If a distant sun were surrounded by a swarm of solar panels constructed to power an advanced alien civilization, it might look a bit like Tabby's Star.
The strange celestial object, located some 1,300 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus, behaves unlike any star scientists have ever seen. Several years ago, researchers working on the Kepler space telescope noticed that a yellow-white dwarf star called KIC 8462852 flickered like a guttering candle. Every so often, and for no reason they could detect, its brightness dipped by as much as 22 percent.
In 2015, Yale University astronomer Tabetha Boyajian published a paper assessing the possible explanations for the dimming effect, but none seemed to fit. The dimming was far more irregular and dramatic than could be caused by a planet passing in front of the star — even a gas giant like Jupiter blocks only 1 percent of the sun's light. Other natural explanations, such as a cluster of comets swarming around the star, didn't fit the data for what became known as “Tabby's Star,” for Boyajian.
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