One weird star...

[jimmy olsen]

They have in fact looked around and found a star that might have done the deed.

And I don't really much care to meet your lefty standards for thread creation on Languish. Like...ever.

Yes, I saw that at Slate.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2015/10/14/weird_star_strange_dips_in_brightness_are_a_bit_baffling.html

The last idea the astronomers looked at was a series of comets orbiting the star. These could be surrounded by clouds of gas and other material that could produce the dips seen. The lack of IR is puzzling in that case, but not too damning. If another star happened to pass nearby, then its gravity could disturb the first star's Oort cloud, the region billions of kilometers out where we think most (if not all) stars have billions of icy objects. This disturbance could send these ice chunks flying down toward the star, where they could break up, creating all those weird dips—ices in them would heat up, blow off as a gas, and could explain the odd shapes of the dips detected, too.

And, as it happens, there is another star pretty close to KIC 8462852; a small red dwarf about 130 billion kilometers out. That's close enough to affect the Oort cloud.

This doesn't close the case, though. Comets are a good guess, but it's hard to imagine a scenario where they could completely block 22 percent of the light from a star; that's a huge amount. Really huge.

Are my thread creation standards leftist?

What makes a thread creation standards leftist, or centrist or rightist for that matter? 

[Martinus]

It seems to me that Berkut has recently been more nasty.

[Josquius]

They have in fact looked around and found a star that might have done the deed.

And I don't really much care to meet your lefty standards for thread creation on Languish. Like...ever.

Yes, I saw that at Slate.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2015/10/14/weird_star_strange_dips_in_brightness_are_a_bit_baffling.html

The last idea the astronomers looked at was a series of comets orbiting the star. These could be surrounded by clouds of gas and other material that could produce the dips seen. The lack of IR is puzzling in that case, but not too damning. If another star happened to pass nearby, then its gravity could disturb the first star's Oort cloud, the region billions of kilometers out where we think most (if not all) stars have billions of icy objects. This disturbance could send these ice chunks flying down toward the star, where they could break up, creating all those weird dips—ices in them would heat up, blow off as a gas, and could explain the odd shapes of the dips detected, too.

And, as it happens, there is another star pretty close to KIC 8462852; a small red dwarf about 130 billion kilometers out. That's close enough to affect the Oort cloud.

This doesn't close the case, though. Comets are a good guess, but it's hard to imagine a scenario where they could completely block 22 percent of the light from a star; that's a huge amount. Really huge.

Are my thread creation standards leftist?

What makes a thread creation standards leftist, or centrist or rightist for that matter? 

How would they go about trying to calculate the direction of this star's movement? (is it possible?)
Considering the distances involved I doubt they can just sit and watch....

[Jacob]

And I don't really much care to meet your lefty standards for thread creation on Languish. Like...ever.

[crazy canuck]

It seems to me that Berkut has recently been more nasty.

Marti.  It was a joke. 

[Tonitrus]

More of a Dyson Swarm.

Maybe it's still under construction.   

[Razgovory]

How would they go about trying to calculate the direction of this star's movement? (is it possible?)
Considering the distances involved I doubt they can just sit and watch....

Sitting and watching is pretty much all they can do.  Whatever events are happening near this star they happened quite a while ago.  Belasarius was still working for Justinian when whatever we are looking at occurred.

[Warspite]

I wonder if there was some sort of conversation along these lines:

"Hi, this is Andy from the press office. Really excited about this paper. We can do something big with this. It will make a splash."
"That's great! When can we see the press release?"
"Yeah so about that. Like I said, I think we can do something with the research paper, but it just needs one little ingredient...
"Go on."
"How comfortable are you with mentioning aliens?"

[Monoriu]

Are they seriously suggesting that something like this is going on? 

[Syt]

So is this the modern equivalent of the Mars Canals?

[Darth Wagtaros]

The other possibility, which isn't really discussed in the article, is new physics.  It could be our understanding of the evolution of that particular star system is incomplete and there's something different going on.

Possible, but it seems rather unlikely in that if that is the case, why is this the only star where we see this behavior?

Your scientists have yet to discover how neural networks create self-consciousness, let alone how the human brain processes two-dimensional retinal images into the three-dimensional phenomenon known as perception. Yet you somehow brazenly declare that seeing is believing!

[Brazen]

?

[Berkut]

Are my thread creation standards leftist?

What makes a thread creation standards leftist, or centrist or rightist for that matter? 

That was meant to say "hefty" standards.

[mongers]

Are my thread creation standards leftist?

What makes a thread creation standards leftist, or centrist or rightist for that matter? 

That was meant to say "hefty" standards.

I was wondering about that, so the typo was part of the joke?

[Eddie Teach]

This explanation deserves its own thread.