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[Dutrius]

My first guess was an eclipsing binary, but that has been ruled out.

My next guess would be interstellar dust. But that would probably be picked up on IR cameras.

[tonnot98]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/forget-water-on-mars-astronomers-may-have-just-found-giant-alien-megastructures-orbiting-a-star-near-a6693886.html

[PTTG??]

Ugh, no. We've looked at a huge number of stars, and we found one where debris happens to be passing by when we looked at it. There is no need to invoke aliens to explain this.

So let's take off the tinfoil hats and construct tinfoil full-body protective suits because we're talking about EM drives and microwave safety.

[RedKing]

Meh, let's point a radio telescope array at it for a little bit and see what we get.
That should be a standard rule -- Find weird anomalies? Point a radio telescope at them.

[Starver]

Meh, let's point a radio telescope array at it for a little bit and see what we get.
That should be a standard rule -- Find weird anomalies? Point a radio telescope at them.

That sounds damn near that there 'science' doohickey, you're a-chattering about there.  No good ever came of science, when the obvious answer to this discovery is to dance naked around some standing stones smoking something not-entirely-tobacco-like...

[TheBiggerFish]

Meh, let's point a radio telescope array at it for a little bit and see what we get.
That should be a standard rule -- Find weird anomalies? Point a radio telescope at them.

Yup.
They're trying to do that.

[Morrigi]

Ugh, no. We've looked at a huge number of stars, and we found one where debris happens to be passing by when we looked at it. There is no need to invoke aliens to explain this.

So let's take off the tinfoil hats and construct tinfoil full-body protective suits because we're talking about EM drives and microwave safety.

The phenomenon regarding this star is unique, they've never seen anything like it. Aliens are as good an explanation as anything.

[Bouchart]

The telescope lens is dirty.  Get some astro-Windex.

This will turn out to be something mundane, like those neutrinos that were thought to be faster than light because some plug was loose.

[Cthulhu]

It's a little more interesting than that.

The occlusion is like 15-20% which is pretty insane.  If Jupiter moved between the sun and the star we're looking at, the aliens would only detect like a 1% occlusion at most.  Whatever it is it's huge.  It's almost certainly from a disintegrating comet, or asteroids.

But then again it could be a dyson sphere in construction, or a dyson cloud of asteroids with solar panels.

And that's way fucking sweeter.

So it's a dyson sphere.  Or ringworld.  Let's all uh.  Rishathra?  Let's do sex on the aliens.  Id on't remember the word.  Those were good books though.  When some MIT nerds told him the Ringworld was unstable and would move off its axis if a solar flare hit the right angle he wrote a whole new book about it.

EDIT:  It was rishathra.  I'm smart.

[Bouchart]

Mr. Burns blocked out their sun.

[mainiac]

[Cthulhu]

shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit

[TheBiggerFish]

Nah, Dyson spheres would radiate in infrared.

[Nick K]

I think they've ruled out it being any kind of lumps of normal matter, such as rogue planets or brown dwarfs or whatever - even if they didn't radiate at all they'd do things like blocking light from sources behind it.

[TheBiggerFish]

I think they've ruled out it being any kind of lumps of normal matter, such as rogue planets or brown dwarfs or whatever - even if they didn't radiate at all they'd do things like blocking light from sources behind it.

What?
It's normal matter distributed distinctly abnormally.  Not dark anything.

So far as I know.