There is now a project on kickstarter to observe the so called WTF star. You can read about it here and here for example. What do you think about all of this? Could it be that we finally found some little green men?
Here's more: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/tabby’s-star-drama-continues Tabby’s star drama continues Slow fading as well as sharp drops in light baffle astronomers BY CHRISTOPHER CROCKETT 3:39PM, AUGUST 15, 2016 KIC 8462852 IN FLUX The star KIC 8462852 (aka Tabby’s star), which sits in the constellation Cygnus (illustrated), has been flickering and fading — and astronomers still don’t know why. C. CROCKETT, STELLARIUM A star that made headlines for its bizarre behavior has got one more mystery for astronomers to ponder. Tabby’s star, also known as KIC 8462852, has been inexplicably flickering and fading. The Kepler Space Telescope caught two dramatic drops in light — by up to 22 percent — spaced nearly two years apart. Photographs from other telescopes dating back to 1890 show that the star also faded by roughly 20 percent over much of the last century. Possible explanations for the behavior range from mundane comet swarms to fantastical alien engineering projects (SN Online: 2/2/16). A new analysis of data from Kepler, NASA’s premier planet hunter, shows that Tabby’s star steadily darkened throughout the telescope’s primary four-year mission. That’s in addition to the abrupt flickers already seen during the same time period. Over the first 1,100 days, the star dimmed by nearly 1 percent. Then the light dropped another 2.5 percent over the following six months before leveling off during the mission’s final 200 days. Astronomers Benjamin Montet of Caltech and Josh Simon of the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington in Pasadena, Calif., report the findings online August 4 at arXiv.org. The new data support a previous claim that the star faded between 1890 and 1989, a claim that some researchers questioned. “It’s just getting stranger,” says Jason Wright, an astronomer at Penn State University. “This is a third way in which the star is weird. Not only is it getting dimmer, it’s doing so at different rates.” Not-so-bright light During the first four years of the Kepler Space Telescope mission, the brightness of Tabby’s star faded. A gradual dimming in the first 1,100 days was followed by a relatively steep six-month decline that then leveled off. Around days 800 and 1,550, the light also plummeted and rebounded by roughly 20 percent. B.T. MONTET AND J.D. SIMON/ARXIV.ORG The slow fading hadn’t been noticed before because data from Kepler are processed to remove long-term trends that might confuse planet-finding algorithms. To find the dimming, Montet and Simon analyzed images from the telescope that are typically used only to calibrate data. “Their analysis is very thorough,” says Tabetha Boyajian, an astronomer at Yale University who in 2015 reported the two precipitous drops in light (and for whom the star is nicknamed). “I see no flaws in that at all.” While the analysis is an important clue, it doesn’t yet explain the star’s erratic behavior. “It doesn’t push us in any direction because it’s nothing that we’ve ever encountered before,” says Boyajian. “I’ve said ‘I don’t know’ so many times at this point.” An object (or objects) moving in front of the star and blocking some of the light is still the favored explanation — though no one has figured out what that object is. The drop in light roughly 1,100 days into Kepler’s mission is reminiscent of a planet crossing in front of a star, Montet says. But given how slowly the light dropped, such a planet (or dim star) would have to live on an orbit more than 60 light-years across. The odds of catching a body on such a wide, slow orbit as it passed in front of the star are so low, says Montet, that you would need 10,000 Kepler missions to see just one. “We figure that's pretty unlikely.” An interstellar cloud wandering between Earth and KIC 8462852 is also unlikely, Wright says. “If the interstellar medium had these sorts of clumps and knots, it should be a ubiquitous phenomenon. We would have known about this for decades.” While some quasars and pulsars appear to flicker because of intervening material, the variations are minute and nothing like the 20 percent dips seen in Tabby’s star. A clump of gas and dust orbiting the star — possibly produced by a collision between comets — is a more likely candidate, although that doesn’t explain the century-long dimming. “Nothing explains all the effects we see,” says Montet. Given the star’s unpredictable nature, astronomers need constant vigilance to solve this mystery. The American Association of Variable Star Observers is working with amateur astronomers to gather continuous data from backyard telescopes around the globe. Boyajian and colleagues are preparing to monitor KIC 8462852 with the Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network, a worldwide web of telescopes that can keep an incessant eye on the star. “At this point, that’s the only thing that’s going to help us figure out what it is,” she says.
