Found another star that mysteriously dimmed

A team of astronomers discovered something mysterious that blocked light from a young star known as RIK-210, located about 472 light-years away from Earth.

Normally, when the light of a star is fading, it is a sign that something is spinning around, like a planet - but the RIK-210 does not have such things.

The RIK-210 is one of the strangest stars we've found in recent months, it seems to belong to an unknown fuzzy system. So what happened?

Astronomers regularly monitor light coming from distant stars in hopes of discovering new planets orbiting them. This type of planet hunting is called a pass-through method , because the star's blurring can show something that crosses in front of the star, preventing light from reaching the Earth. .

For the most part, researchers can find out what has reduced brightness through long-term observations, and the results are often quite simple, such as a planet or another star, but sometimes also a more strange celestial body.

For example, in 2015 astronomers noted the strange faintness of KIC 8462852 , known as the Tabby Star , which posed a lot of theories because no one had ever explained it. In it there was a distant idea that it could be turned around by a super giant alien structure.

The faintness in this new discovery has more mysteries, with less speculation about aliens.

The first faint was discovered by researchers at NASA's Kepler mission, which uses the Kepler Space Observatory to hunt for alien planets by tracking light from distant stars. . The observed data was then taken to the analytical execution team, led by Trevor David from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).

The light of a star will subside as a planet moves in front of it.(Photo: NASA).

According to their report, the light of the RIK-210 faded by 15% every 5.67 days on Earth, ie only a short cycle. In addition, this time is equal to the star's rotation time, which means that the brightness change coincides with a rotation of its own axis.

The team tried to find a reason for this. The first hypothesis they gave was the existence of a brown dwarf rear seat, but was later removed because after long observation the image obtained showed no sign of it.

"The high resolution spatial image shows that it is a single star, the result of the radial velocity measurement shows that the blur cannot be created by a companion brown dwarf , " the group said in the post. their research.

Further analysis shows that the fading cannot happen only with a single object, which also eliminates the possibility of having a planet. They claim that this star, about 5 to 10 million years old, does not have a pre-planetary disk, a dust ring that is often created around young stars.

"The obscurity of light caused by a pre-planetary disk is unfounded when the star does not accrue positively and observing through infrared light also shows its excess when bound to the disk. inside " .

So, what other hypotheses are left? One team thinks that the most likely cause is an inner cloud of the star's magnetosphere, the areas around the star filled with charged particles controlled by the star's magnetic field.

This hypothesis, though unverified, is most significant because a natural cloud will have orbit around the star and accompany the star's rotation speed.

To answer this question fully, the team said they would need to follow this star for a long time.

"Multi-wavelength photodetector can be used to check its depth because depth can be seen through different wavelengths. Transits of a celestial body will be colorless, in when the decrease in brightness by dust clouds will be less prominent at red wavelengths , "the group wrote about their future plans.

"Finally, observing the spectrum while the star is dimmed can check whether there is light absorption by a cloud of gas moving past the star."

After they analyze the stars further, we hope to get a better understanding of what is fading before we have the mystery of super-alien superstructure at hand.

Currently, the group's research is awaiting publication after the magazine's review process. So we have to wait if their results are independently verified before the conclusion is drawn.