As a writer who delves in the fantastic, articles like these get my blood pumping.  Written by Ross Anderson for theAtlantic.com, the article explores…

The Most Mysterious Star in Our Galaxy

In a nutshell, there’s a star, KIC 8462852, which displays some strange -mysterious even- fluctuations in the amount of light emitted by it.

It would appear something quite massive -more massive than a planet the size of Jupiter- is blocking the star’s light and scientists are at the moment at somewhat of a loss to explain what exactly is doing this.  It could be some kind of massive asteroid belt, but that appears unlikely given the star’s age.  It could also be some recent “event”, perhaps involving comets or planets crashing into each other, that caused a vast field of rocks to orbit the star and block her light.

Or…

(Forgive me, I’ve always wanted to use that image!)

Seriously, though, the fact of the matter is that the dips in starlight emerging from KIC 8462852 might (and I can’t help but stress the word might) be evidence of an alien culture.

How?  It is possible that what blocks the star’s light is some kind of massive solar array designed to capture the star’s light and convert it to energy.

Again, this is nothing more than a highly speculative theory and one that could quite likely be proven wrong.  But I have only scratched the surface as to why this theory is even in consideration versus other more natural explanations.  I highly recommend reading the above article as well as this one, by Phil Plait for Slate.com, which also examines this star’s mysterious light emissions:

Did Astronomers Find Evidence of An Alien Civilization?  (Probably Not.  But Still Cool.)