Has NASA’s Kepler Telescope found a “colossal artificial structure”?

The Internet is abuzz with claims that NASA’s Kepler Telescope has found evidence of an alien civilisation after seeing a “colossal artificial structure” many light years away.

The claim that NASA have discovered a “colossal artificial structure” has been published on a couple of sites – namely UFOholic.com and HowToExitTheMatrix.com – and while it is based on a real event, the story has been somewhat exaggerated by these sites (as well as a handful of other media websites looking to exploit the story.)

It is true that the Kepler Telescope has picked up what is generally being described as unusual readings, though before we begin making our “Welcome to Earth” signs, no one with any authority appears to be really giving the alien theory much credence at this point.

So what is going on?

Basically the Kepler Telescope – which is on the hunt for Earth-sized planets by measuring how much light a planet blocks out when it orbits past its local star (sun) – picked up on some unusual readings recently. To be precise, it measured a 20% drop in light coming from star KIC 8462852 (normally a planet would only cause around a 2% drop in light when it passes in front of a star.) Not only that, but the drops in light are happening at irregular intervals.

The theory put forth by many of these UFO-inclined websites is that the unusually large dip in light is being caused by a very large artificially developed megastructure (like the Death Star, only bigger!) which appears to be acting unnaturally, hence the light dips at irregular intervals. However, despite the assertions put forth by such sites, this isn’t being treated as the most likely explanation.

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Tabetha Boyajian, a researcher at Yale University who analysed the readings from Kepler, has been quoted in many of these UFO blog articles when she described the phenomenon, but the articles seemed to conveniently omit one vital fact that she wrote in her journal paper on the phenomenon – Boyajian actually asserted the most likely explanation for the unusual readings was down to a cluster of comets, and nothing to do with an alien structure…

…we conclude that the scenario most consistent with the data in hand is the passage of a family of exocomet fragments, all of which are associated with a single previous breakup event.

Other natural non-alien explanations are being put forward too, including sunspots and large clouds of dust. Despite claims made on many online articles, like the one published on UFOholic, an alien structure is not being hypothesised as a likely scenario, but of course many have speculated on the possibility of alien-life simply because at this stage it hasn’t been completely ruled out. And it is this speculation that is being reported on by many media outlets too.

As it stands, there has been no official word from NASA themselves on the story.

As much as we despise being the bearer of mundane news, such blog articles asserting the Kepler Telescope has found a colossal artificial structure are simply spinning the news to make it seem much more dramatic than it actually is, whilst media websites seem satisfied with reporting on mere speculation about aliens.

Answers won’t be coming imminently either. It won’t be until next year that we’re likely to have any answer as to what is causing the unusual readings.

With all that said, there is a silver lining for all those science fiction fans out there. Kepler’s findings so far have been very promising overall if you’re hoping we’re not alone out there given that it has found plenty of locations able to potentially support other civilisations.

So here’s hoping.