Death Star spotted?

[Blackpuddin]

http://www.iflscience.com/space/milky-ways-most-my...

[Eric Mc]

Much, much bigger than any "Death Star". This is probably something like a ring or partial ring surrounding this star. Whether it is natural or artificial is obviously difficult to say at this stage but, knowing how little we currently know about solar system formation, I would go with "natural" - for the moment.

[Blackpuddin]

Fascinatingly (and unnaturally) non-regular though.

[Eric Mc]

I don't think they can tell that type of detail from this distance.

"Non-regular" to me actually denotes a natural cause. If it had an unexpected REGULARITY then that would be more interesting.

[jmorgan]

It would appear that it is still a mystery, so I would expect a more details investigation, as is what is happening. So in the meantime we can speculate fro Santa Clause to Aliens. I go for debris from a Solar System interaction with its own bits.

[MartG]

Non-regular may just mean that the variations have long cycle times which we have yet to see. If whatever it is orbits the star a long way out it could decades for a pattern to repeat.

[SpudLink]

Our solar system has settled into a nice stable group of rock planets and gas giants, plus assorted debris. But suppose it had formed a couple of hundred bodies, each having an effect on the orbit of the others. Might it look like an irregular 'mega structure' from a few hundred light years away?

Or, they're building a Death Star.

[HewManHeMan]

Oh look, there's Eric herding people away from the Alien explanation again!

(Some weeks ago I cleverly deduced that Eric's a part of the 'Men in Black'. He's clearly hiding the truth)

I, for one, welcome out Alien overlords.

[Eric Mc]

HewManHeMan said:

Oh look, there's Eric herding people away from the Alien explanation again!

(Some weeks ago I cleverly deduced that Eric's a part of the 'Men in Black'. He's clearly hiding the truth)

I, for one, welcome out Alien overlords.

Humans are easy to herd - mwahahahahahahaha.

[dudleybloke]

Its OK. They're here to serve man!

[Eric Mc]

On a plate - with potatoes and a side salad.

[dudleybloke]

[SpudLink]

[RobM77]

There are so many things that it could be. I presume you've seen the paper giving possible explanations?

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1509.03622v1.pdf

The SETI comment is a little strange, I'd like to hear some actual quotes as journalistic exaggeration is all too common. I suspect they might be listening purely because of the high chance this star may have planets round it?

[jmorgan]

pfft. Facts shmacts.

Them aliens, better nuke em from orbit now before they think of nuking us.

[tobinen]

It's too big to be a space station

[Eric Mc]

I jumped to the conclusion section of the actual report and they are currently favouring a "cometary field" of some sort i.e. a group of comets orbiting the star which has clumped in some way to form irregular drops in light output as the clumps pass between the star and our line of sight.

[Vyse]

I'd love it to be a some kind of Dyson Sphere built by a Type II civilization. If it indeed is artificial then this thing was built/being built when we were still hunting things with sticks and arrows. This makes it even more scary as to how far they may have evolved technologically wise in 1500 years.

[Soov535]

So would I.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KIC_8462852

[hornet]

In terms of most redundant questions, asking SETI "so, what do you think it is?" must be near the top of the list?

Will be interesting to find out what it actually is, but getting SETI involved just seems like a way of spicing up an otherwise fairly normal astronomy story.