Astronomers detected the "most mysterious star in the galaxy" known as KIC 8462852 examining this dimming star whose bizarre behavior sparked the interest of many astronomers and scientists where theories of an alien megastructure circulated online.
After prior studies, a new study could prove the existence of an alien civilization.
Last September, a team of scientists from Yale University dubbed this mystery, dimming star as "Tabby's star" revealing this odd stellar activity. According to NASA observations from the Kepler Space Telescope from 2011 to 2013, the team observed two events where the light emanating from the star suddenly became dim in a never before seen manner.
Astronomers believe that this dimming is caused by some massive cosmic object or structure passing in front of the star, which is located between the Cygnus and Lyra constellations. During the time of the study, a swarm of comets was proposed as the most possible cause of this dimming.
However, according to astronomer Jason Wright from Penn State University, this dimming might not be caused by a swarm of comets but rather, an alien civilization could be behind this. This swarm could be a possible highly advanced alien megastructure or even a Dyson sphere that was built by highly advanced alien species, in order to obtain energy from its sun.
After this, two studies based on data from radios signals specifically used to detect alien sources and laser pulses yielded negative results, still proposing that cometary fragments from the swarm theory as the only possible explanation to date.
Now, in this new study, astronomer Bradley Schaefer from the Louisiana State University is now arguing that this comet swarm theory still does not explain the mechanism behind the star's bizarre dimming activity.
Schaefer says that there is now a refutation of this idea from an intensive study of photographic plates of the sky originating from the late 19th century. He noted that the star apparently dimmed by 20 percent during 1890 to 1989. Schaefer then calculated how 648,000 comets with a size of 124 miles wide each would have passed the star within the last 100 years, which is a highly unlikely event.
Latest observations also reveal that the star is now slowly getting dimmer ever since recorded observations. Stars such as KIC 8462852 which is an F-type main sequence star are not supposed to behave this way says Schaefer.
However, he also adds that alien megastructures are also highly unlikely with these new observations, where he believes that even a highly advanced alien civilization would not possess the capability to block out a fifth of its own star within a span of 100 years. This new study is published in the journal, arXiv.