Are The Stars Out Tonight?

              

                  So I was reading about this star named KIC8462852.  It sits out there some 454 parsecs from our cool blue home.  A parsec, which is a unit of distance and not a measurement of time regardless what my sister’s boyfriend Harrison Ford says, is around 3.25 light years.  So that puts this star 1,476 light years away.  That means that if you had planned to arrive at KIC8462852 today, and could travel at the speed of light, you would have had to leave Earth in 540 A.D.  But don’t wait up for news that Romans have arrived at KIC8462852, because it seems that Emperor Justinian didn’t invest in their space program back then but preferred instead to spend Rome’s treasury waging war on the Ostrogoths.  I guess it paid off; the Ostrogoths lost.

                Even though we won’t be visiting KIC8462852 any time soon it stills holds interest.  You see KIC8462852, also known as Tabby’s Star – named after a Yale researcher - has been getting dimmer.

So what’s the big deal Mark?  Nothing last forever.  Eventually all stars will get dimmer until the just fade away right? 

Right, sure, maybe.  But KIC8462852 dims and then brightens back up.

But Mark, isn’t this dimming and then brightening back up the behavior that observers use to determine that a star has planets orbiting it?  A planet goes by and the star dims, then the planet moves on and the star’s light returns to normal?

Yes, but most stars dim less than 1% when that happens.  Tabby’s Star dims 20%, and there is no pattern to the dimming as there would be when an object passed between it and us in an orbit. 

Okay, but maybe it’s something besides a planet.  Could there be something else that would cause this behavior?

There is speculation.  Maybe a huge cloud of space junk/dust.  It floats by and really, really dims the star, and then moves on.  Or perhaps it’s something some scientist call comet swarms, breaking apart (and you thought bees were bad).  But infrared observations show there is no cloud of dust and a reexamination of the data suggests that comet swarms were far too unlikely. 

Okay, so what is causing Tabby’s Star to fade and return?

Another idea began to orbit those who were studying this star; mega-structures.

Wow, that’s amazing!  Wait…what’s a mega-structure?

A mega-structure is something that is very, very large and is built by someone.  I mean really huge.  They are suggesting that someone has built or is building something the size of the orbit of say Earth.  Maybe these folks out there by KIC8462852 really like the star but found that there are no planets orbiting it that fit their definition of supporting life.  So they build one, or a ring in the orbit of where they want one, or a sphere around KIC8462852 the size of that orbit, shutting it in.

Is that what is happening?

Probably not.  At one point SETI, the people looking for extraterrestrial life, pointed their ears at Tabby’s Star and listened for “deliberately produced radio signals.”  They say they found none.

But what does a “deliberately produced radio signal” from an alien species sound like?  Especially from someone who could build a building the size of Earth’s orbit? 

They really look for patterns and found none.  If we’ve missed it we can only hope that they’re not asking how the Ostroghths are doing.

So now what?

Tabby’s Star is acting strangely and no one has a good explanation as to why.  But that’s okay.  Scientists know they won’t solve every mystery and they seem all right with that.  They know they are using tools invented by someone else while standing on the shoulders of those who came before them, and I believe they hope that someday, someone will figure out what Tabby’s Star is doing while standing on theirs.

KIC8462852 is in a group of stars somewhere behind the Northern Cross.  Unfortunately it can’t be seen with the naked eye so those scientist will be our eyes.  By the way, who wouldn’t go to a concert if the bands were named Naked Eye, Comet Swarm, and The Ostrogoths?

Sometimes I wonder why we’re allowed to view things that are impossible for us to ever have; like twinkling stars or Jennifer Lopez.  But I’ve come to the conclusion that we are disallowed nothing.  The fading and glowing stars are put there to make us look up.  To force us to imagine…well to imagine pretty much anything, including mega-structures.

Someday, if we don’t quit trying, we’ll visit KIC8462852 and see in person if there is a giant ring built around it, if comet swarms exist, or if the star has long ago simply died out. In the meantime enjoy the view, vicariously of course.