Sentences with phrase «of alien megastructure»
An oddly dimming star located 1,500 light - years from Earth is causing all sorts of commotion in the scientific community, leading some to speculate that it may be some sort of alien megastructure.
https://gizmodo.com/
The science world is all in a tizzy this week about the supposed discovery of an alien megastructure.
«The hypothesis of an alien megastructure around KIC 8462852 is rapidly crumbling apart,» study author Douglas Vakoch, President of SETI International, said in a statement.
Jason Wright, associate professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Pennsylvania State University, who initially proposed the possibility of an alien megastructure, tweeted: «@tsboyajian's star is dipping.
The star exhibits weird fluctuations in its brightness, leading a few astronomers to propose — among many other ideas — that maybe a swarm of alien megastructures is orbiting around the object.
Not exact matches
The first observations of Tabby's star flickering in real time have put the last nails in the «it's - an - alien - megastructure» coffin.
KIC 8462852 or «Tabby's star» has dimmed like this several times before, prompting some researchers to suggest that the megastructures of an advanced alien civilization might be blocking its light.
Speculation to account for KIC 8462852's dips in brightness has ranged from it having swallowed a nearby planet to an unusually large group of comets orbiting the star to an alien megastructure.
Having examined a host of natural explanations for the odd behavior of Boyajian's star and found them lacking, we can now consider the most sensational possibility — an alien megastructure, akin to what Dyson described more than half a century ago.
«Tabby's Star: Alien megastructure not the cause of dimming of the «most mysterious star in the universe».»
A fresh model that might explain the so - called «alien megastructure» star evokes only natural phenomena, such as a ringed planet that puts Saturn to shame and clouds of comets that contain more mass than Jupiter.
Astronomers are still trying to figure out the nature of the brightness changes, which has been attributed to anything from comets to an uneven ring of dust to the less likely explanation that it is an alien megastructure.
A more headline - grabbing proposal was that the dips were the result of an «alien megastructure.»
An alien megastructure could not be the reason behind the mysterious dimming of Tabby's Star.
The reason the WTF star is famous is the hypothesis put forward to explain the dimming by Penn State astronomer Jason Wright: That what's orbiting the star could be a «swarm of megastructures,» alien - built energy collectors, much like terrestrial solar panels.
This flies in the face of the «alien megastructure» idea and the other more exotic speculations.
«This pretty much rules out the alien megastructure theory, as that could not explain the wavelength - dependent dimming,» said Huan Meng, at the University of Arizona, Tucson, who is lead author of the new study published in The Astrophysical Journal.
«Astronomers believe bizarre light patterns from a star millions of miles away to be alien megastructures» offered one article, and another claimed: «Astronomers think they have found an alien megastructure.»
While the research has not yet been reviewed for publication, it is already stirring up excitement in the scientific community and beyond; after eliminating other theories, some suggest that the only explanation for the flicker is the presence of light - blocking megastructures, built by aliens.
Other scientists have jumped in on the task of explaining these dips with suggestions ranging from weird internal variations with the WTF star itself to unfinished alien megastructures.