KIC 8462852

1. 2016-10-05 at 3:47 PM UTC

   #1
   

   mmQ Lisa Turtle
   Y'all 'eard bout dis star yo?
   
   http://www.iflscience.com/space/myst...-star-deepens/
   
   

   Our galaxy’s weirdest star, KIC 8462852, is even weirder than previously thought, showing changes never observed before in a star like this.
   
   To quickly recap, last year it was announced that the object experienced dramatic and rapid changes in brightness, which led to the wild speculation that the object was surrounded by an alien megastructure. New observations have shown that there are no aliens around it but the mystery has deepened further still, as historical data suggests that the star has inexplicably dimmed by 14 percent in just over a century.
   
   Researchers Josh Simon and Ben Montet, using observations by NASA’s Kepler space telescope, discovered that KIC 8462852 faded slowly and then suddenly during the four years it was studied.
   
   “Our highly accurate measurements over four years demonstrate that the star really is getting fainter with time,” said Montet, from Caltech, in a statement. "It is unprecedented for this type of star to slowly fade for years, and we don’t see anything else like it in the Kepler data.”
   
   A pre-print of the research was released in August, and is now published in the Astrophysical Journal. In it, the scientists compared KIC 8462852 to 500 similar stars also observed by Kepler. Although they saw a small fraction getting fainter with time, none had dimming episodes as intense.
   
   KIC 8462852, which is also known as Tabby’s star, faded about 1 percent in the first three years of the study, before suddenly dropping another 2 percent more. It then remained stable for the final six months.
   
   “This star was already completely unique because of its sporadic dimming episodes. But now we see that it has other features that are just as strange, both slowly dimming for almost three years and then suddenly getting fainter much more rapidly,” Simon, from the Carnegie Institute of Science, continued.
   
   The six months of dimming in 2012 could be explained by the breakup of a planet or comets, but the apparent long term fading must be something else. And we still don’t know what caused a dramatic change in brightness reported last year.
   
   “It’s a big challenge to come up with a good explanation for a star doing three different things that have never been seen before,” Montet added. “But these observations will provide an important clue to solving the mystery of KIC 8462852.”

   
   I'm interested in any space niggas' thoughts and theories. I personally like to think it's somehow related to the puckering of a cosmic butthole. :)
   
   
2. 2016-10-05 at 3:59 PM UTC

   #2
   The Self Taught Man Black Hole
   Oh my god! A branch of science that has been around for maybe 60 years found something it cant explain with the current theories. hurr durr Must be aliens.
   
   Its obviously the puckering cosmic butthole.
3. 2016-10-05 at 4:36 PM UTC

   #3
   

   Sophie Pedophile Tech Support
   Yep i heard about this. It was proposed by some people that the star changed in brightness because of a device called a Dyson Sphere or something similar. People that actually knew what they were talking about soon told everyone else that if it was such a mega structure obscuring the light from the star we would be able to detect excess heat in the form of infrared radiation. Which we did not observe. Other theories include a swarm of comets with an irregular orbit. Whatever the case may be, it's a very interesting object.
4. 2016-10-05 at 4:47 PM UTC

   #4
   The Self Taught Man Black Hole
   I dont quite know about the irregular comet orbit theory but personally I would wonder if the star is being clouded. Lets say a massive cloud of some space gas has been making its way towards this presumed star. As the less dense outer layers creep towards the star we get the slow dimming effect and at some point the more dense center hits it and we see what appears to be a sudden dimming.
   
   This is just armchair astrologicalism though.
5. 2016-10-05 at 4:57 PM UTC

   #5
   

   Sophie Pedophile Tech Support

   I dont quite know about the irregular comet orbit theory but personally I would wonder if the star is being clouded. Lets say a massive cloud of some space gas has been making its way towards this presumed star. As the less dense outer layers creep towards the star we get the slow dimming effect and at some point the more dense center hits it and we see what appears to be a sudden dimming.
   
   This is just armchair astrologicalism though.

   
   It would have to be something like a dust cloud then, because if it's a gaseous cloud we would be able to detect it by performing a spectrum analysis of the light that passes through it.
6. 2016-10-05 at 7 PM UTC

   #6
   The Self Taught Man Black Hole

   It would have to be something like a dust cloud then, because if it's a gaseous cloud we would be able to detect it by performing a spectrum analysis of the light that passes through it.

   
   I agree, dust may be more likely.
7. 2016-10-06 at 1 AM UTC

   #7
   The Self Taught Man Black Hole
   Nuclear reactions do funky shit wow alert the press
8. 2016-10-06 at 2:54 AM UTC

   #8
   

   Sophie Pedophile Tech Support

   Nuclear reactions do funky shit wow

   
   In general they do not, they just sit there converting hydrogen to helium most of the time. Except in the case of Tabby's star. It's brightness varies erratically, which is not something you would expect, except in the case where the light is obscured due to objects passing in front of the star. Even then, there should be a pattern to it, since the things obscuring the star are most likely in an orbit around it. Yet there is no discernible pattern to be observed.