Extraterrestrial intelligence?

[GrandizerII]

It's the end of this planet, guys. We're all gonna die soon.

It's not the end of the planet, but it might be the end of habitable conditions for humans.
It might be too late to change the circumstances leading to that inhabitability but it's not too late to change the genetics of ourselves, plants and animals to cope with the changes.

So it is the aliens responsible for climate change. I knew it!

[Anomalocaris]

It's a promising lead as any:

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1608.01316v1.pdf

Note the text from the preamble:

So, can we just settle for "we don't know" - as of yet? Same as with so many other things we can't explain as of yet.

No one ever swindled the desperate and impressed the foolish by admitting he didn't know.

[Jehanne]

I hope that you're joking.  However, if you are correct, maybe that explains why ET is nowhere to be found in the Cosmos!

What do you mean? Have you not seen the movie? It's been on earth a couple of times already!

Are you talking about The Age of Stupid:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Age_of_Stupid

[Jehanne]

So, can we just settle for "we don't know" - as of yet? Same as with so many other things we can't explain as of yet.

No one ever swindled the desperate and impressed the foolish by admitting he didn't know.

No one is asking for any of your money here!  I think some individuals have raised a 100K to buy telescope time to monitor the star, which seems to be a perfectly stable F-type star.  Question is, what would cause a 22% dip in its brightness?  Perhaps Alex, a physicist, could chime-in here?

[Little lunch]

Faulty batteries. :-)

[Anomalocaris]

No one ever swindled the desperate and impressed the foolish by admitting he didn't know.

No one is asking for any of your money here!  I think some individuals have raised a 100K to buy telescope time to monitor the star, which seems to be a perfectly stable F-type star.  Question is, what would cause a 22% dip in its brightness?  Perhaps Alex, a physicist, could chime-in here?

Impressing the foolish does not necessarily involve asking for money up front. Some people do it just to feel wise and important

[Cyberman]

"Pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space
'Cos there's bugger-all down here on Earth."

[Ben Davis]

No known or proposed stellar phenomena, alone, can fully explain all aspects of the observed light curve.

Fixed that for you. The current investigative hypotheses are:

1. there are combinations of known naturalistic phenomena working to create unexpected effects
2. there is/are a new naturalistic phenomenon/phenomena at work, waiting to be discovered
3. there are issues with/impacts on the data that have not yet been corrected for

'Aliens' seems to be a subtly humourous proposal that's been taken too far by the popular press. They could have said 'a fly on the lens' but then the joke wouldn't have sold so well.

[Excited Penguin]

Fixed that for you. The current investigative hypotheses are:

1. there are combinations of known naturalistic phenomena working to create unexpected effects
2. there is/are a new naturalistic phenomenon/phenomena at work, waiting to be discovered
3. there are issues with/impacts on the data that have not yet been corrected for

'Aliens' seems to be a subtly humourous proposal that's been taken too far by the popular press. They could have said 'a fly on the lens' but then the joke wouldn't have sold so well.

Don't be so sure it was a joke. A lot of scientists, I'm sure, are well aware of the Fermi Paradox. I don't think alien life is that much of a preposterous thing to believe in that a joke like that would be made, especially when talking to the media/reporting on a scientific matter.

[Jehanne]

No one is asking for any of your money here!  I think some individuals have raised a 100K to buy telescope time to monitor the star, which seems to be a perfectly stable F-type star.  Question is, what would cause a 22% dip in its brightness?  Perhaps Alex, a physicist, could chime-in here?

Impressing the foolish does not necessarily involve asking for money up front.  Some people do it just to feel wise and important

If life evolved on this World, it is reasonable to suppose that it evolved elsewhere in the Cosmos, as there are at least a trillion planets in our Galaxy alone.  But, even if things turn out to be explained by non-intelligent naturalistic processes, then the KIC 8462852 is still a unique star, would you agree?  After all, how many other of the 150K stars in the Kepler dataset have had their luminosity decrease by 22%?  For a star, that's a LOT! Either way, money well spent in my opinion.