It’s easy to look up at a starry night sky and ponder existential thoughts because it is such a natural human emotion to want to know if there’s anything, anyone else out there besides ourselves.  Some other sentient, intelligent being that has evolved to the same extent as ourselves; capable of complex thought, emotion, and communication.  

If you believe in what mankind has to say about our universe, which is essentially that there might be an infinite amount of galaxies, planets, and celestial bodies surrounding us, then the chance of alien life existing is almost all but certain.

Now, after studying data from the Kepler Space Telescope for years and years, there is one point in our sky that poses a great mystery to researchers and scientists.  Between the constellations Cygnus, the Swan, and Lyra, the harp, rests an invisible star.  And although it cannot be seen by the naked eye, the Kepler Space Telescope picks up its data fine, and thus far, no one has ever “seen anything like this star.”

The light patterns that Kepler measures and uses to interpret significant findings suggest that there is a huge mess of matter that circles this invisible star in a tight formation.  Which would be expected if it were a young star, but it’s not.  It doesn’t have the typical surroundings of dust that give off intense infrared light, instead, it appears to be mature.

The mess of things surrounding this planet are big enough to block a significant amount of light that would have otherwise been received by the Kepler Space Telescope.  And since it’s not a young star, any sort of mess that was orbiting this star would have disappeared by now, meaning that this mess of stuff that is blocking light arrived only recently.

Across 150,000 stars, there is no similar light pattern to the one found around this planet, telling us that we at least know there is something strange going on out there.  And while aliens are always said to be the last answer to any problem, this strange data has researchers curious to say the least.  Jason Wright, astronomer from Penn State University, along with his co-authors, say that the unusual pattern of light is consistent with a “swarm of megastructures,” perhaps even being stellar-light collectors, or technology designed to harness energy from a star.

While it might sound outrageous, the data is strange enough to warrant such ideas.  And they plan to point a massive radio dish at the unusual star to see if it might emit radio waves at frequencies associated with technological activity.  Should they see sizable waves, they’ll follow up with the VLA, or Very Large Array, in New Mexico.

So, if you ever find yourself looking up at the swan and the lyre, there just might be someone looking back at you.

(h/t Atlantic)

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This blog post has been reproduced with the permission of Expanded Consciousness. The original blog post can be found here. The views expressed by the author are not necessarily endorsed by this organization and are simply provided as food for thought from Intellectual Takeout.

[Image Credit: CCO Public Domain]