Russian-American astronomers have discovered new oddities in the behavior of the star KIC 8462852, whose periodic "blinking" and unexplained drops in brightness turned out to be somehow connected with some invisible structures or objects in its orbit, according to an article posted 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.
"Alien" circadian rhythms
Valery Makarov from the US Navy Observatory in Washington and Alexei Goldin from Teza Technology in Chicago (USA) found new oddities in the "blinking" of this star. They found that its glow periodically dims by 1-7% every incomplete day, and these dimming turned out to be associated with the presence of certain objects in its orbit, which we do not see yet.
Similar conclusions were made by scientists thanks to a new method of analyzing the data that the Kepler telescope collected during the first stage of its work, when it looked over thousands of stars in the constellations Cygnus and Lyra, including KIC 8462852.
Like other scientists who tried to uncover the mystery of KIC 8462852 dimming according to Kepler's data, Goldin and Makarov had to face the fact that the images they received were processed in such a way that they were not suitable for searching for long-term fluctuations in the brightness of the star.
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For this reason, scientists had to develop a new methodology for processing "raw" data, which incorporated statistical methods that are used not in astronomy, but in paleontology and biology to search for similarities and related features in the anatomy of different creatures. In addition to fluctuations in the strength of the KIC 8462852 luminescence, Makarov and Goldin also monitored whether the position of the star relative to other objects changed as time passed.
The star was closed
This analysis showed that the brightness of KIC 8462852 really dropped sharply at least twice during the observations, and it turned out that the intensity of the glow of this "alien star" constantly changes by 1-7% every 20 hours, which scientists have recorded for more than 15 months of observations.
The most surprising thing is that these fluctuations in brightness were associated with some kind of shifts in the position of the star on the Kepler matrix, which can simultaneously indicate several things.
Similar shifts in the position of the center of brightness of KIC 8462852 can be associated with the presence of a "swarm of comets" blocking the star, and with the presence of a nearby star, whose light periodically merges with the rays of the "alien star", or even talk about the presence of a "Dyson sphere" blocking the light of the star directly next to it.
The second hypothesis, as scientists note, is unlikely to be true - if there was another star in the vicinity of KIC 8462852, then it should have been discovered by Kepler or other telescopes in the event that it caused shifts in the force that were detected Goldin and Makarov.
Accordingly, we have two versions - either the "Tabby star" is obscured by some comets or planetoids in orbit, and not in the orbit of this star, but some other star closer to us, or some object is to blame for this of unnatural origin at KIC 8462852 itself. Goldin and Makarov themselves are inclined in favor of the first option, pointing out that such a swarm of comets should be sufficiently small in size and mass if the star around which they revolve is close to the Sun.
