1,500 light years away, light from a star is being obscured by what appears to be a giant structure that’s orbiting it. Scientists have been debating the origin of the thing, with the most interesting theory coming from a Jason Wright, an astrophysicist from Pennsylvania State University. He’s claiming that it looks like the work of intelligent life:
“Aliens should always be the very last hypothesis you consider, but this looked like something you would expect an alien civilization to build.”
The star that everyone’s talking about is known as ‘KIC 8462852’ (catchy name, huh?). It’s an old star which is approximately one and a half times bigger than The Sun.
Using the super-powerful Kepler space telescope, a bunch of astronomers looked into it and discovered that its light was dipping by up to 20% on lots of occasions. Could it be an alien-made structure obscuring the light?
An alternative theory suggests that ‘a Dyson sphere’ might explain things. It is a structure that basically harnesses a star’s energy so that it can be used by lifeforms – kind of like solar power. But we’re talking on an absolutely enormous scale. It would need to be made up of thousands of spacecraft. Enough that it would be big enough to block out a portion of a star’s light.
We’ll leave it to the experts to debate, but either way, it’s pretty crazy!
The debates continues. Let’s just hope someone works it out before the end of the world next month…
