The star called Tabby’s Star / Boyajian’s Star but has the science name of KIC 8462852 dimmed few days ago, it’s increasing its brightness again as I write down this words. While it is not known what is creating this dimming. It is my view that following ideas are not possible, because they are just in the realm of fiction and are going to stay there.
Impossible
- Dyson sphere is the idea that a space able civilisation is able to build a sphere of some type around its host star to shield it and the planets inside it. This idea has several flaws, one of the biggest is gravity, as such sphere would inflict a gravity equal to its size (squared). Then there is question about planet orbits, some planets have orbit that would cross such sphere path and other things. Then there are things like comets, space weather and wind.
What might be possible
- Some type of alien civilisation has built other types of mega structures around the star. This seems unlikely as such structure would require massive resources. This seems unlikely, as such activity might be detectable by RF signal activity. No RF signal activity has been detected by SETI so far, making this a unlikely option.
- Draining the star of its energy (hydrogen). It might be possible that some alien civilisation is draining the hydrogen from the star for energy use propose. Such activity would not leave a lot or any RF signal activity. But I find it quite difficult to imagine the scale of such activity to drop the star light by 20%.*
* I think this is mostly my idea that I was discussing on Ars Technica forum. It didn’t go well into the people there that didn’t understand the concept of what I was talking about. If this is the case, a helium flare might appear soon as the hydrogen is drained from the star (it might not happen due to this type of star). To my knowledge that has not yet happened. Making this idea improbable, but not impossible at the moment. Time is soon going to tell if this is the case, as older data suggests that current behaviour has been going for at least 100 years, possibly longer.
Like the rest of the science community I don’t have any idea about what is going on at KIC 8462852. Only research and observation is going to make that clear. Based on earlier pattern, a short dip that happened few days ago is soon followed by a longer dip in brightness. I’ll try to monitor the news reports once that happens to see if I can get any new data about what is going on at this star.
The light year distance to KIC 8462852 is around 1300 years, so current sequence of events took place around the year 717 on Earth.