Researchers just found a second 'Dyson Sphere' star

Num7

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...But still no aliens.

When astronomers discovered a strange pattern of light near a distant star called KIC 8462852 back in October, it was like nothing anyone had observed before.

When a planet passes in front of star, the star’s brightness usually dips by around 1 percent, but KIC 8462852 has been experiencing dips of up to 22 percent, suggesting that something huge is zooming past. And now a second star with strange dips in brightness has been identified.

Named EPIC 204278916, the star is estimated to be about the size of our Sun in diameter, but has only half its mass.

It was discovered by NASA's Kepler spacecraft in 2014, and ever since, a team of astronomers led by Simone Scaringi from the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany have been keeping tabs on its dips in light, or 'light curves'.

And this thing is even stranger than KIC 8462852.

The researchers report that over 78.8 days of observations, EPIC 204278916 displayed irregular dimming of up to 65 percent for around 25 consecutive days.

As we mentioned above, something as huge as a planet orbiting a star will cause it to dim just 1 percent, so what could possibly be big enough to cause a dimming of 65 percent?

Back when researchers were trying to explain the irregular and large dips in brightness of KIC 8462852 - also known as Tabby’s star - they came up with two plausible explanations and one... not-so-plausible explanation.

The first plausible explanation was that the large and irregular light curves were being caused by a massive swarm of comets orbiting the star.

The second suggests that KIC 8462852 is a 'distorted star' that spins so fast, it becomes 'oblate', meaning it has a larger radius at the equator than it does at the poles.

As Paul Gilster from Centauri Dreams explained, "This produces higher temperatures and 'brightening' at the poles, while the equator is consequently darkened."

The not-so-plausible explanation is that the dimming is being caused by a kind of Dyson Sphere - a gigantic sphere made of solar panels that completely encircles a star, featured in several science fiction stories.

"Aliens should always be the very last hypothesis you consider, but this looked like something you would expect an alien civilisation to build," Jason Wright, an astronomer from Penn State University, told The Atlantic at the time of the discovery.

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Researchers just found a second 'Dyson Sphere' star
 

kcwildman

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while it would be really cool if true , some how I think we need a little more proof than,, hey we saw a star was blinking in the night sky..:(
 

Orpheus Rex

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while it would be really cool if true , some how I think we need a little more proof than,, hey we saw a star was blinking in the night sky..:(

The problem is that the existence of a dyson sphere is that it's creators would either be dead and gone or so advanced as to not care about us in the slightest (except for perhaps mining material.)
 

Num7

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Sounds about right. A Dyson would probably survive much longer than its creators.

I'm not entirely sure though that a race able to build such a huge piece of technology wouldn't care about us. If they're that advanced, they probably already know about us... They must be watching, but definitely not ignoring what we do. IMO.

One can only hope they're wise and respectful of life.
 

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