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curiousuburb
Antimatter Man
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: that interweb thing
 
2015-10-18, 20:45

Star spotted with mysterious fluctuations in Kepler's light curve data*... so mysterious that some are speculating on whether the most likely explanation is some type of artificial constructs... namely a Dyson Sphere

Of course the more cautious links above are from the journalists at the Atlantic...

* The actual paper at Arxiv.org is more academically sound, and while it does sketch out various hypotheses, it seems to suggest a family of disturbed exocomets may fit the data best.


KIC 8462852, located 1480 light-years away, and has produced a series of bizarre light fluctuations researchers have not been able to conclusively explain.


Over the duration of the Kepler mission, KIC 8462852 was observed to undergo irregularly shaped, aperiodic dips in flux down to below the 20% level...


while the Daily Mail version of the story is a bit more breathless ...
Have researchers discovered an alien MEGASTRUCTURE? 'Bizarre' star could be surrounded by a Dyson sphere built by extraterrestrials, researchers claim

All those who believe in telekinesis, raise my hand.
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