NASA Concludes That Comets, Not Alien Megastructures Orbit KIC 8462852 (examiner.com)

MarkWhittington writes: Back in October, findings from the Kepler Space Telescope suggested that something strange was going on around a star called KIC 8462852. Kepler was built to detect exoplanets by measuring the cycles of dimming light from other stars, indicating that a large object was passing between them and Earth. But the dimming light cycle from KIC 8462852 seemed to suggest a lot of smaller objects swarming around it. Scientists narrowed down the explanations to either a swarm of comets or alien megastructures. NASA announced evidence garnered by two other telescopes that pointed to the comet explanation.

Comments

Hey Slashdot: you're not helping

[Anonymous Coward]

I am a registered Planethunter - have been for three years. You just skimmed a recycled story from a couple days ago with the only "new" information is that no infrared increase had been detected - which is no news - zero. We have known this since Tabitha Boyjian's paper which suggested the comet swarm theory to begin with and predicted that IF it was cometary debris from a (unprecedented and never before observed or proven phenomenon) then it would show an increase in IR - it does not - so far. We will not know that until most likely February of 2017 which is the most likely estimated recurrence of the next transition.
If there are no further transitions then that in itself would be bizarre since the likelihood of catching such a brief phenomenon at exactly the right moment at that exact point in the sky would be literally astronomically small.
Which, by the way, Boyjian's paper points to as one of the weakest arguments for the comet swarm hypothesis.
So - once again - there is nothing we know now that we did not know two months ago other than a *second* confirmation that there has been no increase in the infrared. All we have is a tweak to the cometary swarm theory that could, possibly explain (by adding an even less likely scenario) how there could be no IR increase now but "may" show an increase during the next transition. Which will most likely be 2017, at which point if there's still no IR increase we'll be exactly where we we're two months ago and likely still are.
Next time take some time to check the story instead of just regurgitating 2-day old feeds.

Re:Hey Slashdot: you're not helping

[jvrichie]

I wished I had been a little more calm when I wrote it. I concentrated too much on the lack of IR "glowing" observed and while its still not entirely accurate to say cometary dust doesn't put off infrared the main reason to be skeptical of the comet swarm hypothesis is that we just have no other examples of either such a large "swarm" of comets OR of any naturally occurring celectial body that blocks 22% of starlight. The largest gas giant planet would maybe obscure 2%. What really got me was the claim that NASA "concluded" the comet hypothesis as correct. They did no such thing.