A few weeks ago, postdoc at Yale, Tabetha Boyajian, produced a paper on the star which caught the interest of Jason Wright, an astronomer from Penn State University, who believes something built by aliens, a “swarm of megastructures”, likely outfitted with solar panels to collect energy from the star, could be causing the dips in brightness.
A few weeks ago, news of possible intelligent life hanging out in the vicinity of a star system named KIC 8462852, had the world spinning like a crazy ball at the prospect.
In 2011, planet hunters from a citizen science program discovered a star named KIC 8462852, from the Kepler Space Telescope that had an unusual flickering habit, where something would make it drastically dim at irregular intervals every few years. It is the only one of the 150,000 or so stars within view of the Kepler to flicker and dim in this unusual way.
The frenzy began when a postdoc at Yale, Tabetha Boyajian, produced a paper on the star which caught the interest of Jason Wright, an astronomer from Penn State University, who believes something built by aliens, a “swarm of megastructures”, likely outfitted with solar panels to collect energy from the star, could be causing the dips in brightness. According to Gizmodo, Wright called the KIC 8462852 “the most promising stellar SETI target discovered to date.”
Several natural explanations had been proposed for the strong change in luminosity, but there was that one intriguing possibilty that "a technologically adept civilization has built megastructures in orbit around star" that may have been causing the dimming. With all the hype that there could be possible life on KIC 846285, SETI Institute's Allen Telescope Array located in the Cascade Mountains, got to work and has been hunting for the radio signals on the star for the past two weeks.
On their website, SETI explains, two different types of radio signals were sought:
- Narrow-band transmissions - of order 1 Hz in width, that could be used as a “hailing signal” for societies wishing to betray their presence.
- Broad-band signals: produced by intense microwaves used to propel rockets servicing the megastructure.
"If astroengineering projects are really underway in the vicinity of KIC 8462852, one might reasonably expect the presence of spacecraft to service this activity.If these crafts are propelled by intense microwave beams, some of that energy might manifest itself as broad-band radio leakage," SETI stated in a press release.
Analysis of the data however, showed "no clear evidence for either type of signal", crushing the hearts of thousands of alien hunters on planet Earth. “The history of astronomy tells us that every time we thought we had found a phenomenon due to the activities of extraterrestrials, we were wrong,” notes Institute astronomer Seth Shostak in a. “But although it’s quite likely that this star’s strange behavior is due to nature, not aliens, it’s only prudent to check such things out.”
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 "SETI finds no signs of life from KIC 8462852")
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