Tabby's star - source of some alien civilization's daily power or something about which we don't know yet?

If you already don't know, I'm talking about a star known as Tabby's star or Boyajian's star which goes by the code name KIC 8462852 and is approximately 1,280 light years away from us.

##

What's so special about it? The fact that unlike any other well-known star, its light is fluctuating abnormally or you can say unusually. This unusual light fluctuation was discovered by citizens scientists as a part of the Planet Hunters project and in September 2015 an article was published on it describing the data and possible interpretations. It dimmed in ways nobody could really explain and among all the interpretations one was that some alien civilization has build a mega structure to draw power from this star and as they draw the power the light decreases. Intriguing, isn't it?

In 2011, its light was dimmed by 15%. Here's a graph which demonstrates this drop:

##

That's almost impossible (with respect to what we've known yet). A sudden drop of that frequency was never seen before and then after 2 years in 2013 another sudden drop in it's light level was observed and this time it was 22%. Now, let's compare it with what we know in this field. Often the star's light level drops are observed when a planet or say a huge meteorite passes in front of it, but even a planet like Jupiter would drop the level by just 1%.

When things were staring to cool down, the Tabby's star made a comeback in April this year when another huge drop in its light level was observed.

So, what could be the possible reason of such big levels of light drops of Tabby's star? We can say it's not a planet because the light drop in this case must be symmetrical and regular but these drops are irregular and can last anywhere from 5 to 80 hours. Another interesting thing which has been observed by looking at the old data is that the star isn't that much brighter now as it used to be and the brightness has dropped overall by 16% in a century.

The Tabby's star is one of the hottest topic in the Astronomy world today and has everyone in awe and wonder.

What do you think could be the possible reason of the sudden drops in its light level? Let me know in the comment below.

Want to observe some cool stars as well as planets and other celestial bodies yourself? Then you should buy this highly recommended telescope:

 

Make sure to subscribe as more such interesting articles are on their way.

Be passionately curious!