After the appearance of star-like fragments of a star a little earlier this month, they shot a lot of reports, where various reasons for this phenomenon were expressed, and more often than not the cause of "extraterrestrial intelligence" sounded. The official study suggests that these were only fragments of a comet that caused strange blackouts and spots in the Kepler telescope in 2011 and 2013.
The news, in fact, is not so unexpected. Astronomers view it as the most common phenomenon of a comet. The SETI project has already tried to conduct some experiments using a radio antenna, but no signals could be detected. However, scientists add that longer experiments may allow to get at least some data from the Spitzer space telescope.
The Kepler spacecraft scans the stars to find even the slightest signs of other planets. But most often the device makes an incorrect picture of enlightenment and darkening, which greatly complicates the work of astronomers. This leads to speculation and the merging of all fragments of the material of comets, asteroids and planets.
Spitzer is useful because it looks at the Universe in infrared light. This is the perfect set of wavelengths for observing an asteroid. Cosmic dust is reflected in the infrared. The research team immediately used data from the NASA Survey Explorer. As a result, it was found that the "sensitive" Spitzer was not so sensitive, because he did not see anything in the infrared. That is why many objects, most likely, just sailed past it. However, some of them were "cold", that is, covered with ice. Is it possible? Probably.
"Maybe many cometary fragments moving along a certain long trajectory around a star are so frozen that they can never be seen by our devices," NASA wrote in a press release about the study. “The mission’s mission is to study the flocks, especially large comets that were not identified in the distant 2011. As early as 2013, the situation improved, some comet families began to block infrared light less and were able to detect them.”
The study, led by Massimo Marengo of the University of Iowa, was accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
