EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THAT POSSIBLE ALIEN MEGASTRUCTURE
In Everything, Features, Intelligence By Jeff Sorensen
You may have heard in the past few days that the NASA’s Kepler space telescope found that KIC 8462852 (an F-type main-sequence star located in the constellation Cygnus approximately 454 parsecs (1,480 ly) from Earth) noticed that lighting events observed at the star seemed very odd over the past few years. The dimming events happened so much so that scientists figured that it was too much to be caused by a planet. How scientists generally find exoplanets is to watch for a dimming event that coincides with a planet being in orbit, but this was different. Other possible explanations like a passing dust cloud don’t seem to explain what is happening either. This is where thole alien megastructure thing is coming into play. And when I say megastructure, I mean MEGAstructure.
First of all, how far is KIC 8462852 away from Earth? About 1,500 light years, so it doesn’t look like we’ll be sending a ship there anytime soon. But, what is making everyone freak out is what the megastructure could be explained as: A Dyson Sphere.
What is a Dyson Sphere? Prepare to have goosebumps. A Dyson sphere/swarm is a hypothetical megastructure that completely encompasses a star and hence captures most or all of its power output. The …show more content…
If the brightness dips by a tiny percent (think 1%) on a regular basis, there’s a good chance that a star has a planet orbiting it. The problem with this star is that the dips are between 15-22% dips in brightness, and there irregular, and there have been hundreds of these types of dips that baffle scientists. To have these types of dips, you would have to have an object that is around half the size of the star to cause the dips (see the picture above to blow your mind even
In Everything, Features, Intelligence By Jeff Sorensen
You may have heard in the past few days that the NASA’s Kepler space telescope found that KIC 8462852 (an F-type main-sequence star located in the constellation Cygnus approximately 454 parsecs (1,480 ly) from Earth) noticed that lighting events observed at the star seemed very odd over the past few years. The dimming events happened so much so that scientists figured that it was too much to be caused by a planet. How scientists generally find exoplanets is to watch for a dimming event that coincides with a planet being in orbit, but this was different. Other possible explanations like a passing dust cloud don’t seem to explain what is happening either. This is where thole alien megastructure thing is coming into play. And when I say megastructure, I mean MEGAstructure.
First of all, how far is KIC 8462852 away from Earth? About 1,500 light years, so it doesn’t look like we’ll be sending a ship there anytime soon. But, what is making everyone freak out is what the megastructure could be explained as: A Dyson Sphere.
What is a Dyson Sphere? Prepare to have goosebumps. A Dyson sphere/swarm is a hypothetical megastructure that completely encompasses a star and hence captures most or all of its power output. The …show more content…
If the brightness dips by a tiny percent (think 1%) on a regular basis, there’s a good chance that a star has a planet orbiting it. The problem with this star is that the dips are between 15-22% dips in brightness, and there irregular, and there have been hundreds of these types of dips that baffle scientists. To have these types of dips, you would have to have an object that is around half the size of the star to cause the dips (see the picture above to blow your mind even