The researchers suggested that the mysterious twinkling of the "alien star" KIC 8462852 (also known as Tabby's star) is associated with magnetic "avalanches": they can occur in the bowels of the stars and change their brightness.
The mysterious twinkling of the star KIC 8462852 has become one of the most interesting scientific discoveries in recent years. It interested both eminent scientists and ordinary astronomy lovers. The distant star also attracted the attention of ufologists around the world. This is not surprising: the brightness of a star, as scientists have found, can decrease by 22%, and this happens at different time intervals. It is very difficult to explain such a strange behavior of Tabby's star by the passage of a planet or a swarm of comets in front of it. Therefore, the most incredible versions began to appear - up to the hypothesis about the construction of a Dyson sphere around KIC 8462852.
Meanwhile, scientists are in no hurry to develop a hypothesis about aliens, and recently a lot of "natural" explanations for the mysterious flicker have been proposed. Now the American physicist Karin Dahmen and her colleagues drew attention to the similarity of the fluctuations in the luminosity of a star with the magnetization of different materials with magnetic properties. When they enter a magnetic field, a magnetic "avalanche" occurs in them, which causes many atoms or electrons to change the direction of magnetization in one specific direction.
Could something like this happen in the bowels of the stars? Scientists believe it can. Observations of other stars have shown that due to the strengthening of the magnetic field on the surface of the star, the "circulation" of plasma in its interior is disrupted. This weakens the brightness of the star: here you can draw an analogy with the appearance of spots on the sun.
The authors of the work themselves, however, admit that their version cannot provide answers to all questions. It remains a mystery, for example, why Tabby's star has dimmed by 0.19 magnitude over the past hundred years.
We will remind, more recently, another group of scientists proposed their version of the twinkling of a star. As in the new work, the authors focus on the processes taking place inside the star. The researchers associated the drop in brightness with the phase transition that the star is experiencing.
Ilya Vedmedenko
