Tabby’s Star made headlines with its mysterious
behaviour,but is it stillthe strangest?
ReportedbyAndrewMayweirdest
in
the
the
universe
s ta r
hereareatleast 100 billionstarsinour
galaxy,andsomeofthemarepretty
weirdinappearanceorbehaviour.
Butonlya limitednumberofnatural
processesareatwork,sonaturehasa wayof
repeatingitself.Fora startobeuniquelyweird,there
wouldhavetobesomethingartificialaboutit– the
product,notofnature,butofanaliencivilisation.
That’snottosaythestaritselfhastobeartificial,
justthatourviewofitissomehowalteredasa
consequenceofalientechnology.Ifwecouldfind
somethinglikethat,itwouldbetheastronomical
discoveryofthemillennium– andtherearea couple
ofgoodcandidatesalready.T
Is it really possible that alien engineers could
build an artificial structure around a star that’s so
enormous it would affect the way the star looks to
us? The first person to give serious consideration
to such an alien megastructure was the British-born
physicist Freeman Dyson, way back in 1960. He
imagined that a super-advanced civilisation, rather
than venturing into the depths of interstellar space,
might choose to stay in its own planetary system
and expand its territory there. It might do this by
redistributing planetary material into a vast spherical
shell around their star – not a solid shell, but a dense
swarm of orbiting bodies. The resulting ‘Dyson
sphere’ would provide living space for an enormouslyThe weirdest star