The headlines that greeted the discovery of an oddly behaving light pattern being emitted from a star around 1,500 light years away were somewhat predictable given the findings didn't quite rule out the possibility that this could be the work of intelligent life. 

A piece in The Atlantic kicked off much of the social-media response, as it profiled the research by Tabetha Boyajian and Jason Wright, which was examining the star KIC 8462852. 

The Kepler telescope's mission is to survey a portion of our Milky Way galaxy to find other planets within the habitable zones of their nearest stars that may have liquid water and therefore support the possibility of life existing on them. The task, it should be clear, is not alien hunting, rather the identification of terrestrial planets that are up to twice the size of Earth and could, theoretically at least, be hospitable to life. 

A little over a year ago, Boyakian approached Wright with light-emission patterns that Kepler had captured from a star that it had been observing since 2009, which showed some unusual patterns.

Newstalk's Futureproof covered the topic on their newsround earlier this month when the news first broke, outlining a little bit of the detail behind it and what the next step is in the search for more information about this star. 

Kepler noticed dips in the light from KIC 8462852 that were unpredictable (meaning that it was not the orbit of a planet causing the light to dim) but also far too big to be ignored: something was blocking up to 22% of the star's light.

To put that in context, Jupiter (our solar system's largest planet) would block about 1% of the light of a star like this, so whatever is passing in front of the star was big, unpredictable and leaving the scientists well and truly in the dark.

What are the prevailing theories?

The possibility of another star passing in front of KIC 8462852 (something big enough to cause dips like this) was ruled out as a result of the fact that there would be another light pattern for Kepler to pick up. Similarly, the seemingly random nature of the dips in light (as profiled by Dr. Phil Plait on Slate) shows that it is unlikely to be a planet, given that the patterns are dipping and rising at different paces and different intervals; some are much faster than others, and they are of differing strengths. 

The possibility of a collision between two celestial bodies, which would produce debris that could block the star's light, was also somewhat discounted (not entirely, however), given that there doesn't seem to be any corresponding infrared pattern from the dust that would have resulted from such a collision.

Image: Wikipedia

The likelihood of it being a string of comets was also explored, and not yet ruled out. But if this is the explanation, the infrared levels should be higher than what is being observed from the star and the comets would need to be pretty huge.

Another possibility is the star rotating at a higher than usual speed or is not a uniform shape, causing it to appear oblate, meaning that the radius at the equator is larger than at the poles. This one seems to be gaining more credence as the process goes on, but has yet to be confirmed by further investigations. 

Finally, and right down at the bottom of the list, the very remote possibility that this could be some form of superstructure created by intelligent lifeforms in an attempt to harvest energy from the star has been touted, with the important caveat that it should be approached with a large degree of skepticism. As Plait notes, "aliens are a last resort, and even the people advocating this idea of going and looking for maybe signals from aliens, their first choice is something natural [...] that we just don't understand just yet".

What's a Dyson Sphere?

A sci-fi, dystopian nightmare of sorts, the Dyson Sphere was first a theory first postulated by physicist Freeman Dyson after it had been described in the 1937 science fiction novel Star Marker by Olaf Stapledon.

The basic premise is that as a society becomes more advanced and gets more machines and improves its technology, it requires more and more energy; more than its planet can actually provide through solar, renewable or nuclear means. As a result, they look to build solar panels closer to the star to harness its energy and send it back to the planet.

The end of the process is the eventual covering of the entire star in these panels or satellites, as explained by this particular episode of Star Trek.

Response

As one might expect, this was met with a fair degree of skepticism, with calls for further investigation before we start readying ourselves for an alien invasion on a massive scale.

@shelly2161 @andersen It's fine to postulate. Appropriate response: look closer, remain interested, skeptical. (Obviously not Dyson sphere)

— David Grinspoon (@DrFunkySpoon) October 13, 2015

The next step in that process involves searching for radio signals, which may be emitted from the hypothetical structure or crafts around it, and which travel the necessary 1,500 light years, be they intentional or unintentional transmissions.  

This isn't the first time that people have thought that something strange in the astronomical world might be the result of aliens, however. In the 1960s, radio telescopes discovered regular signals pulsing on a periodic basis, and the signals were of such a uniform, predictable nature that the assumption was that they were from other intelligent life somewhere out there in the universe.

Further research for Irish scientist Jocelyn Bell and Anthony Hewish discovered that these pulsing radio waves were in fact stars which we now know as pulsars, which lead to Hewish (and sadly not Bell) winning the Nobel Prize in 1974.

If history is anything to go by then, the eventual report back will more than likely show that this is some form of confluence of unlikely factors or a natural occurrence that has not been encountered before, rather than an alien civilisation harnessing all their star's energy.

If, as some people have asked, it does turn out to be aliens and they're so technologically advanced that they've built a giant structure like this, why haven't they contacted us? Well, there are two things to consider.

Firstly, that's quite a self-important view to take of humanity on the whole given our cosmic insignificance, really. Secondly, whatever view they have of Earth is 1,500 years behind what our planet looks like now, given that the light would take that long to reach them. If they do see us, they're seeing us from the year 515 AD, when we looked somewhat different to how we do now and rather primitive in comparison, relative to a species that were building a Dyson Sphere.

That's all rather fantastical, but no matter what is discovered, it's uncharted territory and will result in a lot of excitement amongst astronomers and space enthusiasts...especially if it's aliens.