KIC 8462852 Faded at an Average Rate of 0.165+-0.013 Magnitudes Per Century From 1890 To 1989
Bradley E. Schaefer (Submitted on 13 Jan 2016)
KIC 8462852 has been dimming for a century. The comet explanation is very unlikely.
I just posted a comment on facebook that I'm going to lazily copy here:
...At this point I have no idea what's going on and I'm basically just waiting for astrophysicists to weigh in. All I can say is that this is fascinating and I can't wait for more data to come in.
Two specific things I'm confused about:
Apparently other astronomers already looked at this data and didn't notice anything amiss. Schaefer quotes them as saying "the star did not do anything spectacular over the past 100 years." But as far as I can tell the only relevant difference b
KIC 8462852, or the WTF (Where's the Flux?) star, is an F-type main sequence star about 1,480 ly away. It's a little larger and more massive than the sun, and a few times brighter. Age is uncertain, but probably older rather than younger.
Kepler observations over the last few years reveal very strange large and aperiodic flux variations (up to 20%) - of the general form predicted by some ETI megastructure models. However there doesn't appear to be any excess infrared.
The star's fluctuations were discovered by the PlanetHunters team. In the WTF paper they review a large number of unlikely natural explanations and settle on an unusual comet swarm as the most likely scenario.
Abstract of the WTF paper:
From "Comets or Aliens?", on the Planet Hunters blog: " However, so far over 100 professional scientists have had a look at the lightcurves and not managed to come up with a working solution."
In a another recent paper Jason Wright et al discusses the WTF star in more detail and critiques the comet theory.
The Search for Extraterrestial Civilizations with Large Energy Supplies. IV: the Signatures and Information Content of Transiting Megastructures:
Jason Wright discusses WTF here on his blog.
Big reddit discussion on r/askscience here.