The star KIC 8462852, discovered by the Kepler Space Telescope and marked out as being a system that could be hospitable to life, has had several astronomers scratching their heads recently.

The Kepler Telescope, which analyses light from distant stars, found that this paritcular star, which lies just above the Milky Way, was emitting strange patterns. 

According to The Independent, it was caused by a cluster of objects around the star that astronomers are finding very difficult to explain. Scientists studying it found that the debris was consistent with that which would surround a young star, but the star itself was too far along in its development to be at that stage, so the cluster must have come from elsewhere. 

That left the team at Yale who were looking into the phenomenon with a bit of a riddle to solve, and they put forward several hypotheses as to what could have caused it. While some were possible, there was only one that was realistically probable, in which a different star had pulled a number of comets into the path of this star.

However, even at that, it would have required a rather extraordinary set of circumstances to actually transpire, and so astronomer at Penn State University, Jason Wright, is planning to release a paper shortly on what exactly could be causing the strange patterns.

Speaking to The Atlantic, he said that it's not impossible that we could be looking at something that was built by intelligent life: "aliens should always be the very last hypothesis you consider, but this looked like something you would expect an alien civilisation to build".

It may seem far-fetched, but the proposition that this is a megastructure built by alien lifeforms on another planet is being taken extremely seriously by the team of researchers, who now intend to investigate that possibility further. 

The scientists believe that as civilisations become more advanced they move towards harnessing more energy from their star, which is what the purpose of this structure could be.  

Now the team of astronomers at Yale are planning on pointing a large radio dish at the star to see if they can find any wavelengths associated with technology, and the initial investigations could be starting as soon as January. 

Via The Independent