Planetary Science Seminar fall-2015

First contact? Kepler's Abnormal Discovery Around KIC 12557548

The Kepler space telescope was originally designed to discover exoplanets using the transit method. Recently, several stars have shown to behave abnormally compared to regular transit patterns; instead of one, periodical dip, the light-curve shows several dips in unequal sizes. We will discuss the possible sources of this abnormal behavior - some natural: an exo-Oort cloud, a transiting comet - and some artificial: a planet size mega structure created by an advanced alien race. The talk will follow Arnold (2005), Boyajian et al (2015) and Wright et al (2015).