A curious star more than 1,400 light-years from Earth has completely baffled astronomers.
It's so unlike anything we've ever seen, scientists can't entirely discount that it's evidence of an alien civilization.
The star, called KIC 8462852, is so distant the only information we have about it comes from its light curves — the amount of light from the star that makes it back to Earth.
Astronomers have noticed strange blobs around the star blocking out some of its light. The blobs don't seem to be planets because they follow a random pattern rather than a predictable, planet-like orbit.
A giant swarm of comets or a broken-up planet might cause the strange phenomenon, but no particularly convincing astronomical explanations have emerged. That's why some believe the weird blobs might be a Dyson sphere — an enormous group of solar panels orbiting a star to harvest its energy — therefore implying that we may be observing a technological "megastructure" built by aliens.
As Penn State astronomer Kimberly Cartier told Business Insider, however, the media coverage has "gotten a bit out of hand."
Jim Galasyn, a writer for the blog Desdemona Despair, saw a 2013 research paper posted by commenter "Michael" on a story from Centauri Dreams. That paper explains how some stars don't have a uniform brightness level because they're irregularly shaped and "oblate" discs.
To read more, click here.