Computers Would Never Have Found "Alien Superstructure" Star--It Required Citizen Science

Last week the internet was abuzz with rumors of a strange star that some suggested might host an extraterrestrial construction. Astronomers say that scenario is a slim possibility. A more likely explanation is that the weird star, called KIC 8462852, is orbited by a swarm of comets, which is a pretty interesting idea on its own. But either way, this intriguing star might never have been found. The oddball was just one of thousands of stars being monitored by NASA’s Kepler telescope, which searches for the telltale dips in a star’s light caused when exoplanets pass in front of it. Computers spot most of the promising planet candidates in the data, but this star would have fallen through the cracks if volunteer citizen scientists had not flagged its unusual signature. “This wouldn’t have been picked up by a computer algorithm,” says Yale University astronomer Tabetha Boyajian, who manages the Planet Hunters crowdsourcing project to analyze Kepler’s data. “We weren’t looking for something like this.”