Astronomers may have found giant alien 'megastructures' orbiting star near the Milky

[Bear]

Why isn't it thought to be a stellar ring? If a gas giant gets torn apart inside the Roche limit of a star, wouldn't you get something that looks a lot like that - for a few hundred years anyway? Sort of a naturally occurring 'smoke ring'?

[stevebowers]

A uniform ring would cause a constant rate of extinction, but it could be a lumpy ring, or 'arc' ring which is only partially complete. The curious thing is the lumpy, bumpy nature of the light-curve.

[tmazanec1]

Please consider sending a little dinero to the kickstarter campaign to monitor this oddball of the skies
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/608...n=45297e55

[tmazanec1]

People, there are just a few hours left in the kickstarter campaign and we are almost there.
Come on...

[tmazanec1]

Tabby is trying to start a discussion forum on the star https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/608...ts/1633722

[tmazanec1]

Tabby's Star dimmed in the last few years:
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy...s-weirder/

[tmazanec1]

Starlifting may explain light curves https://arxiv.org/pdf/1611.08368v1.pdf

[Drashner1]

Hm. Interesting, although I get the sense that the data is a bit preliminary at this point.

If it gained weight with more data, mining stars would certainly bake a lot of people's brains

Todd

[stevebowers]

If there are civilisations out there millions or billions of years old, I'd expect a few of them to try star-lifting - although I'm not convinced we'd recognise it easily.

[tmazanec1]

See what reddit has to say about this star:
https://www.reddit.com/r/KIC8462852/