KIC 8462864 is a sun 1,500 light years from Earth. The irregular light blockage (up to 20%) due to objects orbiting it, has led scientist on a search for an extraterrestrial civilization. These objects appear as masses of tightly packed objects. They’ve been deemed too big to be planets.
If KIC 8362852 were a young star, we’d conclude that the star was surrounded by dust. But KIC 8462852 isn’t young, and no excess of infrared light has been found near it. Jason Wright published a statement claiming that these objects are a swarm of megastructures. Wright hypothesized that these objects are Dyson Sphere’s built by this civilization to harness all of the sun’s energy. Some think the human civilization is only a few hundred years from doing this as well.
To succeed at building this, the civilization would have to be a Type III civilization on the Kardashev Scale. In comparison, humans are a Type I civilization.
Besides aliens, other hypotheses include:
- The objects are massive planets with rings, irregularly obstructing our view of the sun
- Dense gasses occasionally pass between KIC 8462852 and Earth, because of a mass ejection event
- This galaxy’s old and violent resulting in debris orbiting the sun
- Large masses of comet-like objects block the light in irregular patterns
- A swarm of comets orbits KIC 8462852
These explanations sound reasonable, yet every one of them proves itself false or highly unlikely.
But for now, scientist can only hypothesize. The Allen Telescope Array has its focus KIC 8462852. The Very Large Array (VLA) may eventually get involved in this search.
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