[BRIEF NOTE] Some more links about extraordinary KIC 8462852

Continuing from yesterday’s post, there is much more about mysterious KIC 8462852.

The whole matter has been examined at greater length in a
couple of posts at Centauri Dreams. Meanwhile, Supernova Condensate does a nice job of explaining why the hypothesis of extraterrestrial artifacts has to be taken seriously.

I know, I know. The moment you even mention the word “alien,” a number of people will immediately start grumbling and shaking their heads. But let’s consider this rationally. Scientifically speaking, we must consider all possibilities. In the words of Conan Doyle, once you eliminate the impossible then whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth. Additionally, by Occam’s razor, the simplest possible explanation is the most likely – specifically, the explanation which requires the fewest assumptions of unknown phenomena. In this case, all of the proposed explanations require at least one such assumption. Various ideas have been put forward, but none are without their problems. The Bad Astronomer has a pretty good discussion on this, which I’d advise you to have a look over if you’re interested.

So given that an alien civilisation is actually not much more significant an assumption than an unprecedentedly massive barrage of comets or a coincidental and mysteriously dust free collision, the idea is actually being given some serious consideration in a hypothesis paper recently submitted to the Astrophysical Journal. Also, I should stoically point out that no Oort cloud has ever actually been observed, meaning that both Oort clouds and alien civilisations have exactly the same amount of direct evidence proving their existence. I suspect that statement will earn me no friends, but it’s worth remembering.

In the words of Tabetha Boyajian, lead author from the detection paper, “Aliens should always be the very last hypothesis you consider, but this looked like something you would expect an alien civilization to build.” This paper, which I won’t elaborate on right now, discusses a number of possibilities for astroengineered megastructures, and the prospects we may have for finding these things in transit studies designed to look for planets. Which is rather interesting because, frankly, why shouldn’t we at least consider the possibility?

The Dragon’s Gaze links to a paper suggesting KIC 8462852 is an excellent target for SETI

Jason Wright, author of a paper considering KIC 8462852, wrote a blog post that, besides explaining the process of how KIC 8462852 was discovered and identified as a strange object.

[F]rom a SETI perspective, one should focus one’s resources on the best targets. Looking for astronomical anomalies is a reasonable way to focus one’s search. There is no inconsistency between assuming purely natural explanations for all phenomena, and targeting SETI efforts at the most astrophysically inexplicable phenomena.

I found Tabby’s star to be inexplicable, so I contacted Andrew Siemion at the Berkeley SETI Research Center. I told him we had a very strange star, and how does one go about doing a radio SETI search?

Andrew was initially skeptical, but he quickly agreed that this is a great target. He, Tabby, some of the PlanetHunters, and I put in a Green Bank Telescope proposal to do a classical, radio-SETI search (à la Contact), and I went to work on my paper.

He also links to the paper. All of this is must-read, people.

(Incidentally, I was amused to discover that “Tabby’s star” is becoming a common name, drawing from the name of discoverer Tabby Boyajian.)