The idea that a so-called “Tabby’s Star” could be orbited by huge structures created by an advanced alien civilization has been essentially ruled out by “Tabby” herself.
Tabetha Boyajian led the crowdsourced citizen scientist team that first identified the star officially known as KIC 8462852 or Boyajian’s Star in 2015. The story of the mysterious star went viral thanks to its unique and weird habit of dimming and brightening without any obvious pattern, leading some to suggest alien megastructures straight out of science fiction as a possible explanation.
But Dyson Swarms, Alderson disks and other imaginary alien engineering feats were never the most likely explanation for what Boyajian and a team of citizen scientists discovered over two years ago. Now, Boyajian tells me that — thanks in part to a crowdfunded observation run that watched KIC 8462852 for almost two years — we can finally rule out alien megastructures as a possible explanation for its weird behavior.
“From what we can assume, a megastructure would be a solid body, not capable of producing the color dependence we observe,” she told to me via email.
Boyajian is the lead author on a new paper published Wednesday in Astrophysical Journal Letters that explains something much less solid is the most likely explanation for the star’s strange dips in brightness, including the latest such bit of stellar weirdness that started in May of 2017.
“We were hoping that once we finally caught a dip happening in real time we could see if the dips were the same depth at all wavelengths. If they were nearly the same, this would suggest that the cause was something opaque, like an orbiting disk, planet, or star, or even large structures in space,” Penn State astrophysics professor Jason Wright said in a statement. Wright is a co-author of the new paper and on earlier papers suggesting megastructures might explain the dips.
Instead, all the observations of the star since October 2015 point to something much less exotic than alien architecture blocking out KIC 8462852’s light in unpredictable ways.
“Dust is the most likely the reason why the star’s light appears to dim and brighten,” Boyajian said in a statement.
This is far from the final word on the mysterious star, however. Wright says while there’s no longer any reason to think alien structures surround the star, other explanations like a swarm of exocomets or a black hole disk are still on the list of feasible explanations.
With the door apparently shut on the idea of aliens orbiting her namesake star, I asked Boyajian if she thought all the attention the possibility (no matter how minute) of finding an alien civilization drew was frustrating or a net good.
“The attention was a bit overwhelming at times,” she told me. “Considering both points you make, I would settle on a ‘net good’ — the clickbait has helped educate and inspire many people.”
And that inspiration could actually help find the galaxy’s next mystery, as Boyajian points out that volunteer citizen scientists that plucked Boyajian’s Star out of reams of Kepler Space Telescope data and noted its weirdness.
“Crowdsourcing through citizen science… has shown time and time again that the most interesting finds will often go undetected without interaction from unbiased humans.”
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