NASA's Kepler mission has discovered a world where two suns set over the horizon instead of just one. (Photo : NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt)
Scientists are now investigating a mysterious star system that may lead to an "alien megastructure".
With the help of the Allen Telescope Array (ATA), this system of radio dishes spanning 300 miles located in northeastern San Francisco, will now hunt for alien signals that will be originating from KIC 8462852 which is the mystery star that lies 1,500 light years away.
Over the past years, NASA's Kepler Space Telescope discovered that KIC 8462852 "dimmed" in such a bizarre way, in odd light patterns in a dramatic way, several times a few years back. This dimming activity from the star were too significant to pass it as a planet just transiting its star as scientists claim, and even massive galactic dust clouds that could cause this dimming is also too far fetched.
Currently, scientists believe that a swarm of comets ambushed toward KIC 8462852 that created a gravitational disturbance from a passing star. Another possibility is that this signal might be caused by massive structures emitting energy from an advanced alien civilization.
According to Seth Shostak from the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute, we are now observing this phenomenon with the Allen Telescope Array and there is no problem with believing about the possibility of intelligent alien civilizations out there but people should probably somehow moderate their enthusiasm first.
Shostak also mentioned how pulsars can also cause this event, as they are fast spinning, really dense dead stars that emit beams of extremely powerful radiation across deep space. These radioactive beams can be easily detected from Earth as regular patterns from these stellar pulses especially when they directly hit the planet.
However, astronomers know this since the 1960s where the first pulsar signals were detected as some scientists confused them with alien communications.
Even if instruments such as powerful telescopes that are ground based or in lower Earth orbit still do not detect signals from the KIC 8462852 yet, it still does not prove that this is a lifeless system.
