In September 2015, a distant star was observed by a postdoctoral student at Yale University named Tabetha Boyajian. He noted that the luminous sphere was flickering inconsistently, which led to speculations that this could be an indication of alien life proof. One such speculation of the star's glowing pattern is that it is surrounded by a megastructure termed a Dyson Sphere, which is designed to harness the sun's energy from space.
Alien Life Proof Isn't Being Taken Out Of The Equation
However, scientists dismissed this rumor and said that the flickering could be caused by a swarm of comet fragments orbiting the star. As this space debris revolves around it the light emitted by the star - named Tabby's Star - is blocked causing the irregularity. Stars orbited by other planets has their light dimmed by one to two percent, while Tabby has its light dipped from up to 22 percent.
Scientists are still uncertain what's causing this inconsistent dimming pattern. To help explain this phenomenon, the $100m Breakthrough Initiative, backed by Stephen Hawking and Mark Zuckerberg, will aim a US radio telescope on Tabby to listen for signals, the BBC reported. While alien life proof is far from what scientists expect to find, it isn't being taken off the table either.
Initiative To Use $100m Telescope To Observe Strange Star
In the past, astronomers have observed Tabby using the Keck Observatory and the Hubble Space Telescope but found no unusual signal coming from the star. This time, however, the initiative will be observing the irregularity using a $100m telescope located in West Virginia, Stuff reported. "The Green Bank Telescope is the largest fully steerable radio telescope on the planet, and it's the largest, most sensitive telescope that's capable of looking at Tabby's star given its position in the sky," said Dr. Andrew Siemion, co-director of the Breakthrough Listen program.
Though the comet swarm is the most favored explanation in the scientific community regarding the strange dimming interval, other observations stated that such a swarm wouldn't cause such dipping to occur. Another study suggests that the star has been behaving the way it is for the past century. But of course, alien life proof still remains the most popular theory when it comes to popular media and the general masses, which, considering the vastness of space, is still plausible.
