Remember KIC 8462852, the star that had such a weird light curve that serious people suggested that, just maybe, it was surrounded by a partial Dyson Sphere? Other serious people attacked the mystery in two ways:
- Examine the system for evidence of radio and other emissions that might indicate intelligence
- examine the data to see the the light curve is being produced by something natural but weird, like a massive cloud of comets
Sadly unsurprisingly, the first group came up negative: no data indicating aliens. But it turns out the second group came up with bupkis. Apparently, what the astronomers have found is an F3 main sequence star that is just… flickering. It has day-long dips in output of up to 20%, and has substantially dimmed over the last century. In order to explain this via comets, 648,000 giant comets (nuclei 200 km in diameter) would be needed. The total mass of this hypothetical cloud of comets would be 40% of the mass of the Earth. This seems highly unlikely, so for the moment is appears that this star is just… acting kinda funny.
KIC 8462852 Faded at an Average Rate of 0.165+-0.013 Magnitudes Per Century From 1890 To 1989
I have my own ideas on what might be messing with the star.