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

Re:There needs to be a very detail visual 4D sim

[wonkey_monkey]

Huh. Posted my reply as AC for some reason.

To reiterate:

22%. Something obscures 22% of the whole side of a star larger than the sun just in our specific direction.

No. Something blocks 22% of the light emitted in our direction for some amount of time in a regular cycle.

how could a few comets create this sort of thing unless the "clouds" they create are sucked into the star almost immediately?

Why would you expect the clouds to be "sucked in" at all?