Star Possibly Housing a 'Dyson Sphere' Discovered by Astronomers

The star, which is designated EPIC 204278916, was first discovered by NASA's Kepler spacecraft in 2014. According to the researchers studying it, the star displayed irregular dimming of up to 65 percent for around 25 consecutive days for every 78.8 days of observations, while normally a star’s brightness only decreases by one percent when a planet passes in front of it.

It should be noted that back in October 2015 the astronomers already discovered a star, called KIC 8462852, that exhibited a similar pattern of light, experiencing dips in brightness of up to 22 percent, which likely signified a presence of a truly massive body in its orbit.

While the possibility of some sort of artificial extraterrestrial 'Dyson sphere' megastructure being responsible for these irregularities does indeed seem thrilling and theoretically possible, scientists point out that this dimming is more likely to be caused by a natural phenomenon like a protoplanetary or circumstellar disc that is oriented edge-on toward the Earth.

Nevertheless, the actual causes behind both EPIC 204278916 and KIC 8462852 behavior still remain to be determined.

A Dyson sphere is a hypothesized sphere which would completely encircle the Sun, allowing for the creation of a human habitat with a diameter equal to twice the distance between Earth and its nearest star.