Two stars that have begun to randomly dim prompt scientists to examine if aliens are responsible
- New readings from the Kepler Telescope show dimming star in Libra system
- A distant star was recorded dimming 28 times in 87 days
- Researchers have said dimming might be caused by ‘alien megastructures’
Light from a distant star system has begun to dim, prompting some scientists to examine whether it might be a sign of alien life.
The star system in question, HD 139139, lies some 350 million light years from Earth, in the Libra constellation.
Scientists believe the system is home to a pair of stars that are bound to one another, given the joint nickname ‘Random Transiter,’ which have been observed frequently dimming over the last several months.
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Stars that have been observed to frequently dim have been hypothetically linked to possible alien activity
The Kepler Space Telescope recorded 28 instances of random dimming over an 87-day period suggesting that something potentially interesting is happening.
There can be many different causes for stars dimming, according to a SFGate report, including debris floating in front of the star, or one of the 28 planets that orbit Random Transiter passing by.
Another possibility is that aliens have constructed some sort of technology that regularly interferes with the light emitted by the stars.
That option is perhaps the least likely, but it can’t be definitely ruled out.
In 2017, scientists wondered whether the rapid dimming of Tabby’s Star (pictured above) was being caused by alien megastructures
In a forthcoming paper, researchers at UC Berkeley point to all the unusual activity coming from HD 139139 as a reason to make it a focus of study.
‘The mystery behind the origin of these events makes this system an interesting target for technosignature searches,’ the group says in the paper, to be published in Research Notes of the American.
In the past, a number of other instances of star dimming have been linked to the potential existence of alien life.
In 2017, researchers investigated where the rapid dimming of Tabby’s star might have been caused by an ‘alien megastructure.’
In the end, they determined it was likely caused by microscopic fine dust that scattered the starlight.
Last year, a team of researchers from Harvard and Yale went so far as to suggest the idea of trying to dim our own home star, the sun, as a way of fighting climate change.
Using a technique called stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI), researchers would deliver sulfates into the atmosphere with balloons and high altitude planes.
The sulfates would theoretically disperse the light from the sun.
The idea was strictly hypothetical, with an estimated starting cost of $3.5 billion.
As with a first encounter with alien life, scientists were unsure whether the longterm outcome would be better or worse.
A view of Tabby’s Star taken from the Kepler Space Telescope
WHAT IS A DYSON SPHERE?
A suggested method for harnessing the power of an entire star is known as a Dyson sphere.
First proposed by theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson in 1960, this would be a swarm of satellites that surrounds a star.
They could be an enclosed shell, or spacecraft spread out to gather its energy – known as a Dyson swarm.
If such structures do exist, they would emit huge amounts of noticeable infrared radiation back on Earth.
But as of yet, such a structure has not been detected.
Source: All About Space magazine
The Dyson Ring, left, is the simplest form of Dyson structure. Creating a Dyson bubble would be an incredible engineering challenge but it is considered to be far more feasible than surrounding a star in a rigid sphere
