We find the second star, near which can live builders Dyson sphere – Popular Mechanics

In the middle of October 2015, astronomers from Yale University told about the unusual fluctuations in the brightness of the star KIC 8462852 in the constellation Cygnus, the strength of the glow which twice dropped by almost a quarter in the last 7 years. This “blink” for the first time pointed out the possibility of the presence in its vicinity so-called Dyson sphere, trap star energy created by overdevelopment civilization aliens.

Initially, scientists thought that such a “winking” star could be caused by a swarm of comets, closed the its light from the observer on the Earth, but in January 2016 the American astronomer Bradley Schaefer found that the brightness of KIC 8462852 inexplicably dropped by 0.16 magnitudes over the last century that cast doubt on this theory. Subsequently, scientists working with the telescope “Kepler”, confirmed that the brightness of the lights actually falls. Read more

German team of astronomers led by Simon Skaringi (Simone Scaringi) from the Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching (Germany) discovered another such star, the EPIC 204 278 916, and found a potential explanation its singularity, watching the night sky of the southern hemisphere of the Earth by means of microwave radio telescope ALMA.

This is a star in the constellation Scorpius, at a distance of about 400 light-years of Earth, inside the so-called OB association Scorpius-Centaurus. It is a group of about a thousand relatively young and hot stars born inside the giant “stellar nursery” of about 5-11 million years ago

EPIC 204 278 916 -. One of the young stars in this “family”, whose birth is not yet completed. Its weight at the moment is about half the size of the sun and its brightness is approximately equal to how much light and other forms of electromagnetic radiation produces our star.

How to write Skaringi and his colleagues, they discovered the unusual fluctuations in the brightness of the lights by chance, studying the pictures and data that the telescope “Kepler” collected in August and November 2014 in the framework of the mission of K2 after his “resurrection».

in these photographs, scientists have discovered enormous fluctuations in the brightness of the new “Star aliens” in which the power of its glow in one case, dropped a few hours by 65% ​​for 79 days of observation. In addition, Skaringi and his colleagues found other, less prolonged and severe reduction in brightness, the frequency of occurrence of many of these “eclipses” coincides with the speed of rotation of the star.

Intrigued by this unusual phenomenon, scientists have begun to observe the EPIC 204278916 using ALMA telescope, knowing that such drop in brightness can cause, as suggested by the discoverers of the original “Star aliens”, swarms of comets or fragments of the destroyed planet. This is supported by the fact that EPIC 204278916 is a relatively young star, the processes of planet formation around which has not yet been completed.

In fact, as shown by these observations, a potential source of shading the light of young stars can be no man-made sphere Dyson, a protoplanetary disk that surrounds it as a kind of “bagel”. This bagel we see an end, so it it is not visible to infrared telescopes that can capture the radiant heat generated by friction of dust particles and gas molecules inside the drive.

The gas and dust in the disk are distributed extremely uneven, and therefore the brightness of the star’s light, “sews” him on the way to Earth, will vary greatly depending on the density of the part of the “donut”, which now faces us. This may explain why the brightness of the EPIC 204278916 changing incomprehensible to us properly, and why the onset of these cuts is synchronized with the rotation of the star around its axis.

All of this, as stressed Skaringi, does not explain why the brightness falls the original “Star aliens”. KIC 8462852, unlike EPIC 204278916 is not a young star and its spectrum does not indicate how the protoplanetary disk or any large accumulations of dust and gas in the surrounding area. Apparently, in her fogged involved a different mechanism that scientists have not yet opened.