{"id":21769,"date":"2016-02-08T13:31:25","date_gmt":"2016-02-08T21:31:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2016\/02\/comets-may-not-explain-alien-megastructure-stars-strange-flickering-after-all"},"modified":"2017-04-24T22:32:38","modified_gmt":"2017-04-25T05:32:38","slug":"comets-may-not-explain-alien-megastructure-stars-strange-flickering-after-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2016\/02\/comets-may-not-explain-alien-megastructure-stars-strange-flickering-after-all","title":{"rendered":"Comets May Not Explain \u2018Alien Megastructure\u2019 Star\u2019s Strange Flickering After All"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/comets-may-not-explain-alien-megastructure-stars-strange-flickering-after-all.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s looking less likely that a swarm of comets or an \u201calien megastructure\u201d can explain a faraway star\u2019s strange dimming.<\/p>\n<p>The star (nicknamed \u201cTabby\u2019s Star,\u201d after its discoverer, Tabetha Boyajian) made major headlines last October when Jason Wright, an astronomer at Pennsylvania State University, suggested that it could be surrounded by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.space.com\/30832-kepler-telescope-alien-megastructure.html\">some type of alien megastructure<\/a>. A more likely idea \u2014 one that\u2019s far less exciting \u2014 is that the star is orbited by a swarm of comets. But scientists can\u2019t be sure either way.<\/p>\n<p>Now, Bradley Schaefer, an astronomer at Louisiana State University, has probed the star\u2019s behavior over the past century by looking at old photographic plates. Not only does the star\u2019s random dipping date back more than a century, but it also has been gradually dimming over that period \u2014 a second constraint that makes it even harder to explain. [<a href=\"http:\/\/www.space.com\/20155-hunting-intelligent-aliens-extreme-seti.html\">13 Ways to Hunt Intelligent Alien Life<\/a>].<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.livescience.com\/53634-alien-megastructure-star-flickering-mystery-continues.html\" target=\"_blank\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It\u2019s looking less likely that a swarm of comets or an \u201calien megastructure\u201d can explain a faraway star\u2019s strange dimming. The star (nicknamed \u201cTabby\u2019s Star,\u201d after its discoverer, Tabetha Boyajian) made major headlines last October when Jason Wright, an astronomer at Pennsylvania State University, suggested that it could be surrounded by some type of alien [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":362,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1527],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alien-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/362"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21769"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21769\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51062,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21769\/revisions\/51062"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}