Astronomers continue to explore the megastructure, possibly located around the star KIC 8462852
It goes out, then goes out
The star KIC 8462852 of the constellation Cygnus, which is 1,480 light years away, continues to excite astronomers, who, surprisingly, have not yet rejected the assumption that a highly developed extraterrestrial civilization may be located in its vicinity.
Let me remind you. The brilliance of this distant star from the constellation Cygnus changes in a supernatural way, which does not yet lend itself to intelligible explanations. Sometimes the luminous flux coming from it is reduced by 80 percent. Which is not typical of any stars.
The mysterious star that sheltered brothers in mind is visible only through a telescope
The phenomenon was discovered by NASA's Kepler Space Telescope, aka Planet Seeker, which was launched into Earth's orbit in May 2009 and aimed at a small section of the Milky Way in the constellation Cygnus.
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The telescope searched for exoplanets - planets around other stars - through the so-called transit method. That is, he watched whether the brightness of the star changed from time to time. And it barely changes when the star's disk obscures something. For example, the planets passing through it. Astronomers determine their presence and number by fluctuations in brightness.
In 2013, Kepler broke down. But before, every 30 minutes, he recorded the parameters of 150 thousand stars in his field of view. Thus, the telescope provided astronomers with data sets for many years to come. Decrypt and decrypt them. What scientists from different countries are passionately engaged in.
The decryption of the data collected by the telescope in 2011 revealed that same brightness change. The star seemed to be obscured by something. But not planets that do it periodically. The star "went out" for different periods of time - from 5 to 80 days.
“We've never seen anything like this star before,” says Tabetha Boyajian, the leader of the Yale University “decryptor” research team, sincerely amazed. - The star is so strange that we double-checked the data several times. But no mistakes were found.
In the shadow of the Dyson sphere
“An alien hypothesis should always be the very last one to consider,” says Jason Wright, an astronomer at Pennsylvania State University. “But in this case, the colleagues discovered what could be expected from them - from the aliens.
Of course, scientists have tried to find evidence that the objects are of natural origin. That they are, for example, comets sweeping by. However, calculations showed that the observed changes in brightness could have caused celestial wanderers, but in the event that there were more than a million, and the size of each was at least 200 kilometers. This is very unlikely for objects of natural origin.
The hypothesis that the star is obscured by comets is not confirmed
There is no confirmation of the hypothesis that the star is obscured by the debris of the planets colliding here. Or planets not yet formed. Both should leave heat traces. And an infrared telescope aimed at a strange star did not find anything like it.
The facts, surprisingly, do not yet contradict only one hypothesis - about aliens. The fact that KIC 8462852 is located in the Dyson sphere - in some shells built by local inhabitants, which allows you to capture the radiation of the star and use this colossal energy.
The idea is sensible: not to build on your planet - at your place of residence - an "inexhaustible source of energy" in the form of a thermonuclear reactor, but to use the already created one - a star. It is both more reliable and more powerful, and works by itself.
The appearance of Dyson spheres in highly developed civilizations was predicted back in 1960 by theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson. He believed that the spheres named after him can be either closed or composed of many separate spacecraft - giant platforms with equipment.
But where are the aliens themselves?
Recently, astronomers from Russia, Estonia, the United States and Germany decided to see how KIC 8462852 behaved in the recent past. Fortunately, as it turned out, she was in the field of view of the German Sonneberg Observatory (Germany). Archival data collected on photographic plates showed that from 1934 to 1995 the luminosity of the star did not change. That is, at least until 1995, nothing overshadowed it.
Astronomers from the American SETI Institute, who are looking for signals from extraterrestrial civilizations, sent radio telescopes to KIC 8462852 last year. But they did not catch anything civilized, although they spent two weeks trying first, and then another three. No signals - no radio, no lights. The alleged Dyson sphere did not “sparkle” with any short energy impulses that would indicate the movement of spaceships in the vicinity of the observed star.
What is there to suggest? For example, the Dyson Sphere around KIC 8462852 was built in record time. Started in 1995, finished in 2011. But it has not yet been accepted into operation. Eliminate the identified shortcomings.
Or maybe the aliens generally mothballed the object. Or left unfinished. This happens to intelligent beings.
Dyson's sphere may not have been completed
AT THIS TIME
Another area
The star EPIC 204278916. It is located in the constellation Scorpio, about 400 light years from the Sun. And it also blinks in a mysterious way. This became clear quite recently.
The Kepler telescope "spotted" the star EPIC 204278916 back in August 2014, after it was repaired and turned, aiming at different parts of the sky as part of a new mission, the so-called K2.
EPIC 204278916 was monitored for 79 days - the brightness recorded by the instruments decreased by 35 percent within 25 days. A planet located nearby could not cause such a strong anomaly - it would give a decrease in brightness by a maximum of a percentage. Therefore, the star was covered by something much more massive and large-scale. Dyson's sphere, of course.
- There is no convincing evidence that stars with non-periodic brightness are surrounded by any megastructures, - astronomer Massimo Marengo, the author of the cometary hypothesis, comments on the discoveries. - Equally, as no one has yet proved that such megastructures are absent there. The behavior of the stars is really very strange. And it may indicate some unknown physical phenomenon.
The mystery of the winking stars remains unsolved. Therefore, even the most fantastic assumptions remain valid.
Vladimir LAGOVSKY