An international group of professional and amateur astronomers have discovered a new star EPIC 204376071, which has inexplicably changed its brilliance during the day. At another similar luminary - the star Tabby - a number of experts suspected the presence of giant artificial structures like the Dyson sphere. An article by scientists was published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
EPIC 204376071 is 440 light years from Earth and is a red dwarf with a mass of 0.16 times the mass of the Sun. Astronomers noticed that within one day, there was a one-time peak decrease in the star's brightness by 66 percent. The change in the light curve was asymmetric, that is, the shading occurred faster than the subsequent brightening. In addition, for EPIC 204376071, the light curve no longer changed during 160 days of observation.
In 2017, scientists observed a similar darkening pattern for KIC 10403228, which, according to scientists, is a system with a giant planet that has rings like Saturn. The simulation results showed that the rotation of the exoplanet with rings with a period of 28 days at a distance from the star equal to a tenth of the distance from the Sun to the Earth will create the observed pattern. In this case, the system of rings should be 4.2 times the diameter of the star. However, this contradicts the data according to which the blackout occurs once every 160 days at least.
According to another version, a dust cloud passed between the Earth and KIC 10403228, dense at the leading edge and becoming more transparent from right to left. However, the simulated light curve for this case is also not quite consistent with observations. Researchers believe that both explanations are unlikely, but not impossible.
To determine the real cause of the decrease in brightness, it will be necessary to measure the radial velocity of the star in order to prove or disprove the presence of a body orbiting around it, as well as to conduct observations using adaptive optics to detect light scattering from dusty structures.
The star Tabby is known for its luminosity changes in 2015. The star's brightness dropped by 22 percent at different intervals. Some scientists have suggested that the reason for this may be a giant astro-engineering structure built by an extraterrestrial civilization, such as the Dyson sphere. However, at present, astronomers are inclined to believe that the anomalous behavior of the star is explained by a cloud of dust or other celestial bodies of natural origin.
