Scientists search unusual star for signs of extraterrestrial life

Scientists have pointed one of the world's largest telescopes at a star located nearly 1,500 light-years from Earth in an investigation into purported signs of an advanced civilization in the area.

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The search is part of the Breakthrough Listen Project, a program created in 2015 with $100 million in funding and an aim to search the solar system for evidence of intelligent life.

Scientists at UC Berkeley in California are turning the Green Bank radio telescope toward KIC 8462852 – more commonly known as Tabby's Star – to investigate an unusual dimming pattern visible from Earth. Scientists have speculated that the strange pattern could be evidence of a highly advanced civilization living in the area that is capable of building "orbiting megastructures" to capture the star's energy, researchers said.

"Everyone, every SETI program telescope, I mean every astronomer that has any kind of telescope in any wavelength that can see Tabby's Star has looked at it," said Andrew Siemion, director of the Berkeley SETI Research Center and co-director of Breakthrough Listen. "It's been looked at with Hubble, it's been looked at with Keck, it's been looked at in the infrared and radio and high energy and every possible thing you can imagine, including a whole range of SETI experiments. Nothing has been found."

The telescope will watch the star, located in the Cygnus constellation, for eight hours three separate times over the next two months, according to Berkeley researchers.

Tabby's Star has generated much speculation since citizen scientists flagged it for its strange dimming pattern. Unlike other stars, which briefly dim one or two percent, Tabby's Star dims by as much as 22 percent for days at a time and at irregular times, according to researchers.

The star is named for Tabetha Boyajian, an assistant professor of physics and astronomy at Louisiana State University who studied the star's dimming patter last year during her postdoctoral training at Yale University.

Researchers don't, however, expect to find inarguable proof of extraterrestrial life while viewing Tabby's Star.

"I think that ET, if it's ever discovered ... It'll be some bizarre thing that somebody finds by accident," said Dan Wethimer, chief scientist at Berkeley SETI. "And then we look more carefully and we say, 'Hey, that's a civilization.'"

The results of the observations won't be known for more than a month after the experiment concludes because of the data analysis needed to pick out patterns in the radio emissions and finish the investigation.

Cox Media Group