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Sep 20, 2020

Astronomers Discovered A Second ‘Alien Megastructure’ Star That’s Even Stranger Than Kic 8462852

EPIC 204278916 is a pre-main-sequence star, about five million years old with a spectral type of M1, implying a red dwarf. It is part of the Upper Scorpius sub-group of the Scorpius–Centaurus Association, and is in the constellation Scorpius. When you observe a distant star, you expect its brightness to be something that's fairly uniform.

Sure, some stars vary in brightness periodically -- even our Sun does -- but those intrinsic variations occur with predictable regularity and at well-understood magnitudes. Some stars vary because of extrinsic factors, such as being eclipsed by another star or being transited by an extra-solar planet. But every once in a while, we run across a strange star: one that has its brightness change in a way that isn't periodic or explicable by current models. The strangest star in the universe is not alone. In 2015, astronomers reported unusual behavior in the star "KIC 8462852" that they could not explain. Now, another team has discovered a second star that behaves similarly to KIC 8462852. It's called "EPIC 204278916" and it's even stranger than the first one. 

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