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Civilian astronomers participating in the Kepler Planet Hunters program have identified unusual patterns in the light output of a star that is otherwise invisible to the naked eye — patterns that are being caused by an as yet unknown process. This appears to be some sort of huge debris field–or is it a field of artifacts created by an advanced alien civilization?

The star in question, KIC 8462852, is 1,500 light-years away, lies between the constellations Cygnus and Lyra. It was included as part of observations being made by the Kepler Space Telescope, which seeks signs of exoplanets around stars, by watching for dips in the stars’ light output.
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For the first time, astronomers have detected the presence of complex organic molecules, the building blocks of life, in a protoplanetary disk surrounding a young star, suggesting that the conditions that spawned our Earth and Sun are not unique in the universe. In fact, it probably means that the building blocks of life are very widely spread. This, combined with the recent discovery that planets are commonplace, raises the likelihood that life may be abundant. Just how abundant cannot be known, but it is now all but certain that there is life out there. But is it intelligent? If intelligent life was commonplace, then we would have seen more obvious signs, probably in the radio background noise. However, given the sheer size of the cosmos, it is all but inevitable that ET exists.read more