A Most Mysterious Star

Guest: Tabetha Boyajian, PhD, Assistant Professor of Astronomy and Physics, Louisiana State University When NASA sent a telescope to space aboard the Kepler spacecraft, the goal was to look for planets orbiting other stars in our galaxy. Other Earths orbiting other suns, if you will. Over four years, Kepler sent back a huge amount of data – so much that NASA decided to call for backup and released the data online for amateur “Planet Hunters” to comb through. Those amateurs managed to find one of the most mysterious stellar objects ever identified. Then things got a little weird. Some of the Planet Hunters became convinced aliens were the likely explanation for the strange stellar object they’d discovered. Louisiana State University astronomer Tabetha Boyajian couldn’t blame them. Discovering aliens would be really cool, she says. But alas, she’s just co-authored a paper identifying a more plausible scientific explanation.