About 1480 light-years away from Earth, a star is doing something

astronomers have never seen before. Every now and then, at random
intervals, its light dips by as much as 22 percent. That's way too much to be
a planet. And the star (officially named KIC 8462852, but informally called
"Tabby's Star" or "Boyajian's Star") seems to have gotten dramatically darker
over the past century.

This odd behavior defies all known explanations, and astronomer Jason
Wright has pointed out that these light patterns are similar to what we might
expect if aliens built a complex of machines around the star to harvest its
energy. But even Wright admits it's much more likely there's a natural
explanation. In September, he and coauthor Steinn Sigurddsson rounded up
and analyzed some of the most common explanations.

Wright has been been fleshing out those analyses in a series of posts on his
blog.

We've rounded up our favorite explanations here, in rough order from least
likely to most plausible.