Scientists have explained the anomalous behavior of the star KIC 8462852 or the Boyajian star, which was previously suspected of the existence of alien megastructures – artificial structures of an astronomical scale built by an extraterrestrial civilization. KIC 8462852 may have a companion star that causes irregular drops in brightness. The results of scientific work are published in the arXiv preprint repository.
The Boyajian Star was discovered in 2015. It is a yellow-white dwarf about 1,470 light-years from Earth, and is characterized by non-periodic drops in brightness, in which no pattern can be traced. This excludes the presence of the planet. In addition, waves of certain lengths are blocked more than others, which makes it possible to exclude any solid object, including the alien megastructure. The most likely explanation for the anomalous behavior is the presence of a cloud of dust and debris.
According to the researchers, the presence of the cloud can be explained by the existence of a companion star, which orbits KIC 8462852 in a wide orbit and creates additional gravitational disturbance on the debris. Both stars are distant from each other at a distance of 880 astronomical units (the distance from the Sun to the Earth). The hypothetical companion is a red dwarf with 0.44 solar masses, but it is not yet known exactly whether it really belongs to the same system as KIC 8462852.