by vox_mundi » Wed 03 Jan 2018, 12:07:32
No Alien Megastructure: Star's Weird Dimming Likely Caused by Dust$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'F')ourteen hundred light-years separate Earth from the strangest star in the sky. The light from this star flickers, like a giant neon sign drifting through the constellation Cygnus. After the star's dim intervals, which last for days or weeks, it brightens again.
No other star acted this way. No observation could explain its behavior.
That is, until now. A 200-strong team of scientists says it has arrived at an answer, thanks to an astronomy project crowdfunded on Kickstarter. The culprits are not aliens, as some people have speculated, but probably a cloud of dust, each particle less than a micrometer across. Combined, these dust particles coalesced into one of the biggest question marks in recent astronomical memory.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')i]"Dust is most likely the reason why the star's light appears to dim and brighten," study leader Tabetha Boyajian, an astronomer at Louisiana State University, said in a statement. "The new data shows that different colors of light are being blocked at different intensities. Therefore, whatever is passing between us and the star is not opaque, as would be expected from a planet or alien megastructure."
Whatever substance exists between us and Tabby's Star blocks more blue light than red light, as Boyajian, Ellis, Wright and other researchers reported in a study published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters on Wednesday. Planets cannot explain the dips. “If you have something that is completely opaque like a planet, you would expect all the colors of the light to be blocked out at the same levels,” Boyajian said. Likewise, the discovery also rules out alien industry.
“It has the typical signature of dust,” Boyajian said.
Yet even in space dust, there is mystery. If it is dust, the dust cloud has not spread far beyond its point of origin, the authors noted in the paper. A ring of dust around the star would constantly block starlight rather than dim light in bouts.
https://phys.org/news/2018-01-alien-meg ... -star.html Next time, Use a Black Hole - No dust.