Milky Way (Photo : Facebook/The Milky Way Galaxy)
A recent study based on data obtained by NASA's Kepler Space Telescope suggests the possible existence of alien life and structures. These mysterious objects were spotted orbiting a huge star many light years away. The study has prompted search for Extraterrestrial beings.
According to Mirror UK, experts observed these alien structures are revolving around a star called KIC 8462852. The star is located 1480 light years from earth between the constellations Cygnus and Lyra. The researchers noticed an "unusual pattern" in the way the objects surrounded that star. It was reportedly initially thought that the objects were mere comets, shrapnel from asteroids or misinterpretation of the data.
However, researchers believe that these mysterious objects could be "alien megastructure." According to astronomer Jason Wright from Penn University, these structures could have been designed by aliens to draw energy from the star.
Speculations prompted after a paper was submitted to the journal named Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. The paper was presented by several astronomers and scientists from the Planet Hunters crowdsourcing program, according to Discovery News.
The website notes that the study is based on four years of date collected by Kepler Spacecraft. Kepler is a space observatory launched by NASA to examine a part of Milky Way in search of Earth-like planets or exoplanets.
Meanwhile, researchers emphasize that it is not an "instrumental error" but a real signal. A leading author of the paper and postdoctrate researcher at Yale, Tabetha Boyajian spoke to The Atlantic about their new discovery. "We'd never seen anything like this star," she said. "It was really weird. We thought it might be bad data or movement on the spacecraft, but everything checked out." Researchers from The Planet Hunters describe KIC 8462852 as "bizarre," "interesting" and a "giant transit."
Researchers for SETI (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence), including Tabetha, James and Andrew Siemion, the Director of the SETI Research Center at the University of California are planning to take their research one step further. They have proposed the idea of positioning a radio telescope towards KIC 8462852 to listen and observe the signals that could possibly be indicating at existence of alien civilization.
