Mega structure found

[Anomalocaris]

It could simply be a rogue asteroid field between us and KIC 8462852.  Depending on the location, small objects can obscure large.  Our moon covers the sun.

That's because the moon is very close to the earth compared to the sun.

If an object is periodically blocking the line of sight between us and KIC8462852, then it must either orbit us closely, or orbit KIC8462852 closely.  Otherwise the periodicity of the blocking would be very long.

If it orbits us closely, I'd hope we would know it by now, and it would be odd if that object only block the light of sight to KIC8462852, and nothing else in our sky.

If it orbits KIC8462852 closely, then it's dimensions must be enormous to cover the star for so long with each orbit.

[vorlon13]

Some things they do know;

*it's not starspots. They are pretty sure the data does show those, and they are not related to the big dimming

*it's not a planet, or it's not just a planet, it's big, way too big

*whatever 'it' is, it isn't warm. If it's close to the star, and blocking/absorbing that much light, it should warm up as a consequence and be detectable in the IR.

*it's not symmetrical, or if it is, it's orientation to us can change VERY rapidly

*I haven't seen a discussion of this elsewhere, but a very large ring system around a planet orbiting this star would seem to be very unlikely, the ring system would be far larger than Saturn's and it's orientation to us could not change rapidly. Also, a big ring system intersecting that much light (presumably) near a star would be warm, and we would already have seen that

* it's 'unique', to the extent we haven't found anything like it so far

*it may not be 'unique' in that the Kepler satellite was looking at an extremely tiny tiny percentage of the total number of stars in our galaxy

*the phenomena is related to that star, it is not a background or foreground object playing 'tricks' on us (the search for follow on objects for Hew Horizons to study was complicated by the unexpectedly more numerous variable stars turned up by the Subaru telescope during the search)

* the star is slightly hotter and more massive than our sun, but not freakishly so. It's an 'F' star, one up on the chart. Next higher are 'A' stars and they would be quite a bit brighter and hotter than our sun.

* the star (so far) has not shown any 'weird' brightening. For instance, hypothetically speaking, if an enormous flat disc of mylar was orbiting the star, and as it did so, it's orientation to us changed rapidly, we would see darkenings with the asymmetry noted in the light curves, but for such a contrived example, at some point we would expect the object to reflect more light our way, like when it passes on the far side of the star. Kepler did not see that.

* we have quite a bit of equipment available to study this star. If it doesn't start yielding it's secrets to other telescopes, Hubble might be employed to study it.

* I'm still expecting archival data on this star to be searched and there just about has to be more images of it to study. They can figure past dates when 'odd' dimmings might have been occurrring, and they can check records and databases for those dates and see what other scopes were making observations in that part of the sky. Even amateur backyard astronomers can have useful photometry or pictures of this area.

[IATIA]

So we are saying that there is no possibility whatsoever that there may be something midway between both positions and that alien megastructures makes more sense?  

[Anomalocaris]

I saw this earlier in the day. It's such an unusual situation. The strongest theory so far to explain the data is that another star passed very close to the system and disrupted a shit-load of comets which are causing the data. I wonder about an unknown stellar phenomena related to sunspots causing the unusual light dip. I mean a 15% and 22% drop? It would take two dozen Jupiters to do that or thousands of comets if a natural phenomena or something like a Dyson Sphere if it's artificial. Whatever it is, it's VERY unusual.

Determination of possible modes of complex orbital behavior amongst a system of many object is essentially a computation trial and error process.  There is no closed form analytical solution that can enumerate all the possible modes there can be.   It is unlikely we would have guessed that many such modes could exist until we first see them in action.

For example, the Shepherd moons of saturn's rings exhibit a complex interaction between moons, rings, and clumping of ring material that was never dreamt of until we saw it in real time with voyager photography.   It is unlikely anyone would have imagined such behavior existed in nature even now were it not for photograph showing it in action.

