MARK GARLICK/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY
If there ever was an alien megastructure orbiting Tabby’s Star, it has long since crumbled to dust. The dips in the weird star’s light are almost definitely caused by a ring of dust, not a huge opaque object between us and the star.
In 2015, a team of astronomers led by Yale’s Tabetha Boyajian saw the light from the star KIC 8462852 suddenly and repeatedly dip in brightness. The star, nicknamed Tabby’s star after Boyajian, dimmed by up to 22 per cent over several days before it returned to normal.
In May 2017, the star began to dim again. Boyajian, Jason Wright at Pennsylvania State University, and their colleagues called on operators using telescopes around the world to look at Tabby’s star. They got the most detailed data we’ve ever had on how its light changed while the dips were occurring.
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They found that the light was not dimming in all wavelengths, indicating that whatever keeps blocking out the star can’t be a solid, opaque structure. This means that the idea that this dimming could be caused by an alien megastructure is now even more unlikely.
Instead, the researchers say that there are probably dense pockets of dust encircling the star, likely caused by comets or asteroids that leave a trail of dust as they orbit. This dust blocks more blue light than red light.
“It’s for sure not aliens, as much as I can prove that anything’s not an alien,” says Wright. “It looks like it’s boring old dust, which is what most people have thought it was this whole time.”
Read more: Triple signal of ‘alien megastructure’ star baffles astronomers
Reference: arxiv.org/abs/1801.00732
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