{"id":7453,"date":"2016-04-25T09:58:30","date_gmt":"2016-04-25T16:58:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/BigJimIndustries.com\/wordpress\/?p=7453"},"modified":"2016-05-20T10:01:23","modified_gmt":"2016-05-20T17:01:23","slug":"kic-8462852","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2016\/04\/25\/kic-8462852\/","title":{"rendered":"KIC 8462852"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><a href=\"http:\/\/ideas.ted.com\/did-we-just-discover-aliens\/\" target=\"_blank\">from TED.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<h1>Did we just discover aliens? Scientists aren\u2019t ruling it out<\/h1>\n<p>by <a class=\"author url fn\" title=\"Posts by Brian Greene\" href=\"http:\/\/ideas.ted.com\/author\/brianwgreene89\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"author\">Brian Greene<\/a><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/tedideas.files.wordpress.com\/2016\/04\/featured_tabetha-boyajian-art.jpg?w=750\" alt=\"FEATURED_Tabetha-Boyajian-art\" width=\"480\" \/><em class=\"photo-credit\">Stocksy<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Aliens are not a thing. We know this, right? Well, maybe. Turns out that, almost despite themselves, some of the world\u2019s leading astronomers are taking seriously the question of whether or not we are alone on Earth. Among them, Yale\u2019s Tabetha Boyajian, who has stumbled into what might be one of the biggest mysteries in the galaxy.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It centers on a star known as KIC 8462852, tucked in the constellation Cygnus, more than 1,500 light years away from Earth. In 2015, using data from NASA\u2019s\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/kepler.nasa.gov\/\" target=\"_blank\">Kepler<\/a>\u00a0space observatory, citizen scientists from\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.planethunters.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">Planet Hunters<\/a>\u00a0noticed something weird: something roughly 1,000 times the area of Earth was blocking the light from the star. This transit, as such\u00a0dimming is known, was also happening in an unusual, unpredictable pattern. Some say massive clouds of star-making material might be blocking the light, while others think swarms of giant comets are getting in the way. But there\u2019s another possible explanation that has yet to be ruled out: giant, alien-built megastructures. In this Q&amp;A, Boyajian shares more details on KIC 8462852, now affectionately known as Tabby\u2019s Star (a name she claims no responsibility for coining), and herein shortened to KIC 846 (a name she\u2019s cool with).<\/p>\n<p>[ <a href=\"http:\/\/ideas.ted.com\/did-we-just-discover-aliens\/\" target=\"_blank\">click to continue reading at TED<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>from TED.com Did we just discover aliens? Scientists aren\u2019t ruling it out by Brian Greene Stocksy Aliens are not a thing. We know this, right? Well, maybe. Turns out that, almost despite themselves, some of the world\u2019s leading astronomers are taking seriously the question of whether or not we are alone on Earth. Among them, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weirdness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7453"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7453\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}