big hit with one of its predictions:

4.4.3 Aftermath of giant impact in planetary system

A more robust prediction is that future dimming events should occur roughly every 750 days, with one in 2015 April and another in 2017 May. [...] following the prediction in Section 4.4.3, if a collision took place, we should see re-occurring dipping events caused from debris in 2017 May. Unfortunately, the 2015 April event likely went unobserved, as all available photometric archives we checked came up with nothing. [p. 11, p. 13]

This hypothesis explains the dimming as dust and debris from a single, giant collision between planets, similar to the event that formed the Earth-Moon system.

The biggest objection to this hypothesis is the lack of a detectable infra-red signature around the star, which should be present if the dimming is caused by dust.

As of Sunday morning, the dimming event is ongoing

At 10:20am on 21 May 2017, Professor Boyajian tweeted the following data:

the newest light curve for #TabbysStar from LCO 0.4m scopes shows it has a complex shape.

So the dimming event continues, which is a surprise if we were expecting a light curve similar to the Day 1540 event. David Kipping helpfully aligned the original Kepler data with the current event (top graph), and with yesterday’s data, they appeared quite similar, but with today’s data, the curves have diverged significantly.

The planetary impact hypothesis gets a boost

Given the successful periodicity prediction and the novel shape of the current event, the “aftermath of giant impact” idea seems to be favored by the data. This theory predicts that the clumps should be expanding and shearing out, so the light curves will change with each transit.

In “Thoughts on Neslušan & Budaj”, Jason Wright discusses another idea, “with a relatively simple but physically motivated model of massive objects (small planets) with very large, extended dust shrouds moving on highly eccentric orbits”.

No spectrum change during the current dimming event

Preliminary spectra show no change during the current dimming event. Researchers at the Liverpool Telescope report: “In an initial analysis we find no difference between the two spectra apart from in features that are attributable to the expected variable telluric absorption features in the Earth’s atmosphere.”

This is surprising. If the dimming is due to dust or some other material, there should be some filtering of the light from the star that would reveal the composition of the occulting medium.

Extraterrestrial intelligence is still a viable explanation

Many ideas have been proposed to explain the anomalous light curves from Boyajian’s Star. One of the most interesting ETI theories invokes the concept of star lifting, which has been explored by blogger Eduard Heindl. who gets a very good curve fit for a simple model of artificial jets of plasma being pulled from the star:

If the dimming is caused by star material, it may be reasonable to expect that the spectra wouldn’t change during a transit event, since the occulting material is the same as the star’s.

Get the latest updates from the scientists:


Source: http://www.desdemonadespair.net/2017/05/update-on-alien-megastructures-star-21.html


Before It’s News® is a community of individuals who report on what’s going on around them, from all around the world.

Anyone can join.
Anyone can contribute.
Anyone can become informed about their world.

"United We Stand" Click Here To Create Your Personal Citizen Journalist Account Today, Be Sure To Invite Your Friends.

Please Help Support BeforeitsNews by trying our Natural Health Products below!


Order by Phone at 888-809-8385 or online at https://mitocopper.com M - F 9am to 5pm EST

Order by Phone at 866-388-7003 or online at https://www.herbanomic.com M - F 9am to 5pm EST

Order by Phone at 866-388-7003 or online at https://www.herbanomics.com M - F 9am to 5pm EST


Humic & Fulvic Trace Minerals Complex - Nature's most important supplement! Vivid Dreams again!

HNEX HydroNano EXtracellular Water - Improve immune system health and reduce inflammation.

Ultimate Clinical Potency Curcumin - Natural pain relief, reduce inflammation and so much more.

MitoCopper - Bioavailable Copper destroys pathogens and gives you more energy. (See Blood Video)

Oxy Powder - Natural Colon Cleanser!  Cleans out toxic buildup with oxygen!

Nascent Iodine - Promotes detoxification, mental focus and thyroid health.

Smart Meter Cover -  Reduces Smart Meter radiation by 96%! (See Video).

Report abuse

    Comments

    Your Comments
    Question   Razz  Sad   Evil  Exclaim  Smile  Redface  Biggrin  Surprised  Eek   Confused   Cool  LOL   Mad   Twisted  Rolleyes   Wink  Idea  Arrow  Neutral  Cry   Mr. Green

    MOST RECENT
    Load more ...

    SignUp

    Login

    Newsletter

    Email this story
    Email this story

    If you really want to ban this commenter, please write down the reason:

    If you really want to disable all recommended stories, click on OK button. After that, you will be redirect to your options page.