Last
week, NASA's Kepler telescope was focused on KIC
8462852, a star about 1500 light years away from Earth. What
interested astronomers was the strange pattern of dimming that they
noticed when looking at the star. Natural causes have apparently been
ruled out (see link below if you want the technical details—and I
DO mean technical!), so astronomers are beginning to consider
another possibility. Could the dimming patterns be the result of an
alien presence? A little history first: the Kepler space telescope
was directed for use, starting in 2009, in a project to find planets
by looking for a small dip in light caused by a planet passing in
front of a star. So far, the project has been extremely successful,
with 150,000 stars being monitored and thousands of new planets being
added to the roster. However, none of the monitored stars have
exhibited the dramatic amount of dimming that KIC 8462852 has
evidenced...
Natural causes ruled out:
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