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Sunday, May 22, 2016

ALIENS - Alien Megastructure? Kickstarter Campaign Launched to Study 'Tabby's Star'

Alien Megastructure? Kickstarter Campaign Launched to Study 'Tabby's Star':

Artist's illustration showing fragments of a shattered comet passing in front of a star, perhaps the best explanation for the mysterious dimming of "Tabby's Star."

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The mystery of whether a darkening star is home to an alien megastructure might be solved with the aid of crowdfunding, researchers said.

Last fall, a star named KIC 8462852 made news when volunteers from the Planet Hunters citizen-science program uncovered something odd about the object's light. This discovery was made using data from NASA's Kepler space telescope (so far, Kepler has helped scientists find more than 2,200 alien planets.)

KIC 8462852 is an otherwise-ordinary F-type star, slightly larger and hotter than Earth's sun. It sits about 1,480 light-years away from Earth, in the constellation Cygnus. However, astronomer Tabetha "Tabby" Boyajian of Yale University in Connecticut and her colleagues found dozens of strange instances of the star dimming by up to 22 percent. [13 Ways to Hunt Intelligent Alien Life]

Since these events are far too substantial to be caused by planets crossing the star's face, researchers dubbed KIC 8462852 "the most mysterious star in our galaxy."

These analyses of the star — now nicknamed "Tabby's Star," or the WTF star for "Where's the Flux?" — raised the possibility that scientists had detected signs of intelligent alien life. Specifically, researchers have suggested that KIC 8462852 is home to a Dyson sphere, a hypothetical megastructure built around a star to capture as much of the sun's energy as possible. This energy would then be used to power an advanced civilization, it is proposed. (Science fiction often depicts Dyson spheres — which are named after mathematician and physicist Freeman Dyson — as solid shells around stars, but the structures could also be globular swarms of giant solar panels.)

There is still no widely accepted answer as to why Tabby's Star behaves so strangely. "Comets are currently the best natural explanation," Boyajian told Space.com. "That said, 'best' does not necessarily mean 'good.'"

Unfortunately, Kepler has moved on to a different mission and can no longer observe KIC 8462852 in an attempt to unlock the star's confounding secrets.

"It's exciting when you realize that you are working on something new and unusual, but also, at the same time, extremely frustrating," Boyajian said.

To keep working on the mystery of Tabby's Star, and hopefully ease some of that frustration, Boyajian and her colleagues are now turning to crowdfunding. They said they hope a Kickstarter campaign will help raise at least $100,000 by June 17 to secure observing time on a global network of ground-based telescopes. That way, researchers can see when the star's brightness dips again, the investigators said.

The scientists are currently observing Tabby's Star using the Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network (LCOGT), a privately run network specifically designed to continuously monitor objects in space. Although this network does not have Kepler's precision, it will be sensitive enough to detect fluctuations in the star's brightness, researchers said.

So far, the network has gifted the researchers with 200 hours to begin the project, which will take them to the end of the summer. The new Kickstarter campaign may help cover the expenses of monitoring this star for a year, including a total of 2 hours per night dedicated to observing the star.

The scientists said they are turning to private observatories because government-run sites do not have the capabilities for the long-term, continuous monitoring this project needs. The traditional way to pay for private observatories is through a government grant, but the researchers said that more than five-sixths of grant applications for time on such facilities are turned down. And the proposals that do get accepted are usually relatively "safe" ones that promise certain and immediate returns, the researchers said; that's why the team is now turning to crowdfunding.

The researchers warned that patience will likely be needed, even if this project gets funded. When Kepler was observing KIC 8462852, after all, the star fluctuated in brightness only 5 percent of the time, and at unpredictable times.

Still, "this project is the ultimate opportunity to help discover something new," Boyajian said.

You can learn more about the Kickstarter campaign here:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/608159144/the-most-mysterious-star-in-the-galaxy

Follow Charles Q. Choi on Twitter @cqchoi. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

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The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is the United States government agency responsible for the civilian space program as well as aeronautics and aerospace research. President Dwight D. Eisenhower established the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 1958 with a distinctly civilian (rather than military) orientation encouraging peaceful applications in space science. The National Aeronautics and Space Act was passed on July 29, 1958, disestablishing NASA's predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). The new agency became operational on October 1, 1958.

UFO SIGHTINGS PHOTO PHOTOGRAPHY

The Oxford English Dictionary defines a UFO as "An unidentified flying object; a 'flying saucer'." The first published book to use the word was authored by Donald E. Keyhoe. The acronym "UFO" was coined by Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, who headed Project Blue Book, then the USAF's official investigation of UFOs. He wrote, "Obviously the term 'flying saucer' is misleading when applied to objects of every conceivable shape and performance. For this reason the military prefers the more general, if less colorful, name: unidentified flying objects. UFO (pronounced Yoo-foe) for short." Other phrases that were used officially and that predate the UFO acronym include "flying flapjack", "flying disc", "unexplained flying discs", "unidentifiable object", and "flying saucer". The phrase "flying saucer" had gained widespread attention after the summer of 1947. On June 24, a civilian pilot named Kenneth Arnold reported seeing nine objects flying in formation near Mount Rainier. Arnold timed the sighting and estimated the speed of discs to be over 1,200 mph (1,931 km/h). At the time, he described the objects' shape as being somewhat disc-like or saucer-like, leading to newspaper accounts of "flying saucers" and "flying discs". In popular usage the term UFO came to be used to refer to claims of alien spacecraft. and because of the public and media ridicule associated with the topic, some investigators prefer to use such terms as unidentified aerial phenomenon (or UAP) or anomalous phenomena, as in the title of the National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena (NARCAP).

UFO PHOTO PHOTOGRAPHY

UFO - Unidentified Flying Object An unidentified flying object, or UFO, in its most general definition, is any apparent anomaly in the sky that is not identifiable as a known object or phenomenon. Culturally, UFOs are associated with claims of visitation by extraterrestrial life or government-related conspiracy theories, and have become popular subjects in fiction. While UFOs are often later identified, sometimes identification may not be possible owing to the usually low quality of evidence related to UFO sightings (generally anecdotal evidence and eyewitness accounts). Stories of fantastical celestial apparitions have been told since antiquity, but the term "UFO" (or "UFOB") was officially created in 1953 by the United States Air Force (USAF) to serve as a catch-all for all such reports. In its initial definition, the USAF stated that a "UFOB" was "any airborne object which by performance, aerodynamic characteristics, or unusual features, does not conform to any presently known aircraft or missile type, or which cannot be positively identified as a familiar object." Accordingly, the term was initially restricted to that fraction of cases which remained unidentified after investigation, as the USAF was interested in potential national security reasons and/or "technical aspects" (see Air Force Regulation 200-2). During the late 1940s and through the 1950s, UFOs were often referred to popularly as "flying saucers" or "flying discs". The term UFO became more widespread during the 1950s, at first in technical literature, but later in popular use. UFOs garnered considerable interest during the Cold War, an era associated with a heightened concern for national security. Various studies have concluded that the phenomenon does not represent a threat to national security nor does it contain anything worthy of scientific pursuit (e.g., 1951 Flying Saucer Working Party, 1953 CIA Robertson Panel, USAF Project Blue Book, Condon Committee).