In 2016, word came out about the discovery of a downright strange astrophysical object, somewhere in the constellation Cygnus. It wasn’t another Earth, but rather, a star.
Citizen scientists had been combing through the data from four years of NASA’s Kepler mission when they encountered the star, officially named KIC 8462852. And it was an oddball. It randomly dimmed, like a flickering lightbulb, and could stay that way for several days. It fluctuated intensely and erratically, sometimes dropping up to 22 percent in brightness.
“Stars just don’t do that,” says Tabetha Boyajian, the astronomer who led the ensuing scientific investigation into the findings.
KIC 8462852 – better known as Tabby’s Star, after Boyajian – continues to befuddle citizen scientists and astronomers alike. While researchers have thrown numerous theories at the wall, some of which have partially stuck, they’re still searching for one hypothesis that explains everything.
