A while back I wrote about the intriguing discovery astronomers made involving star KIC 8462852.

While you can read the entire post here, the essence of the story was this: Something mysterious is blocking the star’s light, something which astronomers at that point could not explain.

One astronomer brought out the stunning idea that perhaps the blocked light could be the result of aliens building a Dyson Sphere.  A Dyson Sphere is a massive artificial structure built around a star and whose purpose it is to collect all energy flowing from said star…

This concept is pure science fiction and, even in the original article, scientists were extremely hesitant to give credence to that idea.

The best natural theory put forth to explain the star’s loss of light became the idea of a passing comet storm.  A large group of comets therefore block the star’s light.

Alas, that theory is now gone as well, as mentioned in this article found on i09, The Case of the So-Called Alien Megastructure just got weirder.  The gist of the article is found in this paragraph:

…astronomer Bradley Schaefer of Louisiana State University decided to look at photographic plates of the sky dating back to the late 19th century. To his amazement, he learned that over the last hundred years, KIC 8462852’s light output has steadily faded by about 19%, something that’s “completely unprecedented for any F-type main sequence star.”

The steady fading through all those years hurts the theory of a comet swarm cause and leaves scientist once again wondering exactly what is causing the strange dimming of that star’s light.

Fascinating, fascinating stuff.