The internet has been abuzz this week over the possibility of intelligent alien life somewhere in our galaxy. This time, an article published by The Atlantic set off the storm. The story details how NASA's planet-hunting Kepler spacecraft has spotted a strange star in the Milky Way named KIC 8462852. 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.
"I was fascinated by how crazy it looked," Jason Wright, an astronomer from Penn State University who studied the star, told The Atlantic. "Aliens should always be the very last hypothesis you consider, but this looked like something you would expect an alien civilization to build." Wright said he is working on a paper that explores the theory further.
It's perhaps the least likely scenario to explain the star's behavior, but since the story's publication, there have been numerous articles suggesting that NASA has found complex alien life around KIC 8462852. "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." The headlines are completely ridiculous and misleading, according to astronomer Sara Seager.
"It’s just irresponsible reporting. Because if you take a look at the paper — the scientific paper the authors wrote — [that idea] is not really even in there," Seager, astronomer and planetary scientist at MIT, told The Verge.
Seager noted this has long been a problem for astronomy. Whenever astronomers talk about potential evidence for alien life, their statements are often overblown. It’s an unfortunate byproduct of the field, she said, because discussing how to find extraterrestrial beings is an important part of exoplanet science. "We definitely visit that question a lot: How will we know? What evidence does it take?" she said.
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