So I strongly suspect the so called large object periodically blocking the light from that star consist of a natural swarm of small objects, like asteroids or comets, kept clumped and prevented from dispersing into a ring, by something complex, as yet unimagined, gravitational interplay with some system of a few large natural objects.

I propose some rough idea of this could be to get you thinking.   For example, there may be a Jovian plant orbits that star, and a large asteroid or escaped moon, or even another planet, occupies a lagrangian position in its orbit.   These two objects would then form a stable gravitational formation, and together they gravitationally shepherd a large swarm of objects in a similar orbit around that star, and cause them to clump and prevent them from spreading out uniformly into a debris disk, in a manner similar to the sheparding moons of saturn's rings.

So you have a large natural clump of objects that doesn't dissipate over time, thanks to shepherding actions of the co-orbiting planet and its lagrangian mate.  This clump would then periodically block the light for the star for extended periods.

Another possibility might be the star does actually have a complete, but wide and very thin ring of debris surrounding it. We see the ring almost edge on, so it is essentially invisible most of the time. But there is a large planet orbiting near the ring, and its gravity raises a wave in the ring. And what we are seeing is the wave in the ring blocking the light from the star as the planet passes.

These are just pure conjectures. But I think they illustrate the sort of complex interplay that has to be eliminated before we resort to aliens.

[AFTT47]

I have seen a few posts entertaining the alien interpretation.  According to the article, Jupiter would be too small.  Now, regardless of the advancement of this 'alien race', where would one get enough raw material to build something significantly larger than Jupiter?

You're confusing area with volume. There is plenty enough material in our own solar system to build something with sufficient area to block all the light from the sun. It would be relatively thin. A large number of small, natural bodies works for the same reason.

[Anomalocaris]

A sheet of thin gauge aluminium foil the same area as the disk of the sun would have a mass of over a trillion tons. That is infinitesimal next to the mass of any major, or even most minor bodies in a solar system, but still orders of magnitude more than all the material even mined by humanity in its entire history.

[IATIA]

And there is the volume of material necessary to establish structural integrity. Then there is the material necessary for purpose.

[Fake Messiah]

I'm pretty sure that if somebody really built this they would be beyond mining. With sufficient energy you can transform matter from one element into another, not to mention nano technology and stuff we don't even know about.

[vorlon13]

Here's an update on yon weird beastie.

Also note, we have observations of this star going back over 100 years, and it turns out it is and has been a weird little goomer.

The star KIC 8462852 is a completely-ordinary F3 main sequence star, except that the light curve from the Kepler spacecraft shows episodes of unique and inexplicable day-long dips with up to 20% dimming. Here, I provide a light curve of 1232 Johnson B-band magnitudes from 1890 to 1989 taken from archival photographic plates at Harvard. KIC 8462852 displays a highly significant and highly confident secular dimming at an average rate of 0.165+-0.013 magnitudes per century. From the early 1890s to the late 1980s, KIC 8462852 has faded by 0.193+-0.030 mag. This century-long dimming is completely unprecedented for any F-type main sequence star. So the Harvard light curve provides the first confirmation (past the several dips seen in the Kepler light curve alone) that KIC 8462852 has anything unusual going on. The century-long dimming and the day-long dips are both just extreme ends of a spectrum of timescales for unique dimming events, so by Ockham's Razor, all this is produced by one physical mechanism. This one mechanism does not appear as any isolated catastrophic event in the last century, but rather must be some ongoing process with continuous effects. Within the context of dust-occultation models, the century-long dimming trend requires 10^4 to 10^7 times as much dust as for the one deepest Kepler dip. Within the context of the comet-family idea, the century-long dimming trend requires an estimated 648,000 giant comets (each with 200 km diameter) all orchestrated to pass in front of the star within the last century.

[MTL]

I'll be disappointed if it turns out that it was NOT made by Aliens...

...And I'll be terrified if it turns out that it WAS.