 The Kepler Space Telescope lost its functionality in 2013, although the mass of data that it returned is still being sifted through, and the crowdsource group that is looking through that data has found something absolutely bizarre. And this is your space pod for October 23, 2015. What in the wide, wide world of sports is going on here? First, Kepler finds something really interesting, and then all of a sudden somebody makes a comment on it, and it's aliens all of a sudden. What's going on here? Well, in order to figure out this mass of what Kepler has discovered, let's go ahead and take a look at all of the data that we know so far. The Kepler Space Telescope has an awe-inspiring mission, find planets around other stars. And it has, with the current confirmed number being somewhere over 1100 found just by it at the making of the space pod. It does so through a technique called the Planet Star Transit Method, literally a search for shadows. In order to better explain the Planet Transit Method, I've invited one of my friends here to help me out, Blake Calvert. Say hi to the internet, Blake. I'm a prop. That's right. Now, Blake has a magnificent afro, and we're actually going to use this afro to help demonstrate just exactly what this method means. We'll turn a studio light on so that this represents the light from a star, and Blake will represent a planet. As a planet orbits its star, it will move in front of the light and block the light from the star. But not entirely like Blake here, but we can measure a fraction of a percent of that light being reduced. Obviously, this means that with Kepler, we can only see planets that are in an orbit at an angle that allows them to transit their star from our perspective. But this powerful tool has all but confirmed that every single star in our galaxy likely has at least one planet at some point in the star's life. Now on to our weird Kepler data, from a star called KIC 8462852. Sounds like a nice place to visit if you ask me. It's a mere 1,480 light-years away and about one and a half times more massive than our own sun, and it hangs out at around magnitude 12. It's too dim for you to see with the naked eye. A crowdsourcing project of citizen scientists called Planet Hunters took a look at the light curve from pre-2013 Kepler data and found something startling. A typical light curve tends to look like a nice straight line that just so happens to have a U-shape in the middle of it. This is where we see the light being blocked by a transiting planet. But in the case of KIC, something really, really weird is going on. I mean, just look at it! The light curve isn't really a curve. It's a mess! And why is it such a mess? And why at one point is 22% of the light from the star blocked? Exoplanets only block a fraction of a percent. Well, someone in the media got the idea that it could be an alien megastructure, like a bunch of solar panels orbiting a star to power a supercharged alien civilization, which we call a Dyson Sphere. And oh boy, did they run with it. But isn't an alien megastructure? Uh, no, not likely. No, no, no, no. No! Stop that! Oh gosh, this is just so silly. So if it isn't aliens, then what is it? Well, there's actually a lot of things that it could be. Could the star be what we call a variable star, where its brightness varies over time? Nope. Ground observations found the brightness from KIC to be solid and consistent. It could be a massive star spot, a sun spot, but on another star. Although that star spot would have to be much bigger than any we've ever seen before, and it can't be from another star orbiting this one, we'd be able to see that other star pretty obviously. Could it be debris of leftover planets, or an asteroid belt from smashing into each other? That would generate a lot of dust and could potentially work. But that dust should soak up infrared light from the star and glow very brightly in the infrared spectrum. And guess what? There's no evidence of that around this star. It also doesn't exactly explain the sawtooth pattern or the large number of dips in the light curve very well. Nor does it explain that sudden dip where the star loses just shy of a quarter of its light output. The best idea scientists currently have is that we're seeing a cascade of comets around the star. It could be leftovers from a massive collision of comets, which by the very nature of a comet's composition would lower the amount of dust needed to block the light. There's also another star, a small red dwarf, only about 95 billion miles away. Now this may seem like quite a long distance, but it's enough for gravitational interaction to occur. And this star and its gravity may actually be sending that cascade of comets around KIC. This is why the comet hypothesis fits our best guess. Luckily, several groups like SETI and other observatories around the world are all aiming their instruments at KIC 8462852. This way we can take in good scientific data. So although we have no concrete ideas to what's causing this around that star, we're throwing everything we can at it to figure it out. Thanks for watching this Spacepod. I'm Jared Head. What do you think is going around that star? Do you think it's a bunch of comets that are going around it? Well, leave your answer as to what you think it is in the comments down below. And of course, don't forget to like and subscribe to us on social media. And if you've got a little bit of change on the side, we do have a Patreon campaign. That's how we're able to do these awesome Spacepods for everyone who would like to watch them. So if you contribute a little bit, you can help spread some of the knowledge of our universe to anyone and everyone who wants to watch. So until next week, keep exploring.