It's a Ringworld or a Dyson Sphere. They should be relatively common structures really, as even such galactic primitives as ourselves can theorise them. That many comets would be difficult to keep around the star as the first thing stars do when they turn on is blow all their comets far away. Similarly, that many sunspots would indicate another type of star entirely Why are we so reluctant to include sentient activity as one of our speculations? We have whole projects that search for extraterrestrial signals, yet do everything we can to ignore what may be unmistakable evidence at our feet.
There are a great many things we puny little humans do not know, this a but one of them. We will speculate until we actually do and make up wonderful science fiction hypothesis which will of course lead our imaginations in directions that expand our knowledge in the meantime...science at work. For all we know this is the result of something between us and the star and would not even be noticed if our planet was a little to the left. Of course it could also be a Huge planet in an orbit we do not yet understand that has advanced life giggling at this message as they read in on their hyperbolic fourth dimentional translation device after watching an I love Lucy rerun.
For the people who suggest this might be a Dyson Sphere, and really for any times that people suggest that, how would the light of the star be able to reach us if there was a sphere around it to contain it all? I could see them being detected in the infrared from the heat, but as far as visible light goes I don't know how that would work.
If it was a solid Dyson Sphere then I don't see how the star would be detectable in visible or probably even infrared, that's true, but they were not proposing a solld sphere but rather one made up of orbiting energy collectors.This would be a lot easier to build and accomplish the same purpose, that is, to collect a majority of the stars energy. The size of a solid Dyson Sphere, or a Ringworld, is so enormous that not even SF authors can reasonably propose any single race that would have any use for that much area,. though they can see how all the races in a galaxy might.
There was an episode of Star Trek: Next Generation where the Enterprise finds a Dyson sphere. The one in the show was built around the entire star and had a gate that let you get in and out. Curiously the show also guest starred James Doohan who played Scotty on the original series and in the episode. It was the first time I'd ever seen mention or display of one in any science fiction media outside of books. I'll admit that I was picturing the sphere from this episode when I would think of a Dyson sphere in my head. I suppose it probably would be more efficient to build collectors instead of an entire stellar encompassing structure.
I saw that episode and remember laughing about the visible curvature....hell you can't even see curvature in your own back yard.
Regardless Nuc Them before they Nuc or worse us. Remember Independence Day and Battleship too. It is better to defend Earth out there than on Earth! Moi r > g View attachment 45612 As Long As We're At It.
All the Atomics in the world would be less than a minor annoyance to a Ringworld. If they're hostile the best we can hope for is they don't notice us.. The idea of interplanetary invasion is silly. Spacefaring races would have access to a 1000 planets with no life at all to every one with even life, let alone sentient beings that could fight back. What could we possibly have that they could not have for the taking from them?
It's a funny thought though... to put it in perspective, The New Horizons probe, which just passed Pluto a little while back, is travelling at about 36,000 mph. Let's say we really went all-out and designed a missile that could go 100,000 mph. Pretty hot stuff, huh? Not so much.... that's only 1/6706 of the speed of light. KIC 8462852 is 1480 light years away... the blinking light reaching us today from there started out pretty much right after the fall of the western Roman Empire. It'd take our missile 9.9 million years to get there. The half-life of Plutonium-239 (used in all the best bombs) is only 24,100 years. So our warhead would be a big chunk of lead by the time it got there.... assuming it could get there - how are we going to power the guidance system and thrusters of our warhead?
Talking of aliens, did you hear the one about an alien landing in a petrol filling station? It unhooked one of the filling pipes and said to the machine 'Take me to your leader.' That's true! I was there, and heard every word.
Here's something to think about... let's say you traveled to another planet and you encounter two alien creatures walking along... one in front and the other walking a respectful distance behind. You decide to observe them for a while and before long the alien in front suddenly defecates. This action immediately causes the alien walking behind to promptly and obediently take a bag out of it's pocket and pick up the other's feces. Who would you assume was in charge?
One would think that any beings deciding to check out our little planet would send some itty bitty probe to save energy and material expense....likely we would never even see it. As for a "Ringworld"....hard to believe ANYONE would make something so wasteful. Even us stupid humans would never make such a thing except for a science fiction book...Cool story though.
You mean . . . whilst it still er, warm? N-o-o-o-o-o-o!! No wonder they only pick it up if someone else witnessed the 'event'. Jesus I feel quite ill now!
