The Kepler Space Telescope has spotted a 'bizarre' star system that looks like something an alien civilisation would have built, experts have said.
Astronomers initially thought the star was an anomaly caused by bad data.
However, on analysing all their information, they believe the "weird" system may hint at a more advanced civilisation.
“Aliens should always be the very last hypothesis you consider, but this looked like something you would expect an alien civilisation to build,” said Jason Wright, an astronomer from Penn State University, told The Atlantic.
The star first caught astronomers' attention because of the bizarre light patterns it emitted.
The patterns suggested that the star, named KIC 8462852, was surrounded by circling objects usually expected from young stars.
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However, since the star is quite mature, these objects have caused experts to look for other explanations.
Tabetha Boyajian, a post doc at Yale, who published a paper on the star told The Atlantic: “We’d never seen anything like this star.
“It was really weird. We thought it might be bad data or movement on the spacecraft, but everything checked out.”
An alternative explanation from Wright proposes that the star's light pattern could be explained by a "swarm of megastructures" designed to collect energy from the star.
