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12-21-2016, 03:59 PM
Avalanche statistics suggest Tabby's star is near a continuous phase transition
In its search for extrasolar planets, the Kepler space telescope looks for stars whose light flux periodically dims, signaling the passing of an orbiting planet in front of the star. But the timing and duration of diminished light flux episodes Kepler detected coming from KIC 846852, known as Tabby's star, are a mystery. These dimming events vary in magnitude and don't occur at regular intervals, making an orbiting planet an unlikely explanation. The source of these unusual dimming events is the subject of intense speculation.
Suggestions from astronomers, astrophysicists, and amateur stargazers have ranged from asteroid belts to alien activity.
Now a team of scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign—physics graduate student Mohammed Sheikh, working with Professors Karin Dahmen and Richard Weaver—proffer an entirely novel solution to the Tabby's star puzzle. They suggest the luminosity variations may be intrinsic to the star itself. Tabby's star is in most regards a standard F-class star, located in the constellation Cygnus, approximately 1,276 light years from Earth. Its unusual light curve—the graph of its light intensity as a function of time—shows intense dimming events of up to 20 percent, punctuated with smaller irregular dimming events.
( Article Link )
In its search for extrasolar planets, the Kepler space telescope looks for stars whose light flux periodically dims, signaling the passing of an orbiting planet in front of the star. But the timing and duration of diminished light flux episodes Kepler detected coming from KIC 846852, known as Tabby's star, are a mystery. These dimming events vary in magnitude and don't occur at regular intervals, making an orbiting planet an unlikely explanation. The source of these unusual dimming events is the subject of intense speculation.
Suggestions from astronomers, astrophysicists, and amateur stargazers have ranged from asteroid belts to alien activity.
Now a team of scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign—physics graduate student Mohammed Sheikh, working with Professors Karin Dahmen and Richard Weaver—proffer an entirely novel solution to the Tabby's star puzzle. They suggest the luminosity variations may be intrinsic to the star itself. Tabby's star is in most regards a standard F-class star, located in the constellation Cygnus, approximately 1,276 light years from Earth. Its unusual light curve—the graph of its light intensity as a function of time—shows intense dimming events of up to 20 percent, punctuated with smaller irregular dimming events.
( Article Link )