There isn’t a star like KIC 8462852. For the past 18 months, ever since a group of astronomers introduced the world to its strange, seemingly unnatural fluctuations in brightness, scientists have been obsessed with it.
What’s kept the interest so high is a hypothesis that the fluctuations happen because the star is surrounded by some alien megastructure. Unlike most alien hypotheses, it has so far stood up to challenges because no known natural phenomenon could better explain what astronomers are seeing.
That might be about to change. A study to be published on Monday (Jan. 16) in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society suggests that, if KIC 8462852 were to gobble up one or more of its own planets, that could create the patterns of light that put scientists on the case.
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