TIL: That's No Moon. It's Aliens. (Maybe.) | Today I Learned

Recently, there's been a lot of excitement about this mysterious star and the K2 data from the Kepler space telescope. This star has a bizarre dip in the amount of light that reaches Earth. There is a chance that maybe the dip in the light is caused by an alien mega-structure that's being constructed around this parent star. That structure would then cause the light to dip as it orbits the parent star.

Now, this idea of giant alien mega-structures has been around for a long time. Basically, the idea here is that if you're a growing civilization in a solar system, you want to capture all of the energy from your parent star. You want to put solar panels or whatever in a shell around that star so you can grow and grow, and not be limited by the amount of energy.

There are some out there that are speculating that maybe what we're seeing is one of these advanced civilizations in the process of building up this shell. The dips that we're seeing correspond to that shell rotating in and out of our view. Now, this is a far-out and extraordinary hypothesis, but it's something we can't quite rule out yet.

So, the next step is that the SETI Institute will use some of its radio telescopes to see whether or not there are any radio signals coming with messages for planet Earth. I'm skeptical, and I say probably not, but the little kid in me sure hopes it is what's going on.