Since 2011, the so-called Tabby star has been registering irregular changes in its brightness, which are very intriguing … These irregular changes in its brightness that cannot be explained by the passage of a planet, and the origin of these disturbances has scientists puzzled.
So what’s going on? If it is not a planet, what could be causing these changes in its brightness? Could it be an alien structure?
To begin with, we are going to explain exactly what is special about KIC 8462852, the celestial body known as the Tabby star.
NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope has been observing irregular dimming in the star for years.
But Kepler came to detect a blackout of up to 20% in a matter of days, in addition to other slight brightness itineraries without a clear periodicity and without explanation.
Why can’t it be the passing of a planet?
Normally, when a star shows changes in its brightness, it is usually indicative of the presence of a planet orbiting around it. In fact, this is precisely the technique astronomers use to detect planets in distant star systems, since we cannot detect them on our own.
But in the case of Tabby, due to the irregular curves that describe these brightness rounds, no medium-sized spherical planet could be causing these disturbances. It is impossible.
So what causes them?
Hypothesis 1: A Dyson sphere
The most popular hypothesis about what happens in Tabby is called the Dyson sphere (after its creator)
And it is the idea that in reality what orbits the star Tabby and the reason why it presents such irregular changes in its brightness is actually an alien structure.
This hypothesis maintains that this a structure from another intelligent civilization would be collecting the energy from the star Tabby as an energy source.
Although the erratic changes of Tabby’s brightness do not prove that this hypothesis is correct, in fact, scientists believe that it is the least plausible, and the most fanciful …
There are other ideas more based on scientific facts, and very interesting, that we are going to review below.
Hypothesis 2: A ringed planet accompanied by its entourage of asteroids
A team from the University of Valencia and the Institute of Physics of Cantabria published in 2017 a plausible theory based on a natural phenomenon:
The cause of these variations in the brightness of Tabby is the passage of a planet with rings, and accompanied by two groups of asteroids.
Two different types of light curves are seen in disturbances in the star’s brightness. The first one is asymmetric, but it could describe a ringed planet slightly inclined with respect to its orbit, as is the case with Saturn.
The second, which occurs two years later, more than asymmetrical, is totally chaos, but it could suggest that it is a collection of asteroids that accompany the planet, known as Trojans, and that they would go ahead and behind the planet, at an angle of 60 degrees.
The Spanish team has made its calculations. The first disturbance in Tabby’s brightness occurred in 2011, with a 15% dimming of the star. This would correspond to the passage of the planet in front of her.
The next disturbance to alert astronomers was in 2013, of up to 20% obscuration, which researchers associate with Trojan asteroids. The dates fit!
If a disturbance corresponding to the passage of the supposed ringed planet is observed again by the year 2023, the theory would be practically proven.
The science team also points out that, if this is true, the ringed planet should be very large, but not more than 170 times the mass of Jupiter. Otherwise, we would observe changes in Tabby’s orbit, and that does not happen.
Hypothesis 3: A cloud of dust
NASA scientists concluded in 2018 that the strange structure that appears to surround Tabby is probably simply an uneven dust cloud moving around the star.
The study was based on NASA’s Spitzer and Swift missions and the Belgian AstroLAB IRIS observatory.
What are they based on to affirm it?
The researchers apparently found less obscuration from infrared light than from ultraviolet light. This effect can only be produced by dust particles, since any larger object would obscure all wavelengths equally.
To understand it better, let’s move it to the beach on a sunny day. Imagine that you are sitting under the umbrella. This reduces the amount of sunlight that hits your eyes at all wavelengths. But if you wait for the sunset, it will look red, because blue and ultraviolet light is scattered through small dust particles.
The new study suggests that the objects causing Tabby’s star’s long-term dimming cannot be more than a few micrometers in diameter. That is, they are dust.
In any case, we cannot be sure either that the Institute of Physics of Cantabria or that NASA’s hypothesis is correct.
But the idea of the alien megastructure is probably nothing more than fantasy … Or is it?
