What are these patterns? Between 1890 and 1989, the mystery star lost about 14% of its brightness. In cosmological terms, that’s far too quick for any known natural dimming. Stranger still, over the few years before 2011, the Kepler space telescope caught the light from the star dipping for periods of just a few days, some times by as much as 22%. [...]
Brian Metzger of Columbia University and his colleagues have instead put up the planet-gobbling theory. Planets don’t usually fall into their stars, but one could if, say, a large body like a comet knocked the planet out of its orbit and sent it to its doom. They reason that when a star swallows something as large as a planet, for a cosmologically short period, between 200 years and 10,000 years, its brightness increases as it burns away the planet’s matter. Then it would decline again. So if we happen to have started watching the star towards the end of such a period, it might explain the 14% fall in brightness over 100 years.
Also, an eaten-up planet could leave behind large debris, such as its moon or large pieces of the planet that for some reason weren’t sucked in. These large bodies could be passing in front of the star in orbit, blocking some of its light and causing the brief dips seen by the Kepler space telescope.
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