The KIC 8462852 star was first spotted by online astronomers Planet Hunters in 2015, which appeared to be dipping in brightness. Astronomers struggled to explain why the star’s brightness was constantly fluctuating, leading some to believe an advanced alien civilisation had built a megastructure, or Dyson Sphere, around it to harbour its energy. Top scientists were keen to rule out aliens and opted instead to look for a more natural explanation, such as comets passing in-between Earth and the star – colloquially known as Tabby’s Star after its discoverer Tabetha Boyajian – but this has since been ruled out.
In their most recent attempt to figure out the dimming of Tabby’s Star, scientists have begun checking for signs of lasers emitted by alien technology.
The team from University of California Berkley wrote on online science journal arXiv: "We analyse 177 high-resolution spectra of Boyajian's Star in an effort to detect potential laser signals from extraterrestrial civilisations.”
The researchers used data from the Lick Observatory's Automated Planet Finder telescope to look for continuous laser light which was more powerful than 24 megawatts, which is around the lowest outage of what can be detected by a telescope some 1,470 light-years away.