There is something strange happening around Boyajian’s star.
Something very strange. The Sun-sized star is located nearly 1,500 light years from Earth in the Cygnus constellation and in 2015, a team of astronomers and citizen scientists discovered irregular dimming in the light from the star. The team was pouring over data from NASA’s Kepler telescope, which was designed to find exoplanets by looking for the periodic decreases in starlight that occur when a planet passes in front of its host star during orbit. But the light profiles from Boyajian’s star didn’t look like an exoplanet at all.
The universe is massive, and the odds of discovering a truly unique astrophysical phenomenon are low. When astronomers find something they can’t explain, such as a fast radio burst or the dimming of Boyajian’s star, there’s a very good chance that it is merely the first example of a widespread, but previously unknown, natural phenomenon.
But often these apparently singular astronomical discoveries lend themselves to speculation—that intelligent alien life might have something to do with it—and Boyajian’s star is no exception.
