Have We Detected Megastructures Built By Aliens Around A Distant Star?

The Kepler space telescope's job is to find faraway planets that could potentially support life. But as The Atlantic reports, scientists are exploring the possibility that the telescope may have detected something even more exciting.

For four years, the telescope stared at a patch of sky, waiting for each star to darken, which would indicate an exoplanet passing in front of it. The telescope monitored more than 150,000 stars, but one star in particular stood out to citizen scientists who were helping to analyze the Kepler data: KIC 8462852, located 1480 light-years away.

When a planet passes in front of a star, the star dims only for a few hours or days, and on a regular basis-- every 365 days, for example. But, at irregular intervals, the star KIC 8462852 darkens by as much as 20 percent, and it stays dark for anywhere between 5 and 80 days.

What could cause the weird light fluctuations? The researchers who discovered the behavior call it "bizarre."

Read the entire article:
http://www.popsci.com/have-we-detected-alien-megastructures-around-distant-star

More reading:
http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sci-tech/astronomy/its-either-aliens-or-a-swarm-of-comets-scientists-baffled-by-wtf-001-our-galaxys-strangest-star-20151014-gk9iwj.html