Stargazers have spotted ANOTHER star which looks like an ‘alien megastructure’ is orbiting it
A mysterious flashing star spotted 500 light years away is puzzling scientists with its unusual 'blinking' behaviour
A SPACE mystery which left astrologists scratching their heads has deepened.
Scientists have spotted yet another star behaving as if an "alien megastructure" is harvesting its energy.
The binary star, dubbed FO Aquarii, joins a list of twinklers that have shocked astrologists.
It appears to be losing its brightness at an astonishing rate - just like the remarkable Tabby's star, discovered in 2016.
"Just after the star came around the sun last year, we started looking at it through the Krizmanich Telescope, and we were shocked to see it was seven times fainter than it had ever been before," said astrophysicist Colin Littlefield, who made the discovery along with colleagues at the University of Notre Dame.
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"The dimming is a sign that the donating star stopped sending matter to the compact dwarf, and it's unclear why. Although the star is becoming brighter again, the recovery to normal brightness has been slow, taking over six months to get back to where it was when Kepler [telescope] observed," he added.
In 2016 a distant star called KIC 8462852, or Tabby’s Star, also displayed a bizarre “blinking” behaviour which caused its light to dim periodically.
One researcher suggested that the light was being blocked by a huge object called a Dyson Sphere – a theoretical structure which an intelligent civilisation could build around a star in order to harvest its energy.
Other theories proposed that aliens were using the star to get in contact, like a cosmic version of a smoke signal.
But a team from the University of Illinois recently claimed the strange blinking ruined everyone's fun by debunking the theory.
They claimed it could be explained by "avalanche statistics".
The academics argued that the star was simply undergoing a process which meant it pumped out huge amounts of light at some times and smaller amounts at others as it went through a process called a "phase transition".
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