Monday, October 19, 2015

Alien Rumors (part 1)


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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