I’m not an astronomy expert either, but see section 2.6: “Limits on a companion”. That reddit thread didn’t seem to realize that section 2.6 actually lays out the case against an undetected binary based on doppler shifts.
The 20% dip requires a large occluder, about as large as the F-class star itself—or more likely even larger assuming it isn’t perfectly opaque/cohesive. A star that big should be detectable unless it is close enough to be indistinguishable, because stars only get that big due to fusion overcoming gravity. The doppler analysis in section 2.6 rules out any large heavy close companion.
The other sections in general place geometric limits on the location of the occluder object(s) - within a range of 3 to 8 AUs.
Also, the hidden binary hypothesis doesn’t much help explain the odd fractal complexity of the dip around 1540, which suggests a number of objects. The simpler single dip pattern at around 800 fits the profile of a single occluder clump about the size of the star or larger (partial occlusion), which of course is itself also weird. The second occlusion event at 1540 could be caused by the 800 clump plus additional smaller objects/clumps. For comparison, a more typical occlusion by a jupiter sized object creates a plateau shaped dip pattern of < 1%, like this.
The occluder clumps appear to be something about as large as the star, but of less mass, and they can’t be very hot. They outline a full set of observational constraints in 4.4.1 which doesn’t leave much room for known objects. The only things that seem to fit the full profile are swarms of stuff/debris/clouds bound to small objects, moving in tight formations (thus the swarm of disintegrating comets theory).
There is another oddity that the paper briefly mentions but does’t even attempt to explain. There is a clear but small high frequency modulation in the light curve which they explain as the star’s rotation period of 0.8 days. There is another larger longer term modulation on the order of 10-20 days which is present most of the time but strangely disappears in at least one time period:
We also report on the presence of a possible 10 – 20 day period (Figure 2), which, when present, is visible by eye in the light curve. We illustrate this in Figure 4, showing zoomed in regions of the Kepler light curve. The star’s 0.88 d period is evident in each section as the high-frequency flux variations. The panel second from the bottom ‘(c)’) shows no low-frequency (10 – 20 day) variations, but the rest do. We have no current hypothesis to explain this signal.
Assuming this isn’t aliens, then perhaps this will turn out to be the stellar equivalent of ball lightning.
I’m not an astronomy expert either, but see section 2.6: “Limits on a companion”. That reddit thread didn’t seem to realize that section 2.6 actually lays out the case against an undetected binary based on doppler shifts.
The 20% dip requires a large occluder, about as large as the F-class star itself—or more likely even larger assuming it isn’t perfectly opaque/cohesive. A star that big should be detectable unless it is close enough to be indistinguishable, because stars only get that big due to fusion overcoming gravity. The doppler analysis in section 2.6 rules out any large heavy close companion.
The other sections in general place geometric limits on the location of the occluder object(s) - within a range of 3 to 8 AUs.
Also, the hidden binary hypothesis doesn’t much help explain the odd fractal complexity of the dip around 1540, which suggests a number of objects. The simpler single dip pattern at around 800 fits the profile of a single occluder clump about the size of the star or larger (partial occlusion), which of course is itself also weird. The second occlusion event at 1540 could be caused by the 800 clump plus additional smaller objects/clumps. For comparison, a more typical occlusion by a jupiter sized object creates a plateau shaped dip pattern of < 1%, like this.
The occluder clumps appear to be something about as large as the star, but of less mass, and they can’t be very hot. They outline a full set of observational constraints in 4.4.1 which doesn’t leave much room for known objects. The only things that seem to fit the full profile are swarms of stuff/debris/clouds bound to small objects, moving in tight formations (thus the swarm of disintegrating comets theory).
There is another oddity that the paper briefly mentions but does’t even attempt to explain. There is a clear but small high frequency modulation in the light curve which they explain as the star’s rotation period of 0.8 days. There is another larger longer term modulation on the order of 10-20 days which is present most of the time but strangely disappears in at least one time period:
Assuming this isn’t aliens, then perhaps this will turn out to be the stellar equivalent of ball lightning.