Originally spotted by the Kepler Telescope between the Cygnus and Lyra constellations back in 2009, the ‘alien megastructure’ star is more mundanely named KIC 8462852 and has been puzzling scientists ever since its discovery.
Most stars which host planets experience small periodic dips as their planets pass in front of them, this star seems to experience very random/chaotic dips which by our assumptions would indicate a large tightly packed assortment of physical matter orbiting around it.
The star and its behaviour became very well known once astronomer Jason Wright suggested publicly that one possible explanation for its behaviour was that a giant, extraterrestrial made artificial structure was orbiting around it.
A recent study on the star found that the stars dimming occurred at 0.34% per year to begin with, yet fell to 2.5% for 200 days before returning to its original dimming rate.
Now, after another unexplained period of dimming which began last Monday, astronomers have been put on notice to focus their telescopes on the star. Scientists are hoping that with enough people focusing on the mysterious star, we may be able to learn something new about it which may help explain the strange behaviour we see.
Aliens? Hopefully one day we will find out.
