A distant star seen through the Kepler telescope appears to have an odd, possible unique, light pattern. Some scientists have jumped on the discovery has proof of a distant alien civilization; others urge caution.
“The mysterious star, KIC 8462852, does have an odd light curve,” said Steve Howell, a scientist at NASA. “It does not look like a normal exoplanet or binary star light curve. However, I think that saying that it immediately is alien is a bit of a stretch.”
A postdoctoral student from Yale University named Tabetha Boyajian recently published a paper in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, a British journal. The paper describes the unusual light patter of KIC 8462852 as resulting from clusters of material orbiting the exoplanet.
“We’d never seen anything like this star,” said Boyajian. “It was really weird. We thought it might be bad data or movement on the spacecraft, but everything checked out.”
The way that the Kepler telescope detects stars and planets light years away is by observing the dimming of light that occurs when a celestial body passes between a star and the telescope. The manner in which the two objects pass each other forms the so-called light pattern.
For KIC 8462852, the light pattern features dimming of 15 to 22 percent at irregular intervals. In comparison, when a planet the size of Jupiter passes by the light of a star and a telescope, the light dims by only one percent.
Several possible scenarios could account for the strange light pattern and Boyajian discusses each in her paper. For starters, there could be a defect in the Kepler telescope itself. Or perhaps there is a pile up of asteroids or comet debris ringing the exoplanet. Or, of course, it could be an alien civilization.
This last theory is the one that Boyajian leans towards and now, so does Jason Wright of Penn State University, an astronomer who is also preparing to publish a paper that interprets the light pattern of KIC 8462852 as a sign of extraterrestrial life forms.