Unusual star in our galaxy twinkles, hinting at the presence of ET life

An unusual star has been discovered in our galaxy that flickers as if someone is playing with its switch. This strange behavior has puzzled scientists and raised an intriguing possibility: could it be a sign of extraterrestrial life?

On April 29, at a lecture at Gresham College in London, Oxford University astrophysics professor Chris Lintott spoke about the Boyajian star in the constellation Cygnus, also known as Tabby’s star. In recent years, space probes and observatories have closely studied its unpredictable dimming and brightness.

“This star’s behavior is extraordinary,” Lintott said. “Its brightness decreases sharply and then increases in rapid, erratic leaps. It does not follow any pattern and is the only one of its kind in our galaxy.”

When Boyajian’s unusual behavior was first discovered in 2012, the Kepler space observatory studied the star in great detail. These measurements showed that a huge amount of material periodically blocks the light of the star and tightly surrounds it.

Theories about the strange star included asteroid clusters, dust rings and disintegrating comets. However, what has received the most attention is a suggestion by Penn State University scientists that the eclipsing mass may be a massive alien megastructure, also called a Dyson sphere.

A Dyson sphere is a hypothetical megastructure proposed by physicist Freeman Dyson in 1960. It is an artificial shell surrounding the star that collects most or all of its energy.

The concept of a Dyson sphere is based on the assumption that a sufficiently advanced civilization could build a huge structure that would absorb the energy of a star and use it for its needs. The shell can be constructed from a variety of materials, such as metals, carbon nanotubes, or even living organisms.

“These distant civilizations could be powered by massive rotating structures that astronomers have called Dyson spheres, or swarms,” ​​Lintott said.

They found that different wavelengths of light were blocked to different degrees, Lintott said. This indicates that starlight is passing through the dust cloud. Boyajian’s obscuring mass is most likely a dust cloud resulting from the planet’s collision and subsequent destruction.

However, Lintott also noted that the analysis of the strange object is important because it draws attention to techniques that will become more important in the coming years as efforts to identify extraterrestrial civilizations intensify.