Astronomer Brian Luckey believes that the uniqueness of the unusual dimming and blinking star KIC 8462852 in the constellation Cygnus, which astronomers have never found, cannot be explained by the presence of an extraterrestrial civilization next to it, says an article published in the arXiv.org electronic library
In mid-October 2015, astronomers from Yale University spoke about unusual fluctuations in the brightness of the star KIC 8462852 in the constellation Cygnus, the intensity of which has decreased by almost a quarter in two times in the last 7 years. These "blinks" for the first time indicated the possibility of the presence in its vicinity of the so-called Dyson sphere, a trap of the energy of the star, created by a super-developed alien civilization.
Initially, scientists assumed that such a "blinking" of the star could be caused by a swarm of comets that blocked its light from observers on Earth, but in January 2016, the American astronomer Bradley Schaefer discovered that the brightness of KIC 8462852 inexplicably dropped by 0.16 magnitude over the last century, which called into question this theory. Subsequently, scientists working with the Kepler telescope confirmed that the brightness of this star is decreasing.
Is this star alone in the universe?
Brian Lacki of Ohio University (USA), a young astronomer who is famous for his unusual ideas about principled nature, has joined the controversy surrounding what constitutes the "Tabby Star," as it is now called after its discoverer Tabetha Boyagian. the absence of superdeveloped aliens (the so-called "type III Kardashev civilizations", which have subdued the energy of entire galaxies).
Lucky approached this problem by reformulating the classic question we ask ourselves when looking at space - are we alone in the universe? He put it in the following way - what is the probability of detecting a star like KIC 8462852, and how many similar objects and cases of their dimming should humanity have discovered if such a behavior of the star is explained by some natural factors.
Over the past year, scientists have put forward about ten different hypotheses that explain the "blinking" and dimming of KIC 8462852 by different natural factors, including the aforementioned "swarms" of comets or asteroids, or other more exotic scenarios such as the action of a brown dwarf or the presence of interstellar streams asteroids. Lucky examined each of them separately and tried to understand how often stars with similar behavior are found in our Galaxy.
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His calculations and observations of more than 160 thousand other stars using Kepler show that if the fluctuations in the brightness of KIC 8462852 were caused by some natural factors, then over the past hundred years astronomers should have seen hundreds or even thousands of such stars, and the stars themselves must have experienced a huge number of such tarnishing and shading.
Freak of nature
This did not happen, which suggests that KIC 8462852 is most likely a unique object, accidentally found by Kepler, and that its behavior is unlikely to be caused by any processes we know or imagine. In other words, not a single cosmic process described by astronomers when trying to explain the behavior of KIC 8462852 can occur as often as required by Lucky's calculations.
Lucky doubts that a Dyson sphere is being built in the vicinity of the "Tabby Star" - its owners, as the scientist argues, should have long ago mastered interstellar flights and colonized other stars, making their behavior similar to how KIC 8462852 "blinks"., some of the periodic blinking could only be explained by the fact that the owners of this sphere periodically disassembled and reassembled it, which is extremely unlikely.
What other options remain? Perhaps, Lucky thinks, astronomers simply do not fully understand all the processes occurring in the interiors of stars, and attribute fluctuations in the brightness of KIC 8462852, generated by processes inside the star itself, to some "external" factors like aliens or a stream of comets. If we talk about aliens, then the only possible option is a swarm of living "space trees" in orbit around the "Tabby star", whose giant colony periodically blocks its light on its way to Earth.
Another "natural" hypothesis that does not contradict such calculations is the presence of some structures in the interstellar medium, periodically blocking the light of KIC 8462852 on its way to Earth. The absence of other similar pairs of structures and stars in the Kepler catalog, according to the scientist, is explained by the fact that he “looks” not at the disk of the Galaxy, where stars and small celestial bodies are often found, but at its outer parts, where there are relatively few of them.
On the other hand, such objects - clouds of dust or debris - must be incredibly rarefied in order to explain the behavior of KIC 8462852. Accordingly, the intrigue around the "Tabby Star" thickens - until Lucky and other astronomers have a plausible explanation for the behavior of this star.